Russification

…there was a policy of Russification that lasted until 1905. It extended to education as well as to the legal and administrative systems. However, it could not affect the considerable progress that had been made in education over the century. By the middle of the 19th century, the German University…

…a period of more rigid Russification. The Russian municipal constitution was introduced in 1882. Russian criminal and civil codes replaced the old Baltic ones. In 1887 Russian was made the language of instruction, instead of German and Estonian. In 1893 the University of Dorpat (now Tartu), which was then an…

…in 1890, however, unconstitutional “Russification” measures were introduced. The February Manifesto, in essence, held that the tsar of Russia could rule Finland by edict, without regard for the grand duchy’s constitution; the legislation of the Finnish Diet was entirely subject to the tsar’s will. This arrangement was justified by…

Direct attempts at Russification were then made. The gradual imposition of Russian as the third official language was ordered in 1900, and in 1901 it was decreed that Finns should serve in Russian units and that Finland’s own army should be disbanded. Increasing executive power was conferred on…

…a result, Latvia became more Russified than its two neighbours.

…were followed by waves of Russification. The tsarist government treated the Northwest Region—as historic Lithuania, apart from the southeastern lands, was called after 1832—as an integral part of Russia. In 1832 the University of Vilnius, founded in 1579, was closed. In 1840 the Lithuanian legal code, which dated back to…

…period of extensive repression and Russification. An organized guerrilla resistance, at times involving up to 40,000 fighters, lasted into the early 1950s. Several waves of deportations to Siberia and Central Asia accompanied the collectivization of agriculture: about 70,000 people were deported in late 1947; 70,000 in May 1948; and some…

Cultural Russification in the empire’s former Polish provinces involved the liquidation of the Uniate church in 1839 and the abolition of the statute that had preserved the Lithuanian code of law. The Uniate church continued to exist only within the Congress Kingdom (until 1875) and in…

…there began a policy of Russification of Poland.

…now able to accelerate the Sovietization of public life, which was to result in an isolation from the West far more complete than that which the Romanians had experienced at the height of Ottoman domination.

…the attempt was made to Russify the Germans of the Baltic provinces, he objected. The Baltic Germans were loyal subjects and provided admirable officers and officials; they were therefore allowed to preserve their German culture and to maintain their cultural and social domination over the Estonians and Latvians. The young…

The policy of Russification of the non-Russian peoples of the empire, which had been a characteristic of the reign of Alexander III, continued. Nicholas II held anti-Semitic views and favoured the continued discrimination, in economic and cultural life, against the Jews. Russification of…

In parallel with the industrialization and collectivization drives, the Soviet regime commenced a campaign against “nationalist deviations” that escalated into a virtual assault on Ukrainian culture. Repression of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church culminated in the liquidation of the church in 1930 and the…

…in hand with a renewed Russification drive. Ukrainian writers, artists, and scholars, who in the wartime years had been permitted to develop patriotic themes and sentiments in a mobilization effort against the Germans, were now accused of Ukrainian nationalism and subjected to persecution and repression. An “anticosmopolitan” campaign destroyed the…

…however, a distinct trend toward Russification reemerged. An educational reform adopted in 1959 initiated a long process of curtailment of Ukrainian-language instruction in schools. In 1961 the new party program emphasized the importance of the Russian language for the integration of the Soviet peoples and spoke of the diminishing significance…

…the dominant Russian culture (although Russification did take place on a significant scale in the case of some native elites, as in the Caucasus and Crimea).

…Georgian, surprisingly turned to “Great Russian” nationalism to strengthen the Soviet regime. During the 1930s and ’40s he promoted certain aspects of Russian history, some Russian national and cultural heroes, and the Russian language, and he held the Russians up as the elder brother for the non-Slavs to emulate. Industrialization…