Selecting the Main Elements of the Territorial Structure of the Ethnocultural Space of Asian Russia at the End of the 19th Century

Abstract

The relevance of this study is associated with the concepts of ethnocultural space and ethnocontact zones being developed by Russian geographers. Further development of these concepts involves the search for new research approaches and techniques. First of all, this concerns cartographic research methods, which are key in identifying the main elements of the territorial structure of the ethno-cultural space – cores and contact zones. The aim of the study is to develop new cartographic techniques for identifying elements of the territorial structure of the ethno-cultural space of Russia on the example of the regions of Siberia and the Far East based on the results of the First General Population Census of 1897. For this, the ethnic communities of this territory at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries grouped into two meta-ethnic levels. The first meta-ethno-cultural community covers the indigenous peoples of Asian Russia (North Asian cultural world), the second – immigrants to Siberia and the Far East from the European part of the country (East European cultural world). The boundaries of the nuclei of these cultural worlds and the contact zones between them are determined, for which a quantitative indicator is used – the index of meta-ethno-cultural heterogeneity, which is an analogue of the ethnic mosaic index proposed by B. M. Eckel. A map has been drawn up, which reflects two quantitative characteristics at once – the ratio of the proportion of representatives of the two considered cultural worlds and the value of the index of meta-ethno-cultural homogeneity. This map is more informative than the one based solely on the value of the index of meta-ethnocultural heterogeneity.