Inorodtsy is a legal term used in the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 in reference to non-Slavic

Slavic peoples

The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

 population of the Empire. Literally meaning "of different descent/nation", it is sometimes translated as allogeneous (people) (cf. "allogenes

Allogenes

Allogenes is a Sethian Gnostic text from the New Testament apocrypha. The main surviving copies come from the Nag Hammadi library, though there are many missing lines. A small fragment also survives in the more recently discovered Codex Tchacos, which may help in filling the gaps.The text concerns...

") and sometimes as "aliens". The latter translation is misleading, since in most cases the term was applied to the indigenous population of Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

, Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

, and Russian Far East

Russian Far East

Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean...

. Initially introduced as a legal statute for special treatment of certain categories of population (including a certain degree of protection of their traditional life), for which some laws of the Empire were deemed inappropriate, over time the term acquired a pejorative

Pejorative

Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...

 connotation of "lacking culture, uncivilized peoples". Privileges and special treatment for inorodtsy included exemption of military service

Military service

Military service, in its simplest sense, is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, whether as a chosen job or as a result of an involuntary draft . Some nations require a specific amount of military service from every citizen...

, protection of grazing lands, and religious and governmental self-administration.