“Letters from the Trans-Ural steppe” by sultan Mendali Piraliev: an unofficial point of view of a Russian official on imperial policy in Kazakhstan

The article is devoted to the analysis of V. V. Grigoriev's views on Russian policy in the Kazakh Hordes. The interrelations with the Central Asia was not the primary one in the foreign policy of the Russian Empire in the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries. Therefore, the central authorities entrusted managing the Kazakhs to the Orenburg governor and the Orenburg border commission. The Orenburg and Omsk officials not only implemented Russian policy in this region, but also exerted a strong influence on its formation and took part in the development of the most normative acts in the Steppe management. Therefore, the views of local officials are of interest for understanding the Central Asian policy of the Russian Empire, the peculiarities of relations with the Kazakhs and their management. V.V. Grigoriev, who held the important post of chairman of the Orenburg Border Commission, preferred to declare his position in the form of letters from the imaginary Kazakh sultan Mendali Piraliev, because thus as we can assume his ideas got more weight and he could have felt free in describing the policy of the Russian authorities in the Kazakh Hordes. This policy, according to V.V. Grigoriev, was erroneous, because it did not take into account the mentality of an Eastern person and was based not on justice, but on “excessive indulgence”. That is why the Russian administration could not cope even with the attacks of the Kazakhs on Russian villages and the border line that had been erected to separate the Kazakhs after their taking citizenship. V.V. Grigoriev, who headed the Orenburg border commission in the 50s and early 60s. XIX century, the period of the Kazakh steppe future fate determination, perhaps expected to strengthen the positions of supporters of the incorporation of Kazakhs into the general imperial political and legal space by publishing his polemical “Letters”.