Maksim Viktorovich Pul’kin,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History Karelian Research Centre Russian Academy of Sciences; Petrozavodsk State University, Petrozavodsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Strengthening an Empire: the Policy of Russification on the Northern Outskirts of the Country in the 19th – Early 20th Century (Based on the Materials of the Olonets Province)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-5-8
The main aspects of Russification as the most important component of the national policy in the Russian Empire are considered. The first to realize the urgency of the problem, the Orthodox Church made the most notable efforts in Russification activity. For church hierarchs, the essence of Russification was to spread the Orthodox faith. In the process of the formation and development of spiritual education in the Olonets diocese, the complication of religious life, the publication of various theological literature in the languages of the indigenous inhabitants of the region has become an urgent matter. In the first half of the 19th century, the process was stimulated by the struggle against the Old Believer influence. By the second half of the 19th century opposition to the Panfinian and Lutheran influence acquired a significantly greater stimulating significance. Ultimately, the activities of Orthodox missionaries led to the development of grammatical norms of the Karelian language and the formation of an active group of intelligentsia interested in its preservation. At the same time, the needs of the country’s modernization inevitably led to the idea of unifying all aspects of society’s life on the basis of the Russian language. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the local administration has developed an extensive set of measures for the widespread dissemination of the Russian language among “inorodtsy” (non-Russian population). A noticeable role in the Russification projects was assigned to the public education system. A network of schools for “inorodtsy” was formed, designed to spread the Russian language among the younger generation. The purpose of the Russification policy was to unify all the most important constituent elements of the socio-cultural activity of the population of the national outskirts (religious life, the activities of peasant self-government and the development of the education system) in order to accelerate modernization and strengthen the unity of the empire.
Publishing: 28/10/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 29/06/2021
How to cite: Pul’kin M.V. Strengthening an Empire: the Policy of Russification on the Northern Outskirts of the Country in the 19th – Early 20th Century (Based on the Materials of the Olonets Province) // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 5 (19), pp. 87–97. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-5-08.pdf]
Links: Issue 5 2021
Keywords: history of medicine; history of healthcare; The First Russian Revolution; doctors-revolutionaries
The financial support of the research was carried out from the federal budget to fulfill the state task of the KarSC RAS on the topic: “Karelia in the Conditions of Social Transformations of the 17th – 21st Centuries: new Approaches and Interpretations” (state registration number 121070700117-1).