On the peasants' opposition to the tsarism forest policy on the state lands of Siberiain the late 19th - early 20th centuries

The study examines the issues of interaction between the state and the peasants in the process of implementing the course of the tsarist government to strengthen and expand the state forestry on the state lands of Siberia in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. This course found a concrete manifestation in land surveying to allocate forests of the sole ownership of the treasury and their exploitation, as well as in prohibitions on the sale of timber by peasants, obtained by them as a result of the development of forests for joint use of the treasury and peasants. The state took measures to protect and exploit its forest resources. The peasantry of Siberia, accustomed to the free use of forests, tried as far as possible not to comply with the prohibitions of the authorities on the exploitation of legally state-owned lands and forests, used them, if possible, as if they were their own. Foresters, elected from the peasantry, in fact, very often did not fulfill their functions of protecting forests. At the everyday level, opposition to the forest department was reflected in the intimidation and even beating officials of the forest guard. Important forms of struggle were such legal and passive forms of protest as complaints and petitions sent to various authorities and administrations. Based on documentary materials of departmental statistics on unauthorized forest felling for the period 1897-1914 the authors concluded that the active form of resistance to the course of tsarism to strengthen and expand the forestry of the treasury had the greatest impact during the years of the First Russian Revolution: the tsarist authorities were forced to increase the volume of forest resources sold to the population free of charge and at a reduced price. On the whole, the resistance of the peasants to the policy of strengthening and expanding the forestry of the treasury limited the degree of completeness of the state's ownership rights to the Siberian forests.