Ethnic and administrative borders: from conflict to stability (on the example of Orenburg Region in XVIII-XIX centuries)

Understanding the historical experience of relations between peoples affects the political, economic and cultural sphere of people’s lives. Ethno-cultural and inter-confessional dialogue in the multi-ethnic space is always in the spotlight of researchers. Over the past two and a half centuries more than 50 thousand scientific works devoted to the history of Kazakhstan of the pre-revolutionary period were published in different regions of the former USSR and abroad. Historians of Russia and Kazakhstan, using an extensive documentary base, study all aspects of the interaction of their peoples. As before, the subject of discussion is a multifaceted problem of Russian-Kazakh relations, in particular, the entry of Kazakhstan into the Russian Empire in the early XVIII century. The paper deals with the nature of this connection in the context of cross-border region relations. The author relies on an approach that is free from emotional influence and reflects both negative and positive consequences of the Empire’s national policy. Colonization of the Kazakh steppe began with the territory of the southern Urals; the paper demonstrates the conflict potential, the confrontation of tsarism and Kazakh society. The author shows on the materials of Orenburg Region that despite all the vicissitudes of history the Kazakhs and the Russian people have developed sincere relations of good neighborliness and cooperation.