THE JOURNAL OF REGIONAL HISTORY V.9 No.4
Citizenship: A View from the Center on the Outskirts: Rights and Responsibilities of Armenians in the Russian Empire according to the Public Opinion of St Petersburg and Moscow in the 1880s
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The article focuses on the role and specificity of the Armenian Question in the Russian public sphere of St Petersburg and Moscow in the early 1880s, a period of the first tension between the government and the Armenian subjects of the empire. The study of the four major newspapers reveals the relationship between the state policy and the public discourse about the Caucasus and Armenians under the early reign of Alexander III. According to the public opinion, the legal particularism together with the abolishment of Caucasus Viceroyalty caused problems for the government and the local population. The article shows that conservative and liberal correspondents had different opinions about the causes and ways to resolve that situation. The analysis of public discussions resulted in the conclusion that the essence of “citizenship” (the group identity of Armenians) depended on the collective imagination of participants in the public sphere rather than fixed legal norms.
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Borisova, T. “Imperial Legality through ‘Exception’: Gun Control in the Russian Empire.” Journal of Modern European History, vol. 19, iss. 4 (2021): 448–68.
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Lohr, E. “The Ideal Citizen and Real Subject in Late Imperial Russia.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 7, no. 2 (2006): 173–94.
McReynolds, L. The News under Russia’s Old Regime: The Development of a Mass-Circulation Press. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Morrison, A. “Metropole, Colony, and Imperial Citizenship in the Russian Empire.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 13, no. 2 (2012): 327–64. ttps://dx.doi.org/10.1353/kri.2012.0016
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Remnev, A.V. Samoderzhavnoe pravitel'stvo: Komitet ministrov v sisteme vysshego upravleniia Rossiiskoi imperii (vtoraia polovina XIX – nachalo XX veka [Autocratic government: The Committee of Ministers in the Russian Empire’s system of higher administration (in the second half of the 19th and the early 20th century)]. Moscow: Rossiiskaya politicheskaya entsiklopediya (ROSSPEN), 2010. (In Russian)
Renner, A. “Defining a Russian Nation: Mikhail Katkov and the ‘Invention’ of National Politics.” The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 81, no. 4 (2003): 659–82.
Riegg, S.B. Russia’s Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801–1914. Ithaca; New York: Cornell University Press, 2020.
Safronova, Yu.A. Russkoe obshchestvo v zerkale revolyutsionnogo terrora. 1879–1881 gody [Russian society in the mirror of revolutionary terrorism, 1879–1881]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014. (In Russian)
Saunders, D. “Russia and Ukraine under Alexander II: The Valuev Edict of 1863.” The International History Review, vol. 17, no 1 (1995): 23–50.
07075332.1995.9640700
Slocum, J.W. “Kto i kogda byli ‘inorodtsami’? Evolyutsiya kategorii ‘chuzhie’ v Rossiiskoi imperii” [Who, and when, were the inorodtsy? The evolution of the category of “aliens” in imperial Russia]. In Rossiiskaya imperiya v zarubezhnoi istoriografii [The Russian Empire in foreign historiography], compiled by P. Werth, P.S. Kabytov, and A.I. Miller, 502–25. Moscow: Novoe izdatel'stvo, 2005. (In Russian)
Sonina, E.S. Peterburgskaya universal'naya gazeta kontsa XIX veka [St Petersburg universal newspaper of the late 19th century]. St Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 2004. (In Russian)
Suny, R.G. Looking toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Urushadze, A.T. “Armyanskii katolikos v sisteme upravleniya Rossiiskoi imperii: predely i protivorechiya integratsii” [Armenian Catholicos in the system of government of the Russian Empire: Limits and contradictions of integration]. Khristianstvo na Blizhnem Vostoke, vol. 7, no. 2 (2023): 84–98. (In Russian)
Urushadze, A.T. “The Caucasian War in the Russian Public Sphere (1801–1864).” Historia Provinciae – the Journal of Regional History, vol. 8, no. 1 (2024): 85–126,
Werth, P.W. The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Ataev, Kh.A. Torgovo-ekonomicheskie svyazi Irana s Rossiei v XVIII–XIX vv. [Trade and economic ties between Iran and Russia in the 18th–19th centuries]. Moscow: Nauka, 1991. (In Russian)
Avrutin, E.M. Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia. Ithaca; New York: Cornell University Press, 2010.
Berger, S., and A. Miller, eds. Nationalizing Empires. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2015.
Borisova, T. “Imperial Legality through ‘Exception’: Gun Control in the Russian Empire.” Journal of Modern European History, vol. 19, iss. 4 (2021): 448–68.
