Siberian separatism

Siberian regionalism (Russian: Сибирское областничество, Sibirskoye oblastnichestvo) is a political movement to form an autonomous Siberian polity. It originated in the mid-19th century and reached a high tide with the military activities of Aleksandr Kolchak and Viktor Pepelyayev during the Russian Civil War.

On the heels of Afanasy Shchapov's activities in Siberia, a movement advocating a far-ranging autonomy for the region took shape under the name of "regionalism" (oblastnichestvo). In the 19th century the movement was founded by Siberian students in Saint Petersburg: Grigory Potanin, Nikolay Yadrintsev and people with other backgrounds. Some radical members in 1863 presumably prepared a revolt in Siberia together with exiled Poles and Ukrainians, trying to achieve independence and to begin with the development of a Siberian state, similar to the United States. Forty-four members of the group were arrested and taken to prison by the Czarist government in May 1865, after watch officers of the Siberian Cadet Corps searched cadet Arseny Samsonov, aged 16, for illicit items and found a proclamation entitled "To Patriots of Siberia," attributed to a collective authorship of Grigory Potanin, Nikolay Yadrintsev, S.S. Shashkov, et al. The idea of an autonomous Siberia was supported by Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, hoping it would become a democratic state, prosperous within a union with United States and leading to the collapse of Imperial Russia. Siberia was seen by local thinkers and settlers as means of escape from the oppression of the Russian Empire, and the seed of a possible free and democratic country that would spread freedom across Asia.

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