Revisiting Land Use Patterns in Uncontrolled Settlements along the Caspian Coastal Strip

Introduction. The note by I. I. Peresvet-Soltan, an official of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property, is a valuable source on colonization history of the Caspian coastal strip and government policies towards uncontrolled fishing settlements in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. Goals. The article aims at introducing the identified source, analyzing its materials in the context of state policy towards unauthorized fishing villages and their inhabitants. Materials and methods. The study examines a manuscript by I.I.Peresvet-Soltan prepared for the Minister of State Property pertaining to fishing settlements in the Caspian-Volga Basin and stored at the State Archive of Astrakhan Oblast. The work employs a number of research methods, such as the comparative historical, historical genetic, and descriptive ones. Results. Our insight into documents shows the note contains valuable data collected personally by the author and by other government officials. Due to this the note is largely synthetical. The content analysis indicates that despite there were varying approaches to the issue of unauthorized fishing settlements, authorities of different levels were rather inclined towards a positive solution of legalizing such villages

Archaeology · Christian ministry · Economics · Economy · Fishing · Geography · Human settlement · Political science · Arctic and Russian Policy Studies · Engineering · Law · Regional Socio-Economic Development Trends · Russia and Soviet political economy