Non-core Russian territory under Anarcho-capitalism: better or worse?

Suppose an isolationist/westward focused/aggressively non-expansionist regime gained power over the Russian heartland (inside the St. Petersburg-Mogilev-Voronezh-Nizhny Novgorod-Petrozadovsk pentagon) and never expanded beyond their immediate vicinity (not crossing the Urals, for example). Suppose further that this situation continued until some time after the TTL equivalent of the industrial revolution. Trade, exploration, and settling in the East is still possible, but direct military control of non-own territory isn't.
What would these areas look like today, having been left to develop more or less on their devices. Russian conquest and forced settling is replaced with competition and opportunism. The main ways to get into Siberia are the large rivers, which are best navigable from West to East. Entry from, say, China is problematic considering the barren deserts and mountain ranges ahead of any potential settler. With no Russian dominance the steppe is open to pastoral empires for a longer time, further complicating subjugation from the South or East.

Central Asia and especially Siberia are incredibly resource rich areas, and I imagine that resource extraction and trade would be the bread and butter of many of there statelets. Growing markets in Europe but also Asia will create a demand for Siberian and Central Asian furs, gold, diamonds, silver, and other metals, and later the largest coal, oil, and gas reserves in the world.

What would the effect on the native populations be? Would they be pushed into reservations as per OTL US by Siberian Gold rushers or would they try to leverage their share of the earth?

With no prison and work camps and forced mass immigration, will Siberia be even more sparsely populated than OTL? Or will the rush for natural resources attract companies, workers, and services to build small welfare states, Siberian Norways and Denmarks?
 
I don't understand this question. Is there a specific time period this government or I guess system comes to power in Russia?
I think he means "how would Siberia/Central Asia have developed demographically and economically without Russian control?", in which case he probably wants us to talk about their state history from possible establishment to present. He also wants them to remain independent during this time, or at least independent of non-Siberian/non-Central Asian powers.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
The idea of an alt-Siberia that isn't gobbled up by Russia as in OTL is very interesting, but I don't really see how you make the leap from there to anarcho-capitalism.

In any case, I would argue that any obstacles to Chinese annexation/colonisation of Siberia are not much more of a problem than the obstacles Russia faced. Russia had an easier time of it, facing fewer geographical obstacles ecept the sheer distance, but if Russia remains absent from the region, China might well start see it as a place to expand into. Perhaps this indeed happens later, and Siberia remains mostly the domain of various Khanates (some of them epghemeral, some of them lasting longer). I imagine that Mongolia would effectively have no fixed northern border, and various Mongol peoples and confederations would be part of "Mongolia" in greater or lesser degree. Further north, there would be other native Siberian peoples, just living their lives, largely unconcerned with the outside world.

The resources will be meaningless for the longest time. There will indeed be fur trade, yes. (And this might be a reason for China to grab the area, or for some enterprising Khan to solidify his hold and set up a lasting Khanate; think a "Kazakhstan of the north" or something like that.) But the other stuff? Even mining for gold, silver, coal etc. was difficult in Siberia in OTL for a long time. Oil and gas are obviously not something that will become relevant early on.

Once Siberia does become interesting to foreign powers, I expect them to just treat it as they did any other area in the great game of colonialism: they'll try to grab up as much of it as they can, at the expense of their rivals. Depending on the ATL circumstances and the exact timeframe, one might expect Russia to expand into western Siberia, while China comes in from the south, through Mongolia, and Japan tries to get a coastal foothold in the east. If there Russu-British rivalry is a thing, as in OTL, Britain might be interested in getting a slice of the pie (likely at the expense of Japan's coastal foothold).

Since large parts of Siberia are not exactly inviting, the more northern areas will mostly be just claim lines on a map. (They were in the case of Russia for a long time, and to some extent still are!) This really answers the question about natives: in OTL, they were driven from the most desirable/strategic spots, and outside those areas, they were mostly left to their own devices. I expect something similar here.

The period of an unruly "scramble for Siberia", likely involving a gold rush or something like that, might have the sort of characteristics that someone identifying as an anarcho-capitalist might admire (at least in theory). That is: no effective state control, rugged explorers and prospectors, no taxes or government bureaucracy, and who-so-ever manages to dig that gold out of the earth gets rich. (This vision ignores the obvious downsides of such lawless areas, but sure, I'll admit it has its appeal.)

The point is that such a situation never lasts. It's the nature of the wild frontier, which is then pacified to at least some extent, and becomes "just like the rest of the world". That's what happened to the Wild West, and to the Gold Rush-era Californian hinterland, and to the Yukon...

At the end of the day, one must not expect Siberia to become a "state-less" region, without government or anything like it, and where the free market is the only order of things. Such things, or something like them, exist for brief periods on the frontiers of expanding societies. And then law and order catch up, as they do.
 
Top