In modern historiography there is a certain interest in the national policy of the Russian Empire. This is due to changes in the methodological approach, the application of a new paradigm of "new imperial history", imperiology. There has been a shift of interest from how the Russian Empire managed and integrated the peripheries to how the peripheries modified the empire. On this basis, the article examines what assessments/views are used in foreign and Kazakhstani historiography. The area of historiographical review includes works on Russian imperial policy in the Steppe regions published in the post-Soviet period. The problem of Russia's national policy towards the Kazakh community in the Western historiography was studied in the context of general tendencies of studying colonialism as a historical phenomenon "with all its negative and positive features". Most Kazakh researchers adhere to the traditional assessment of Russia's imperial policy towards the Kazakh steppes, calling it colonial. In Russian historiography there is a revision of classical approaches, which resulted in new concepts: imperial policy of acculturation, frontier modernization.