scholarly journals TO THE DISCUSSION OF THE PROSPECTS FOR THE EVOLUTION OF THE RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY INTO A BOURGEOIS MONARCHY (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE JUDICIAL REFORM OF 1864)

Author(s):  
T.P. Evseenko

The article deals with the problem of opportunities for reforming the social and state system of the Russian autocracy. The example of the Judicial reform of 1864 shows the limits of the tsarism's ability to reform. The author considers the preservation of the class system in the Russian Empire as the main reason for incomplete reforms. The desire to preserve the privileges of the nobility by any means did not allow the government to realize the real needs of society. Without seeing the emergence of new social classes, the government could not protect their interests. At the same time, the autocracy imposed on society its understanding of its interests. This policy has led to a distortion of the ideological development of the Russian bourgeoisie, making it unable to independently protect even the most important of its own interests. Therefore, the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution had to be solved by other, anti-bourgeois forces in the course of the socialist revolution.

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Victoria Vengerska ◽  
Oleksandr Zhukovskyi ◽  
Oleksandr Maksymov

Right-bank Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire after the second partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1792. The integration of these territories into the new administrative, economic and cultural space caused certain difficulties. In the first half of the 19th century, the region had the highest percentage of peasant serfs and the elements and institutions of the non-existent state (including the courts) still existed and kept functioning. The defeat in the Crimean War of 1853–1856 imposed on the Russian Empire the need for radical reforms in all spheres of life. The wave-like periods of cooperation-confrontation between the Russian authorities and the local nobility brought about regional provisions in virtually all the reforms, launched by the peasant reform of 1861. The judicial reform and the emergence of new institutions and practices had to resolve existing problems, disputes, and punish criminals legally. The social estate (stanovy) character of the society was reflected in the establishment and activities of the volost courts, as the lower courts. The district courts were a completely novel phenomenon in the legal culture; their functioning was ensured by professional lawyers on the basis of new judicial statutes. The purpose of this article is to consider the court practices and functioning of penitentiary establishments in Right-Bank Ukraine (on the example of Volyn province) under implementation of the judicial reform through the prism of social and estate factors, based on the cases of the Zhytomyr District Court and the reports of the heads of local prisons. The methodology of the research includes the tools of social history and the so-called "new imperial history" that have helped to trace the adaptation of new legal practices to the socio-ethnic peculiarities of Right Bank Ukraine. The methods of history of everyday life and history of reading have been employed to consider the under-researched component of the penitentiary system of the Russian Empire, namely the libraries and their funds. This component should be attributed to the novelty of the suggested research findings. Conclusions. Estate privileges were maintained in the Russian Empire throughout the "long 19th century". Belonging to a higher social status practically made the Polish nobles equal in the rights with the imperial officials, endowed with power. During court decisions and sentencing, an ethnic criterion was not taken into consideration or had secondary significance. Many years of placing the peasants outside the legal field developed a steady arrogant attitude of the power-holders towards the representatives of this social estate. Though the peasants dominated in the social structure of the Empire population, they remained the most prevalent class. Since the early 20th century, some shifts in perception and attitudes towards peasantry were observed.


Author(s):  
Anna Matveeva

The study focuses on assessing the representativeness and relevance of diplomatic documents for the study of key aspects of German domestic politics. Three issues are central to the analysis of the documents from the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire: the completeness of the indicated sources for understanding the factors of the German Empire’s inner policy; the assessment of the subjectivity of the author of diplomatic dispatches, i.e. how much the ambassador's personality determined the content of the dispatches that he sent to the ministry; the relevance of highlighting key issues of internal life in Germany from the point of view of Russian diplomats. Among constantly present in the messages, the most important was the problem of the socialist movement and the Social-Democratic Party’s activities. The socialists were mentioned for significant reasons: the repeal of the Law against the Socialists, the Berlin Conference on the Labor Protection (1890); elections to the Reichstag (1893, 1898); the Reichstag votes on issues important for Russia. The measures of counteraction to the socialists, discussed by the emperor and the government, also aroused interest. The study of archival documents (1890–1898) allows the author to draw the following conclusions. The dispatches adequately reflect the main trends in the socialist movement and the tactics of the SPD, therefore they can be used to study many internal problems faced by Germany in the course of its political evolution. The development of the social-democratic movement was rightly interpreted by Russian diplomats as one of the fundamental reasons for the internal instability of the German state during the reign of Wilhelm II. At the same time, the conclusion drawn by the diplomats can be primarily explained by the Russian imperial regime and its substantial characteristics, rather than the political realities within Germany itself. They considered parliamentarism, limiting the monarch actions (the state interests), to be the main reason for the high popularity and the broadest electoral support of the SPD. The key factor preventing the monarch from defeating the “coup parties” was defined as the activities of liberal political parties, which demanded the unconditional observance of the freedoms prescribed in the Сonstitution of 1871, as well as the prevention of the introduction of Exceptional Laws and other measures of an extraordinary nature.


