« Russian colonisation: Willard Sunderland, ‘The Russian Guide to Colonization Management: By Titular Councilor Andrei Ivanovich Korotich’, Ab Imperio, 3, 2025, pp. 162-178
Vulnerable settler colonialism: Oliver Baker, ‘Embattled Settler Colonialism in John Rollin Ridge’s Joaquín Murieta’, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, 71, 4, 2025, pp. 443-481 »

Facing Russian colonisation: Egor Antonov , Aleksandr Korobeinikov, ‘Under the Name “Yakut”: Pseudonymous Authorship, Settler Colonialism, and the Political Agency of Sakha Intellectuals in the Late Russian Empire’, Ab Imperio, 3, 2025, pp. 79-111

15Dec25

Abstract: The article explores the strategic use of the pseudonym “Yakut” by a group of Sakha (Yakut) intellectuals in the late Russian Empire to assert their political voice against imperial authority and settler colonialism. Operating from the margins of the empire, this collective voice engaged in sophisticated public discourse that did not merely respond to imperial misrepresentation but actively constructed a political language of Indigenous self-assertion. The article systematically examines three key thematic areas in which the pseudonym was deployed: rewriting Sakha history to legitimize traditional governance, rigorously critiquing land policy and settler colonialism with environmental realism, and advocating for Indigenous self-government by repurposing imperial legal frameworks. Ultimately, the article argues that “Yakut” was a discursive position crafted by an educated elite to assert intellectual sovereignty and redefine the terms of Sakha participation within a contradictory imperial system.


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