scholarly journals Nälg ja ränne: 1868.–1869. aasta väljarändeliikumine Eestimaa kubermangus [Famine and migration: the migration movement in the province of Estland in 1868–1869]

2016 ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
Kadri Tooming
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
State Support ◽  
Migration Flow ◽  
Difficult Situation ◽  
Saint Petersburg ◽  
Short Period ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Baltic

This article deals with the rural migration movement during the years of the last major famine (1867–69) in Estonia. Famine was particularly severe in the province of Estland and in the Saaremaa district of the province of Livland. A new wave of migration movement also began in Estland on the island of Hiiumaa in Western Estonia where the misery was greatest. The article studies the migration movement during one year starting with the moment when the movement entered the public spotlight in the summer 1868 until the summer of 1869 when the movement subsided. This short period stands out because of the attention of the state authorities and the publicity that the movement attracted. This article seeks to answer the question of what the standpoint of the state authorities was. Was migration seen as famine relief or something that had to be prevented? The main sources are thematic correspondence in archives of the institutions that guided and controlled the migration movement on the local and central levels from Estonian, Latvian and Russian archives. The Baltic Governor-General Pyotr Albedinsky suggested that peasants who had lost their source of subsistence due to famine should be given land in the inland governorates of the empire and settled there with the state support. The central government and the tsar himself did not support his programme. The migration movement was a source of discomfort for the authorities because it drew the attention of the Russian Slavophile public to agrarian relations in the Baltic provinces. When discussing possible solutions for dealing with the migration movement, the main intention of the Russian Empire’s Minister of the Interior was to prevent poor peasants from flocking to Saint Petersburg, the capital of the empire. There was no intention to reorganise the principles of land ownership in the Baltic provinces. For the central government of the Russian Empire, it was also important to prevent precedents of settlement with state support that would have increased migration flow throughout the empire, strengthening the belief among peasants that the state would financially support their migration. The nobility of Estland (Ritterschaft) considered the only causes of the widespread migration movement to be the state’s inadequate passport policy, incapability to restrict illegal emigration and unwillingness to take resolute measures against it. Roughly 4500 peasants from Estland registered themselves for migration to southern provinces of the Russian Empire. Approximately 2000 peasants, who were distrustful of local officials and landlords, headed for Saint Petersburg. Those that were sent back sometimes repeatedly returned to the capital. Both numbers say little about those who actually emigrated from Estland during the famine. Measures implemented by the authorities such as restrictions on issuing passports and hindering moving onward from Saint Petersburg (even with required passports) put peasants in a difficult situation. Large numbers of peasants departed without applying for any assistance from the authorities. Those who made it to the province of Stavropol in Caucasia had an advantage since most of the arrivals were given land. Officials of the province of origin and those of the province of destination regarded migration differently. Areas of colonisation were willing to accept peasants who wished to cultivate the fields in order to gain additional manpower. About 300 Estonian peasants who had assembled in Saint Petersburg to obtain state support for migrating to Caucasia were forcibly settled in the province of Novgorod at state expense at the end of 1868 and beginning of 1869. A third of them died shortly after relocation and another third were minors. This forcible settlement was not carried out in the hope of improving the subsistence of peasants or to stimulate the economy of the province of Novgorod but rather was an emergency measure to prevent the spread of disease in the capital.

The “Belarusian” past, present and future in the representations of the Catholic Metropolitan Stanisław Bohusz Siestrzeńcewicz

2019 ◽  
pp. 237-253
Author(s):  
Larisa Shchavinskaya
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Saint Petersburg ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Catholic Churches ◽  
Roman Catholics ◽  
Over Time

