What Was the Russification Policy?
On 1 March 1881, a bomb thrown by a member of the Narodnaya Volya killed Tsar Alexander II on the embankment of the Catherine Canal in St Petersburg. The new tsar, Alexander III, came to the throne with a policy programme that the court newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti summed up in a single sentence: “Russia for the Russians, and the Russian language, the Russian faith, and the Russian state.” Russification, the systematic policy of imposing Russian language, Russian institutions, and Russian Orthodox Christianity on the non-Russian populations of the empire, became a defining feature of the late-imperial political order (see Hosking, Russia: People and Empire, 1997; Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multi-Ethnic History, 2001).
The origins of the policy
The Russian imperial state had always been concerned with the integration of its non-Russian subjects, but the policies had been pragmatic and varied. The early Romanovs had accepted the autonomy of the Cossack Hetmanate, the Bashkir and Kazakh steppes, the Crimean Khanate, and the various Siberian and Caucasian peoples. The 18th century brought a more systematic policy of integration: Catherine the Great’s “Statute on the Administration of the Non-Russian Peoples of the Borderlands” of 1775, the incorporation of the Crimea in 1783, the partition of Poland in 1793-1795, and the establishment of the Russian Orthodox Church as the state religion.
The 19th century brought a more aggressive policy. The partitions of Poland, the autonomy of the Grand Duchy of Finland, the autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland, the suppression of the Polish Uprising of 1830-1831, and the suppression of the Polish Uprising of 1863-1864 were the political events. The post-1864 period saw a sustained policy of Russification, including the closure of the Polish-Catholic schools, the confiscation of the Catholic Church property, the renaming of the Polish-Catholic holidays, and the gradual replacement of the Polish-Lithuanian civil service with Russian officials (Kappeler, 2001).
The 1881-1894 system
The assassination of Alexander II in 1881 was the trigger for the most aggressive phase of Russification. The 1881-1882 May Laws restricted Jewish residence and movement in the Pale of Settlement. The 1881-1884 pogroms in the Pale claimed several thousand Jewish lives. The 1881-1884 Russification of the Baltic provinces imposed Russian-language schooling on the German-speaking universities and gymnasiums of Riga, Reval, and Dorpat. The 1882-1884 Russification of the Grand Duchy of Finland imposed Russian-language schooling on the Finnish university at Helsinki and the Finnish civil service. The 1882-1884 Russification of the German Baltic provinces renamed the university of Dorpat as Yuryev, in honour of the founder of the Russian dynasty, and imposed Russian-language teaching on the Baltic German Gymnasien (Hosking, 1997).
The 1881-1894 period also saw the suppression of the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Lithuanian national movements. The 1863 Valuev Circular had already banned the publication of religious and educational books in Ukrainian. The 1876 Ems Decree extended the ban to the entire Ukrainian language, including the printing of Ukrainian-language dictionaries, songs, and stories. The 1881-1882 Russification of the Polish schools and the 1885 introduction of the Russian language in the Polish public schools were part of the same pattern (Kappeler, 2001).
The 1894-1917 system
The reign of Tsar Nicholas II (1894-1917) saw a more complex phase of Russification. The early years of the reign were marked by the 1897 census and the 1900-1904 Russification of the Grand Duchy of Finland by Governor-General Nikolai Bobrikov. The 1905 revolution and the October Manifesto produced a partial relaxation of the Russification policies: the 1905 decree on the restoration of Finnish autonomy, the 1905-1906 restoration of the Ukrainian language in the educational system, and the 1906 introduction of the Eduskunta, the Finnish parliament elected by universal suffrage.
The 1907-1914 period saw a partial restoration of the Russification policies, particularly in the western and southwestern provinces. The 1908 Russification of the Polish public schools, the 1910 introduction of the Russian language in the Polish private schools, the 1910 closure of the Finnish university at Helsinki and the transfer of its students to the Russian Imperial University of Helsinki, and the 1914-1916 Russification of the Jewish Pale of Settlement in the wake of the First World War were the events. The 1917 February Revolution produced a final abolition of the Russification policies, and the 1917 October Revolution was the definitive end of the Russian imperial system (Hosking, 1997; Kappeler, 2001).
The impact of the policy
The Russification policy had a profound impact on the non-Russian nationalities of the empire. The policy contributed to the development of national movements among the Poles, the Finns, the Balts, the Ukrainians, the Georgians, the Armenians, and the various other groups. The policy was particularly aggressive in the western provinces, where the Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian populations were the largest of the non-Russian nationalities; in the Caucasus, where the Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani populations were the principal targets; and in the Far East, where the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese minorities were subject to specific restrictions.
The impact of Russification varied considerably from one region to another. In the Baltic provinces, the Baltic German elite was itself a target of the Russification campaigns of the 1880s, which imposed Russian-language schooling and renamed the university town of Dorpat as Yuryev; the Baltic Germans did not assimilate, and the Estonian and Latvian populations developed a strong national consciousness that contributed to the independence movements of the early twentieth century. In Poland, the policy was a major failure, and the Polish national movement continued to organise and to agitate for Polish independence. In Finland, the policy provoked a major constitutional crisis, and in 1906 the Parliament Act created a new unicameral parliament, the Eduskunta, elected by universal suffrage.
The legacy
Russification is one of the most controversial aspects of Russian imperial history. The policy was used by the imperial regime to integrate the non-Russian populations of the empire, but the policy also contributed to the development of the national movements that would eventually play an important role in the collapse of the empire. The 1991 independence declarations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Georgia all articulated Russification as a formative national grievance; in Estonia and Latvia, the large Russian-speaking minorities created by Soviet-era resettlement have made the language question a live constitutional issue decades after independence.