Mishars of the Southern Ural in the national policy of the Russian empire during the canton's period

This historical and ethnological research analyzes the history of the Mishars Southern Ural during the period of functioning of the canton’s government system in the region, when their estate and ethnic boundaries generally coincided. The historical aspect of the study reflects key milestones of this period between 1798 and 1865, with a brief historical excursion to an earlier period. The paper attempts to reconstruct the process of forming and developing the Mishars’ identity, taking into account the identification of factors that had a direct impact on this process. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that for the first time an attempt was made to comprehensively consider the scantily explored ethnic community - the Mishars of the Southern Ural. Despite the considerable interest of researchers in the ethnic history of the Southern Ural, the Mishars of the region are still mentioned only in passing in research, remaining the least studied ethnic community in the region. They were called meshcheryaks, and they were a special group that occupied an intermediate position between other pripushchenniks and Bashkirs-patrimony. The processes that took place in the life of the Mishars of the Southern Ural are considered against the military-political and social situation in the province and the evolution of the canton’s system of government. The author reveals the influence of the canton’s period on the completion of the Mishars of the Southern Ural formation as an ethnosocial community. The study also focuses on the transformation of Mishars into a part of “novobashkiry”, which, of course, contributed to the blurring of identity. So, after the abolition of the Bashkir army, the process of transferring Mishars to the category of free rural inhabitants was accelerated. This research is relevant, since it has not yet been considered in the scientific community from such a perspective.