A large number of Roman Catholic population, mainly ethnic Lithuanians and Belarusians, joined the Russian Empire during the division of the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1771-1795. The first section of 1772 included mainly the Eastern Belarusian territories and the new Roman Catholic subjects of the Empire were mostly ethnic Belarusians. This fact influenced the choice by the Russian Imperial administration of «Bishop of Catholic churches in Russia». They appointed Stanisław Bohusz Siestrzeńcewicz. In accordance with the volition of Empress Catherine II, the “Bishop of Belarus” was placed in Mogilev. He was entrusted with the gradual transfer of control of the Russian Roman Catholics in within the Empire. Siestrzeńcewicz was a “Litvin” by origin, raised in a mixed Protestant and Catholic family. Over time, Siestrzeńcewicz became close to understanding the national otherness not only of his East Slavic flock, but, apparently, his own. His otherness was vitally connected with the use of the names “Belarus”, “Belarusian”. The relocation of Siestrzeńcewicz in the early nineteenth century from Mogilev to Saint Petersburg gave him the opportunity to significantly expand his ties and influence in the state. This contributed to his further scientific and literary researches. Even in Mogilev, he created a number of works, which described the Western part of the East Slavic lands, considers the problem of unity of the origin of the East Slavic peoples. By the end of his life, Siestrzeńcewicz sees the past, present and future of all the Eastern Slavs in close connection with the fate of Russia, “the State that occupies the ninth part of the inhabited globe...”

scholarly journals The Development of the Norms and Institutions of Criminal Law in the Transcaucasia Region at the Beginning of the 19th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 766-774
Author(s):  
Irina Minnikes ◽  
Natiq Salamov
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Criminal Policy ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Criminal Legislation ◽  
The 19Th Century

The authors study the development of criminal law in the Transcaucasia region of the Russian Empire in the early 19th century, and discuss the political and legal significance of the accession of Transcaucasia to the Russian Empire. The normative basis of the research is various agreements of the Russian Empire, including agreements with the Khanates of Northern Azerbaijan, the acts of the supreme power —decrees, manifests and instructions, as well as the corresponding narrative materials. The methodological basis of this research is the general dialectic method of scientific cognition, the methods of empirical and theoretical character: description, formalization, comparison, analysis, generalization, deduction and induction, hypothesis, as well as the special legal methods: formal legal, comparative legal. Research results made it possible to prove that, before Transcaucasia joined the Russian Empire, social relationships in the region, including criminal law ones, were regulated by both written and common law, and that state and political changes lead to changes in criminal legislation throughout the whole history. When Transcaucasia, which has a multi-national and multi-confessional population, joined the Russian Empire, the central government faced the task of working out a special criminal law policy of protecting the society from criminal infringements, as well as some other goals and tasks in this area. The authors determine the degree to which the borderland policy of the state influenced the development of the borderland criminal policy, describe legal acts that enacted changes in the criminal legislation. Special attention is paid to describing the institutions of criminal law that underwent changes though the participation of the state in this process; specifics of the goals and tasks of government coercion, as well as the general basics of sentencing are evaluated. The conducted analysis of the contents of historical legal acts allowed the authors to conclude that, after joining the Russian Empire, the essential tasks of the criminal law of Transcaucasia were, for the first time, formulated at the normative level, including such tasks as crime prevention and the protection of individuals and public safety from criminal infringements. The fundamental principles of humanism and justice, different from the previously dominant ones, were established in the criminal law.

The Central Snitch Squad at the Saint-Petersburg Security Department as the Subject of Ensuring the Security of the Head of State in the Russian Empire

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-36
Author(s):  
Anton Matveev
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
Job Descriptions ◽  
Saint Petersburg ◽  
National Importance ◽  
Legal Literature ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Normative Basis ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Russian Empire

