Lazy Imperialists or Hardworking Careerists? The Bureaucracy of the Southern Outskirts of the Russian Empire in the First Half of the 19th Century

The article is devoted to the analysis of models of official behavior and practices of officialdom in the southern outskirts of the Russian Empire in the first half of the 19th century. The purpose of the study is to overcome simplistic stereotypes (“lazy imperialists” vs. “hardworking careerists”) and identify a set of factors that determined the specifics of the regional bureaucracy. The central place in the article is given to the period of the viceroyalty of M. S. Vorontsov in the Caucasus in 1844—1854. Based on archival materials, including form lists, official correspondence and memoirs, career trajectories, motivation, professional competence and integration of officials into local social structures are reconstructed. The importance of the official rights and privileges of officials who served on the outskirts of the empire is revealed. It is established that the Caucasian bureaucracy represented a heterogeneous environment where imperial career strategies, adaptation to local conditions and individual life trajectories were combined. The results of the study contribute to discussions about imperial governance, the history of bureaucracy, and the specifics of frontier regions

Bureaucracy · Empire · Frontier · Psycholinguistics and Behavioral Studies · Security, Politics, and Digital Transformation · Soviet and Russian History