Forced Migrants as a Political Actor in the Siberian Province during the World War I

Forced migration during the First World War has become a powerful factor affecting both international relations and the situation within involved countries. In the Russian Empire this phenomenon appeared to be a new factor in the political space. Researchers believe that in the European part, the refugee component of this migration flow has had a noticeable impact on the collapse of state power in provinces. At the same time, there is a common opinion that the deported part of the immigrants, once in the Siberian provinces, joined the composition of organizations and movements dissatisfied with the authorities and, accordingly, contributed to the further shattering of state structures in these regions. The purpose of this article is to analyze the mentioned influence on the materials of the main recipient territory of all types of forced migrants - Siberia. The work is based on the historical-genetic method, the application of which made it possible to reconstruct the features of the interaction of various political actors within the region. The orientation of their political activity, its degree was determined on the basis of the historical-psychological method. As a result of the study, there was formulated the statement about the vector of the impact of forced migrants on the political forces of Siberian society, from the perspective of the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour, John Law and Michel Callon. This methodological approach refuted the classical historiographic position that there was no political influence on the part of the group of forced migrants, with the exception of the active position of the deported ones. Also, during the analysis, it was confirmed that the left political powers were not interested in migrants.