ABSTRACT
The main concern of this chapter is not the socio-economic dimension of peasant migration (for which there exists an enormous literature), but rather the theoretical foundations of an empire that was developing the concept of a “united and indivisible” Russia and its justification in national terms. The agrarian movement of Russian peasants to new lands was implicated in an ideology of “internal imperialism” and, from the end of the nineteenth century, became part of a national discourse, then at a formative stage, that included a series of concepts in its elaboration of the so-called “Russian cause” [russkoe delo]: “peaceful conquest,” the “revival” of the borderlands, the “establishment of Russian civilization [grazhdanstvennost'],” and – most frequently – “Russification.” 1 In this chapter, I wish to examine how spontaneous peasant resettlement was incorporated into an official ideology of “popular autocracy” as a way of giving popular sanction to imperial policy. I also consider who precisely was most active in pursuing this goal.
