In the center of the collective monograph is the problem of determining the characteristics and features of the formation and implementation of the policy of the Russian Empire on the development of Central Asian and Ural-Volga territories. The team of authors, consisting of leading domestic and foreign experts on this issue, offered their own answers to the question whether the implementation of the state policy of acculturation took place in the Russian Empire, and if it took place at least in certain aspects, then does the imperial policy of acculturation fit into the methodological scheme of "colonialism" (on the Russian pre-revolutionary material of the respective regions, with the main emphasis on the situation developing on the Lower and Middle Volga, in the Southern Urals and in the Kazakh steppe, since these territories were inhabited by nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples typologically close to each other).