ORGANISATIONAL AND LEGAL SUPPORT FOR REFUGEES DURING WORLD WAR I (IN A PROVINCIAL TOWN)

Abstract

The author in the article analyses the process of formation of organisational and legal institutions during World War I on a specifi c example of a district town of Novgorod Province (Cherepovets). Local governments, including district councils (zemstvo), municipal governments and the institutions they created, played a great role in providing assistance to refugees on the level of districts (volost) and settlements. The study of Cherepovets archival documents on the refugees allows to suggest that the activities of the Committee named after Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia and the activities of the Provincial Committee of the All-Russian Urban Union were widespread here. All the events that were held at the local level initially were neither systematic nor co-ordinated, they completely depended on the local initiative because of the lack of a legislative framework for assistance to refugees in the Russian Empire during the fi rst years of the war. The government refugee institutions were created later (summer 1915 to spring 1916), and they had the structure similar to the exisisting state administrative bodies, and they were funded by the State Treasury.