“…Having neither Grain Farming nor Stock Breeding nor Reindeer but Only This One River”: Paternalism and Market Economy in the North-East Baikal Area

Abstract

The article describes the features of the state paternalism in the context of development of capitalist relations in the North-East Baikal area in the late XIX – early XX centuries. The research is focused on the practice of the rent of the land, which actually was owned by the state. At the same time the rights of ownership/use of the land were given to “wandering” Tunguses. Rent was a form and source of formation of market and paternalistic relations. We consider the practice of such a relationship which was not spelled out in the official law and took the form of the “wild market” and localized forms of sovereignty, providing the possibility of a “social elevator” and “game on paternalism”, i.e. of the state resources by the participants of economic relations.