The articles examines the history of Central Russia, or what was known as the governorates of Greater Russia (velikorusskiye / velikorossiyskiye gubernii), in the first half of the 19th century, during the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. The author starts with focusing on the naming of the region and tracing its borders – both as it appeared in research discourses and in the rising language of the authorities. Following on with a look at the new practices of administration and the language of symbols, the author concludes that the region was steadily marginalized both in the “outside gaze” and even in the region’s selfidentification. The author suggests that over time this perception of Central Russia crystallized into a mental construct which largely survived numerous regime changes from the Russian Empire to the USSR to Post-Soviet Russia. A case for studying the administration of the territories is found in Alexander I’s project of governorates general (as it was put in practice in Greater Russia and then dismantled under Nicholas I). Special attention is paid to the work of governors general A. D. Balashov and A. N. Bakhmetev, most notably to the latter’s memorandum “On the advantage of and need for governors general” (1826). The document explores reasons for preserving the institute of governorates general in the Russian Empire’s hinterlands. The article also presents an overview of the research field as it can be applied to studying Central Russia as compared to the body of literature on the history of Russia’s other macro-regions.
SUMMARY:
The subject of the article is the Russian Guards (Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii regiments) at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century as a case study in the continuity of tradition.
During Peter I’s reign, the Russian Guards became a grouping of a handful of people who were given the right to hold individual and independent views on any matter of governmental or other importance due to the significant role they played in the state system of the Russian Empire. It’s hard to find a branch of the economy or politics where the guardsmen did not play some role. Some were obliged to perform police duties, while others controlled the construction of St. Petersburg, governed the occupied territories, censored the activity of imperial institutions (the Senate, the Holy Synod, the Admiralty) as well as assisted powerful individuals such as Prince Menshikov, Field-Marshal Sheremetev, and Admiral Apraksin. Both 18 th century society and contemporary historiography have considered the Guards to be, on the one hand, a unique group of the Emperor’s supporters and, on the other, a corporation that tended to reject and destroy so-called “Russian traditional culture”. Yet, the analysis of this aggressive elite body shows that tradition as such was not forgotten as the Guards were formed on the basis of wide-reaching networks of family relations. Kinship was the unit of inner support that led to the emergence of a spirit of companionship and corporate state of collective consciousness. This, in turn, helped the Guards to accept the reformist attitudes and to become the means by which reform was promoted.
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