2020 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 95-103
Author(s):  
Maria A. Saevskaya

The life and preaching activity of the holy saint John of Kronstadt (1829–1908) coincided with the last period of the history of the Russian Empire, that was followed soon by the revolution destroying the former statehood. The pre-revolutionary decades became the time of searching for new ways and meanings in social and political existence. But in all social classes of Russian society there were people who wanted to preserve tsarist Russia with its Orthodox faith, traditional culture and autocratic rule. John of Kronstadt became the symbol of the defenders of the Orthodox empire, and he saw the path to revival of that empire in the people’s support of their tsar, in sacrificial service to the motherland and in following the Christian commandments of mercy, humility and love. During his lifetime John of Kronstadt had a huge number of followers, and after more than a hundred years he still remains one of the preachers and thinkers whose ideas do not lose their significance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Alexey L. Beglov

The article examines the contribution of the representatives of the Samarin family to the development of the Parish issue in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The issue of expanding the rights of the laity in the sphere of parish self-government was one of the most debated problems of Church life in that period. The public discussion was initiated by D.F. Samarin (1827-1901). He formulated the “social concept” of the parish and parish reform, based on Slavophile views on society and the Church. In the beginning of the twentieth century his eldest son F.D. Samarin who was a member of the Special Council on the development the Orthodox parish project in 1907, and as such developed the Slavophile concept of the parish. In 1915, A.D. Samarin, who took up the position of the Chief Procurator of the Most Holy Synod, tried to make his contribution to the cause of the parish reforms, but he failed to do so due to his resignation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 293-317
Author(s):  
Protopriest Alexander Romanchuk

The article studies the system of pre-conditions that caused the onset of the uniat clergy’s movement towards Orthodoxy in the Russian Empire in the beginning of the 19th century. The author comes to the conclusion that the tendency of the uniat clergy going back to Orthodoxy was the result of certain historic conditions, such as: 1) constant changes in the government policy during the reign of Emperor Pavel I and Emperor Alexander I; 2) increasing latinization of the uniat church service after 1797 and Latin proselytism that were the result of the distrust of the uniats on the part of Roman curia and representatives of Polish Catholic Church of Latin church service; 3) ecclesiastical contradictions made at the Brest Church Union conclusion; 4) division of the uniat clergy into discordant groups and the increase of their opposition to each other on the issue of latinization in the first decades of the 19th century. The combination of those conditions was a unique phenomenon that never repeated itself anywhere.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
T.V. BOGDANOVA ◽  

The purpose of the article is to review the activities of the civil governor M.M. Oreus in the service in the Vyborg (Finland) province in 1799–1804. The guarantee of an effective mechanism of admin-istration creation as for over than 200-year period of the Russian Empire existence, as for modern conditions, it was and still is the effectiveness of the government policy on the ground. Based on this key task, the most important condition for its implementation at different stages of the development of the country was the effective selection of personnel for the post of a governor. It was the governor responsible for everything happened in his province, and the government expected him to under-stand the tasks assigned to him and take definite steps to solve them. The urgent management problem in these conditions was the strength of administrative resources capable of retaining their effective power in cases of emerging extraordinary situations, including which, will be discussed in this article. Emergency situations in the border areas occurred regularly and required the ob-servance of certain administrative traditions that influenced the success of the governor's initiatives in state tasks implementation. It will be all the more important to consider the history of the life and activities of one of the governors of the Finland (Vyborg) province, Maxim Maksimovich Oreus, who was at the head of this territory from December 14, 1799 to April 9, 1804.