The article is devoted to the organization and activities of the Central Snitch Squad at the Saint-Petersburg Security Department for ensuring the security of the head of state in the Russian Empire. The normative basis for the activities of agents of the Central Snitch Squad and the specifics of implementation of their job descriptions are described in the article. The Central Snitch Squad was a separate division of the Search and Surveillance Service of the Russian Empire, which solved the various and most complex tasks of search-and-surveillance. The Central Snitch Squad operated until the fall of the monarchy in February 1917, but the experience gained by it in fulfilling tasks of national importance continues to be used in modern Russia. At the same time, the issues of the organization and functioning of the Central Snitch Squad have not received a comprehensive analysis yet. One of the activities of the Central Snitch Squad, which has not received proper coverage in historical and legal literature, is the protection of imperial majesties in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore, its regulation and implementation has become the subject of this article. The main and integrating method of research on the organization and activities of the Central Snitch Squad was the method of materialist dialectics. General logical (deduction, induction, analysis and synthesis), general scientific (systemic, structural-functional, typologization) and special (formal-legal, historical-legal, comparative-legal, interpretations of regulatory legal acts, sociological and statistical) methods of legal research were used. It was concluded that the protection of imperial majesties and the highest persons in the Russian Empire was one of the most important areas of activity of the gendarmerie. The simultaneous existence of three different divisions that guarded the emperor ‒ the Central Snitch Squad, the Security Unit and the Security Agency led to duplication of agents activities and inconsistent actions of the units. The Central Snitch Squad of the Saint-Petersburg Security Department has accumulated a variety of search-and-surveillance experience that can be used to solve problems of national importance in modern Russia.

Review of the III International historical and legal congress “Legal traditions of the formation of Russian statehood”

2021 ◽  
pp. 182
Author(s):  
Lyudmila Yu. Grudtsyna
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Legal Problems ◽  
Scientific Schools ◽  
Legal Science ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Further Development

The review of the III International historical and legal congress “Legal traditions of the formation of Russian statehood", dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the proclamation of the Russian Empire, is given. One of the main tasks of the event was to bring together representatives of science from different states, different scientific schools and directions to solve topical historical and legal problems of the state and law. Following the results of the congress, a declaration was adopted, in which the importance of continuing legal research of domestic state-legal traditions was noted, the main directions for the further development of historical and legal science were outlined.

Haunted Empire

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Sobol
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Baltic

This book shows that Gothic elements in Russian literature frequently expressed deep-set anxieties about the Russian imperial and national identity. The book argues that the persistent Gothic tropes in the literature of the Russian Empire enact deep historical and cultural tensions arising from Russia's idiosyncratic imperial experience. It brings together theories of empire and colonialism with close readings of canonical and less-studied literary texts as the book explores how Gothic horror arises from the threatening ambiguity of Russia's own past and present, producing the effect Sobol terms “the imperial uncanny.” Focusing on two spaces of “the imperial uncanny” — the Baltic “North”/Finland and the Ukrainian “South” — the book reconstructs a powerful discursive tradition that reveals the mechanisms of the Russian imperial imagination that are still at work today.

The 1912 Duma Elections: The State, the Opposition and the Clergy

Orthodoxia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
F. A. Gayda
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Difficult Situation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

This article deals with the political situation around the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Empire in 1912 (4th convocation). The main actors of the campaign were the government, local administration, liberal opposition and the clergy of the Orthodox Russian Church. After the 1905 revolution, the “official Church” found itself in a difficult situation. In particular, anti-Church criticism intensified sharply and was expressed now quite openly, both in the press and from the rostrum of the Duma. A consequence of these circumstances was that in this Duma campaign, for the first time in the history of Russian parliamentarianism, “administrative resources” were widely used. At the same time, the authorities failed to achieve their political objectives. The Russian clergy became actively involved in the election campaign. The government sought to use the conflict between the liberal majority in the third Duma and the clerical hierarchy. Duma members launched an active criticism of the Orthodox clergy, using Grigory Rasputin as an excuse. Even staunch conservatives spoke negatively about Rasputin. According to the results of the election campaign, the opposition was even more active in using the label “Rasputinians” against the Holy Synod and the Russian episcopate. Forty-seven persons of clerical rank were elected to the House — three fewer than in the previous Duma. As a result, the assembly of the clergy elected to the Duma decided not to form its own group, but to spread out among the factions. An active campaign in Parliament and the press not only created a certain public mood, but also provoked a political split and polarization within the clergy. The clergy themselves were generally inclined to blame the state authorities for the public isolation of the Church. The Duma election of 1912 seriously affected the attitude of the opposition and the public toward the bishopric after the February revolution of 1917.

scholarly journals The regional policy of the Russian Empire in the first half of the 19th century: The Kingdom of Poland (1815–1830)

