| Popis: |
The article examines the experience of Russian regionalism in mid-19th – early 20th century Tuva, which took shape of setting up a colony of Russian subjects and became one of the most powerful factors behind the declaration of the People’s Republic of Tuva. Russian Autonomous Labor Colony (RALC) was established in early 1920s and lasted for 10 years as a unique political entity in the history of Russia. RALC was fully controlled by official representatives of the Soviet state. Its stable population of over 10000 was mainly involved in cattle breeding, agriculture, crafts and even trade. RALC had its own legislation which even provided for certain elements of statehood. It was allowed to create its own flag and emblem, control its budget, and had its own military unit. The land under use by the colonists was on official lease from the government of the People’s Republic of Tuva (PRT). Ethnic Russians with Soviet citizenship complied with the legislation of the RSFSR. RALC had its own court, with convicted criminals serving their sentence in the PRT. Both RALC and PRT passed through several stages of increasingly radical left-wing reforms, which gave Moscow a firm grip over the local political establishment. In the second half of the decade the sociopolitical structure that included the RALC started to crumble away. On May 24, 1932, the autonomy was abolished by the new USSR-PRT agreement that oversaw the transformation of the colony’s remnants into Committees of Soviet Citizens. The article introduces a number of unpublished or little-known documents from the state archives of Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk and other cities of the Russian Federation. |