2021 ◽  
pp. 32-42
Author(s):  
Sergey S. Novoselskii ◽  

The article considers the attitude of representatives of the top bureaucracy to the draft of the State Duma, developed by a Special Council chaired by the Minister of the Interior A.G. Bulygin in 1905. Particular attention is paid to the high officials assessments of the dignitaries of the place and role of the Duma in the system of state administration of the Russian Empire, the arguments that officials cited in favor of its convocation. It analyzes intellectual context of the emergence of the “bulyginskaya duma” (“Bulygin Duma”) project is analyzed, which largely determined the breadth of the actual, not declared powers of the people’s agency. The research is based on unpublished documents from the funds of state institutions, as well as materials from the personal funds of officials and public figures. The article shows that, despite the legislative nature of the Duma, it had to have significant powers. The electoral system, which was proposed and defended by the high officials, was originally modeled in such a way as to avoid the triumph of the estates principle. The monarch’s open opposition to the people’s agency was considered a politically short-sighted move, which indicated a limitation of his power. The results of the study allow considering the government policy in 1905 not as an untimely response to public demands, but as a conscious strategy for systemic political reforms.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 62-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yelena Sevostyanova

The article examines the main plotlines and images of Japan and China in the end of 21th century which were modelled and translated to the reading public by one of the most accredited Siberia’s newspaper «Vostochnoye Obozreniye»(«Oriental Review»). The choice of the newspaper for the analysis is determined by three factors: its oriental trend, growing print run and popularity, participation of famous scientists, travelers, public figures in creating the content. In the newspaper editorial board, for the Russian periphery at the Asian border «in the interests of this very periphery it never hampers to learn the neighboring countries,» thus «increasing the horizons», “to renounce the hackneyed prejudices and the fear to be faulted for Asian barbarism». Materials about China and Japan were present almost in each issue, which testifies the newspaper’s permanent interest in the oriental neighbors of the Russian empire. With general eurocentrism of relations to Japan and China, a dichotomy was kept in regard of several plotlines: he militant and reformative potentials, the role in international policy. Depending on historical circumstances, some or other features grew stronger, often being hypertrophied in mass consciousness or, vice versa, «being dissolved» in generalized images and stereotypes of the oriental (Asian) world. The dichotomy of the Orient’s two images — the progressive, dynamically Europeanizing Japan and the fossilized, obstinate in its conservatism China — became a stable stereotype for «Vostochnoye Obozreniye», too. The government of Japan and the government of China were also contradistinguished in their reformative potentials and methods of governance. In general, the newspaper assessed the military, political, civil experience of the Japanese authorities more complementary than the Chinese governors and officials. The newspaper did nor model and did not translate the image of the enemy but took into account the potential geopolitical danger of the eastern neighbors.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-373
Author(s):  
Irina V Sinova

The article deals with the issues related to the evolution of the use of women in the civil service at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries on the example of the Maritime Ministry on the basis of previously unpublished documents stored in the Russian state archive of the Navy and periodical press materials. The study of gender issues can be of scientific interest on the basis of its documents, as practically not in demand in research related to the women’s issue. As a result of the struggle of the public, there were some concessions on the part of the authorities related to the expansion of women’s access to fill certain positions in a number of areas that experienced a lack of certain qualifications, including public service, in the conditions of intensive bourgeois development. The article analyzes the legal acts regulating the work of women, especially in the public service. it is shown how the changes that took place in the Russian Empire influenced the transformation of the socio-economic situation of women in General, and, also, became a reflection of the social policy of the state. The article reveals the attitude of the heads of departments of the Ministry to the admission of women to the public service, as well as their opinion on the degree of necessity for the service itself in attracting women to it. The article deals with the arguments of men - heads of departments of the Ministry, related to the impact of women’s work on home life, on the family and on itself, which differed largely by philistine assessments, rather than progressive views. In fact, on the part of the authorities, concessions to women were more imaginary and forced than the result of an objective assessment of their equal opportunity to serve in the public system.


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