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-105
Author(s):  
Boris V. Nosov ◽  
Lyudmila P. Marney
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Regional Policy ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Russian Government ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article is devoted to the problems of the regional policy of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 19th century discussed in the latest Russian historiography, to the peculiarities of the state-legal status and administrative practice of the Kingdom of Poland. It was the time when basic principles and a special structure of management at the outlying regions of the empire were developed, and when special (historical, national, and cultural) regions were formed on the periphery of the Empire. The policy of the Russian government in relation to the Kingdom of Poland depended both on the fundamental trends in the international relations in Central and Eastern Europe (as reflected in international treaties), as well as on the internal political development of the empire, and the peculiarities of political, legal, social, economic, cultural processes in the Kingdom and on Polish lands in Austria and Prussia. All these aspects have an impact on the debate that historians and legal experts are conducting on the state and legal status of parts of the lands of the former Principality of Warsaw that were included in the Russian Empire in 1815 by the decision of the Congress of Vienna. The fundamental political principles of the Russian Empire in the Kingdom of Poland in the first half of the 19th century were a combination of autocracy (with individual elements of enlightened absolutism), based on centralized bureaucratic control, and relatively decentralized political, administrative and estate structures, which assumed the presence of local self-government.

scholarly journals A special meeting as an institution of emergency management of the russian empire during the First World war

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 33-40
Author(s):  
V. V. Sinichenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Economy ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Management Functions ◽  
State Defense ◽  
The Military ◽  
Special Meeting

The article examines the issue of the effectiveness of the work of the Special meeting for combining measures to provide the active army with items of combat and material supplies, headed by the Minister of War. It is noted that the Special Meeting, which appeared on May 13, 1915, received extraordinary powers to carry out the economic mobilization of the entire national economy of the Russian Empire. These powers were legally formalized on August 17, 1915. From that moment in 1915, a Special meeting for the discussion and unification of measures for the defense of the state, for the provision of fuel for communication lines, state and public institutions and enterprises working for the purposes of state defense, for the food business and transportation of fuel and food and military cargo. This body, created in wartime conditions, was entrusted with extraordinary powers to manage state, public institutions and enterprises. The chairman of this meeting was the Minister of War, appointed directly by the emperor. It was he who could form commissions and subcommissions that dealt with both the procurement of weapons, equipment and equipment abroad, and directly with the implementation of a general domestic economic policy in the state for the development of certain branches of industrial and agricultural production. However, as the materials show, the transfer of management functions to the state apparatus and the entire mobilized economy of the country into the hands of the military department led to distortions in the development of the country’s national economy. Primary attention was paid to industrial enterprises working for the purposes of state defense, while the organization of food supply and transport support in the Russian Empire, despite the initiatives of the Ministry of Railways, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the All-Russian Zemstvo Union, which had a representative in a Special Meeting, did not found due support and attention from the Chairperson of the Special Meeting.

scholarly journals Activities of Military Topographers in Western Siberia in Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Russian Empire in 19th Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 360-374
Author(s):  
Evgeny V. Igumnov
Keyword(s):  
Western Siberia ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
River Channels ◽  
The North ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Military

The activities of military topographers in Western Siberia to provide cartographic information on the foreign and domestic policies of the Russian Empire in Central Asia and Siberia in the 19th century are considered in the article. The role of information in the formation of the Russian Empire is emphasized. The contribution of the state to the organization of the study of the Asian regions of Russia and neighboring countries is noted. The establishment of the military topographic service in Western Siberia can be traced taking into account data on administrative transformations in the Siberian region, and on changes in the foreign policy of the Russian Empire. The participation of military topographers in determining and designating the state border with China is described in detail. The question of the role of military topographers in the scientific study of China and Mongolia is raised. The significance of the activities of military topographers for the policy of the Russian Empire on the socio-economic development of Siberia and the north-eastern part of the territory of modern Kazakhstan is revealed. The contribution of topographers to the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway, the design of river channels and new land routes is revealed. A large amount of literary sources, materials on the work of military topographers of Western Siberia, published in “Notes of the Military Topographic Department of the General Staff” is used in the article.

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