The Amur Expedition and the Committee for the Settlement of the Far East in the Agenda of the Russian Council of Ministers under P. A. Stolypin

Abstract

The defeat in the Russo-Japanese War forced the Russian authorities to change their strategy: instead of territorial expansion, the main task was to settle the Russian-speaking population in the Russian Far East and to ensure the border area security. For this purpose, large infrastructure projects were financed from the state budget during the interwar period. One of the most famous was the Amur railroad, the construction of which, as in the case with the Trans-Siberian Railway, significantly accelerated the colonization of the vast but sparsely populated territories of the Amur Region. In official publications and government discussions, the role of the road was associated not only with the achievement of military and strategic goals, but also with the economic development of Siberia and the Far East as a whole. At the same time, the establishment of a coordinating center for Far Eastern colonization became urgent in view of a large-scale attempt to solve the agrarian question in Central Russia. Participation of the members of the unified Government — the Council of Ministers — in the development of these measures implied taking into account all inter-agency interests. At the end of 1908, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers could only formulate general wishes on the organization of theoretical (scientific work) and practical (resettlement) aspects in the Far East. These proposals did not consider the specifics of lawmaking in the Duma monarchy. Attempts of the Main Administration for Land Management and Agriculture headed by A. V. Krivoshein to monopolize the subject of resettlement encountered sharp opposition from the most influential part of the government. The decision taken in 1909 to establish the Committee on the settlement of the Far East and to organize the Amur expedition was a compromise which was not predetermined by P. A. Stolypin’s original plans.