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

Abstract

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.