Discussion on the Ostsee provinces in Russian public thought in the middle of the XIX century

Abstract

The article provides research on public thought concerning the Ostsee issue and the role of the Ostsee region in the Russian Empire in the middle of the XIX century. Until the middle of the XIX century, this issue was rarely discussed and was embedded in the broader topic of the status of foreigners in Russia. The most intense and passionate debate on this issue arose between the 1850s and 1860s, driven by political and historical developments and the newly formed national discourse. The work that provides access to the Ostsean discourse of the 1850s and 1860s is Y.F. Samarin’s «Letters from Riga», composed in 1849 while he was pursuing his official duties at the Ministry of the Internal Affairs’ Committee for the Organization of Livonian Peasants. The author examines how opposing viewpoints - both «pro-» and «anti-Ostsean» - appear in public and how they are reflected in journalism, with Y.F. Samarin and M.N. Katkov becoming the theme’s principal promoters. The primary publications that discussed the topic of the Ostsee region were the newspapers «Den’», «Moskovskie Vedomosti», «Vest’», «Severnaya Pochta», «Birzhevye Vedomosti», and «Nashe Vremya». Until the middle of the 1860s, the Ostsee issue was generally of insignificant importance outside the aforementioned newspapers. According to the author’s conclusion, the discussion led to many significant changes, including the first steps taken to establish a unified political and cultural space in Russia for the following epochs.