Law and Custom in the Steppe by Virginia Martin

Author:Virginia Martin [Martin, Virginia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136123863
Google: QRvhKhALfhwC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-10-12T04:42:48+00:00

Appeals for Russian Intervention

If Kazakhs learned to adapt to border demarcations to protect their land claims, prevent disputes and resolve disputes, it was clearly with the ultimate goal of upholding a kinship group's authority to make land use decisions on the administrative unit within which political power was located. By the same token, the manipulation of administrative boundaries for the sake of kinship group control often prevented other Kazakh nomads from resolving land disputes and thus they failed to ensure adequate pasture lands and water access for their herds. That is, the side in the dispute without the power base rooted in the administrative unit was usually the losing side, and those Kazakhs were forced to seek legal recourse in other ways. In these cases, Kazakhs learned to appeal to Russian authorities for direct intervention to override decisions made by delegates, volost administrators and aul elders that benefited only the power base of those bureaucrats, but not necessarily the land needs of all the nomads concerned.

One case is typical of the resolution process that a Kazakh had to follow after deciding to use official channels to resolve his land dispute; it was repeated over and over again through the rest of the nineteenth century, as nomadic land needs and kinship authority collided and engaged with colonial structures. In this particular case, a Kazakh nomad named Miirman Nurabaev of Temerchinsk volost in Karkaralinsk uezd of Semipalatinsk oblast submitted a petition to the uezd commander in March of 1870 requesting help in resolving a land dispute.43 The dispute involved another Kazakh, Maichi Churtukov, and a claim to a winter pasture in neighboring Kentsk volost called Qïzïl-Uadïr-Abalï. Given the information I have obtained regarding the distribution of kinship groups on winter pastures in this region, it is fair to assume that both men in this dispute came from the Argïn clan of the Middle Horde, but from different lineages within the Argïn.44 In his petition, Nurabaev explained that he had inherited the land in question from his ancestors and he had occupied it as winter pasture since 1850. In September 1868, the defendant, Churtukov, had come to Nurabaev to request that he be allowed to winter on the land called Qïzïl-Uadïr-Abalï. Nurabaev, in a spirit of clan solidarity and mutual aid to kinsmen in need, agreed to give Churtukov the land on condition that it be returned if he needed it. Five months later, in February 1869 (a month after the 1868 Provisional Statute became law) Nurabaev came back to Churtukov to request the return of Qïzïl-Uadïr-Abalï, because he now wanted to give it to his son. Churtukov refused to give it back, saying Nurabaev had no right to it anymore, and if he wanted it, he had to buy it. In exasperation, Nurabaev turned to the volost administrator to request that he intervene to resolve the dispute.

According to the 1868 Provisional Statute, it was the duty of the volost administrator to assign resolution of such a land dispute to the biy court or the volost assembly of delegates.

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