Scientific Networks of Empire: Grigory Potanin and Siberian Regionalism

Siberia, a relatively early colonised region of the Russian Empire, was home to one of most intellectually exciting movements in imperial history: namely, to that of oblastnichesto, loosely translated as “regionalism.” It was an ideology that mixed science with politics, emphasised the colonial nature of Russian rule in Siberia, and promoted geographical, ethnographic, and statistical study of the region. In the proposed paper I will argue that paying attention to this particular ideologically-inspired view of science in the Russian Empire can significantly deepen our understanding of how both imperial science and imperial governance worked by looking at epistemological and political projects on the imperial periphery.

Looking at the towering figure of Grigory Potanin, one of the intellectual fathers of the oblastnichestvo, once an inmate and later an acknowledged scientific luminary and administrator, I would like to show the workings of poly-centric imperial networks. Potanin's networks ranged from Tomsk to Omsk to St. Petersburg, and beyond Russian borders. These had proved crucial in both formulating a research agenda presentable in St. Petersburg and carrying it out in Siberia. Any account of the late nineteenth-century development of Russian imperial natural sciences should take these and similar networks into account.

Using the case of the science of the Siberian oblastniki and emphasising the need to look beyond St. Petersburg, I will argue for the importance of networks and their polycentricity in studying the Russian Empire. An analysis careful to tensions and incongruities of specific scientific practices in a diverse multi-ethnic empire will shed light on understanding imperial situations in general.