Non-conflict Forms of Integration of the Western Regions of Russia in the Late Imperial Period

Abstract

In the second half of the 19th century, under the influence of external and internal challenges, the modernization of the Russian Empire began, one of the manifestations of which was an attempt to unify the imperial space and to strengthen state ties between the center and the peripheries. Integrative impact of the imperial center in the late 19th — early 20th century was carried out by various means, which included, along with power management practices, a wide range of non-conflict methods of integration, the identification and analysis of which this article is devoted to. The approach proposed by the authors implies shifting the research focus from the study of exclusively administrative and forceful management practices to the non-conflict methods consistently present in management activities which formed a positive sociocultural landscape within the framework of the polyethnic diversity of the population of the western regions of the empire. The analysis of the documentary material demonstrates that during the period under review, an increasing number of imperial administrators were aware of the need to search for new non-conflict methods of managing the national peripheries of the country. The systematic implementation of these practices — the rejection of a number of discriminatory restrictions and consistent cultural, educational, educational and memorial policies — gives reason to characterize the imperial management strategy in relation to the western peripheries as a policy of “soft power”, the purpose of which was to form a nationwide imperial identity that dominated national and confessional self-consciousness.