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The paper analyzes the proposals and projects elaborated in 1894-1895 by the Minister of Agriculture and State Properties, Alexey Yermolov, for developing the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Urals, and Siberia. The article aims at disclosing to what extent and in what aspects the general trend to modernizing the country’s economy influenced the policies of settling and developing the imperial outskirt regions, thus submitting them to the logic of “frontier” modernization. The materials surveyed are diverse in content. In the Caucasus, the main attention was paid to the resettlement problems, in Turkestan – those of economic development; and in Siberia both directions of colonization policies were combined. Meanwhile, the general approaches can be revealed in Yermolov’s proposals. This is, first, overcoming the economic isolation of the regions and opening them with laying the transport communications; second, combining the resettlement colonization with the intensification and specialization of economics turning to more rational methods of natural resources development; third, paying emphasis to preparation and organization of the resettlement, optimization of the land use in terms of relations between immigrants and natives; fourth, starting the transition from agricultural development to industrialization of the outskirt regions. A special place among the regions belonged to the Urals, which, due to the long tradition of the mining industry, had lost the frontier features by the end of the 19th century. In the Urals, the tasks coming to the fore were concerned with the structural policy aimed at adapting the region to market.