Afanasiev Pavel A.,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Altai State Pedagogical University, Barnaul, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Evgeny Klevakin: a Provincial Official in the Context of Post-Reform Russia
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2018-2-3
The article presents a research of the early stage of biography of Evgeny Polikarpovich Klevakin (1841–1919) who held various offices at Ural and later Altai towns. His eventful biography reflects the influence of an epoch on a course of life of an “outstanding ordinary person”. The article is based on Klevakin’s unpublished diaries and letters as well as his recently published large memoirs written in the last decades of Klevakin’s life. A workman of the Kushvinsky plant by birth, after the emancipation of 1861 he undertook several ventures in the state and private service and by the beginning of the 1880s he managed to win an official post and get ennobled. The article demonstrates how an ordinary person fitted into the changes happening in the country. The main features of Evgeny Klevakin as a person of the Great reforms epoch are his personal liberty and the opportunity to choose freely his professional way. Implementing these freedoms Klevakin rejected consciously the well-off life at the plant, tried private and state service and by the late 1870s turned into a typical official living on his salary. Klevakin’s life during the post-reform period is an interesting example of a generally successful, but not always smooth materialization of opportunities opened by the peasant emancipation at Russia. New life opportunities depended first of all upon personal choice correlated to vital needs, desires and prospects.
Publishing: 19/12/2018
How to cite: Afanasiev P.A. Evgeny Klevakin: a Provincial Official in the Context of Post-Reform Russia // Historical Courier, 2018, # 2. Article 3. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2018/ISTKURIER-2018-2-03.pdf
Links: Issue 2 2018
Keywords: Evgeny Polikarpovich Klevakin; officials; Perm province; Goroblagodatsky plants; post-reform epoch