The Uprising of 1863 and Government Policy Towards the Peoples of the Western Regions Russian Empire in the Second Half of the 19th Century

Abstract

The article is devoted to the changes in St. Petersburg’s policy towards the population of the western border regions of the empire in the middle of the 19th century. After the uprising of 1863, the so-called “peasant peoples” (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Finns) began to be perceived as a more reliable support of the authorities than the local elite (Poles, Germans, Swedes). The most important reason for that reorientation was the abolition of serfdom in 1861. In the light of the attitudes that the reformers had, the transformation of national policy in the outskirts was inevitable. The new self-awareness of a signifi cant part of the government and society was expressed in the works of the famous Slavic scholar A.F. Hilferding. According to him, thanks to the peasant reform of Alexander II, Russia no longer needed to worry so much about maintaining the loyalty of local elites, and there was no need to fear the free development of the cultures of “peasant peoples”. Supporters of the “popular” government tried to prove that the population of the outskirts was connected with the Russian people by ancient common roots. In that regard, a number of government and public fi gures developed certain measures aimed at reformatting the sociocultural identity of the peoples of the western regions, trying to bring those peoples closer to the Russians. Among the measures indicating a partially formed turn in government policy was the introduction of teaching in local languages (Belarusian, Little Russian, Lithuanian) in primary schools. Despite the fact that the said turn was neither decisive nor sustainable, the projects developed in that area deserve the full attention of researchers.