Burbank, J. “An Imperial Rights Regime: Law and Citizenship in the Russian Empire.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 7, no. 3 (2006): 397–431.
Case, H. The Age of Questions: Or, A First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth Century, and Beyond. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.
Dolbilov, M. “Polyak v imperskom politicheskom leksikone” [A Pole in the imperial political lexicon]. In “Ponyatie o Rossii”: k istoricheskoi semantike imperskogo perioda [“Concepts of Russia”: Toward a historical semantics of the imperial period], 2 vols., edited by A. Miller, D. Sdvizhkov, and I. Shirle, vol. 2, 292–339. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012. (In Russian)
Glebov, S. “Between Foreigners and Subjects: Imperial Subjecthood, Governance, and the Chinese in the Russian Far East, 1860s–1880s.” Ab Imperio, no. 1 (2017): 86–130. .
Grant, B. The Captive and the Gift: Cultural Histories of Sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus. Ithaca; New York; London: Cornell University Press, 2009.
Kirmse, S.B. Imperiya zakonnosti: yuridicheskie peremeny i kul’turnoe raznoobrazie v pozdneimperskoi Rossii [The lawful empire: Legal change and cultural diversity in late tsarist Russia], translated from English by A. Lange. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2023. (In Russian)
Kornoukhova, G. “Rossiiskie eksportery v Iran VS zakavkazskii tranzit evropeiskikh tovarov v nachale 1880‐kh gg.” [Russian exporters to Iran VS Transcaucasian transit of European goods in the early 1880s]. Vestnik Rossiiskogo universiteta druzhby narodov. Seriya: Istoriya Rossii, vol. 21, no. 4 (2022): 556–67. (In Russian)
Krbekyan, V.G. “Armyanskii vopros na Berlinskom kongresse” [The Armenian Question at the Congress of Berlin]. Vestnik obshchestvennykh nauk, no. 2 (2002): 25–45. Accessed November 30, 2024. (In Russian)
Kukanova, N.G. Ocherki po istorii russko-iranskikh torgovykh otnoshenii v XVII – pervoi polovine XIX veka (Po materialam russkikh arkhivov) [Essays on the history of Russian–Iranian trade relations in the 17th – first half of the 19th century (Based on the Russian archival materials)]. Saransk: Mordovskoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1977. (In Russian)
Lohr, E. “The Ideal Citizen and Real Subject in Late Imperial Russia.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 7, no. 2 (2006): 173–94.
McReynolds, L. The News under Russia’s Old Regime: The Development of a Mass-Circulation Press. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Morrison, A. “Metropole, Colony, and Imperial Citizenship in the Russian Empire.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 13, no. 2 (2012): 327–64. ttps://dx.doi.org/10.1353/kri.2012.0016
Norkina, E.S. “A.M. Dondukov-Korsakov i evreiskii vopros v Rossiiskoi imperii” [A.M. Dondukov-Korsakov and the Jewish issue in the Russian Empire]. Tirosh. Trudy po iudaike, slavistike, orientalistike, iss. 19 (2019): 189–200. (In Russian)
Remnev, A.V. Samoderzhavnoe pravitel'stvo: Komitet ministrov v sisteme vysshego upravleniia Rossiiskoi imperii (vtoraia polovina XIX – nachalo XX veka [Autocratic government: The Committee of Ministers in the Russian Empire’s system of higher administration (in the second half of the 19th and the early 20th century)]. Moscow: Rossiiskaya politicheskaya entsiklopediya (ROSSPEN), 2010. (In Russian)
Renner, A. “Defining a Russian Nation: Mikhail Katkov and the ‘Invention’ of National Politics.” The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 81, no. 4 (2003): 659–82.
Riegg, S.B. Russia’s Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801–1914. Ithaca; New York: Cornell University Press, 2020.
Safronova, Yu.A. Russkoe obshchestvo v zerkale revolyutsionnogo terrora. 1879–1881 gody [Russian society in the mirror of revolutionary terrorism, 1879–1881]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014. (In Russian)
Saunders, D. “Russia and Ukraine under Alexander II: The Valuev Edict of 1863.” The International History Review, vol. 17, no 1 (1995): 23–50.
07075332.1995.9640700
Slocum, J.W. “Kto i kogda byli ‘inorodtsami’? Evolyutsiya kategorii ‘chuzhie’ v Rossiiskoi imperii” [Who, and when, were the inorodtsy? The evolution of the category of “aliens” in imperial Russia]. In Rossiiskaya imperiya v zarubezhnoi istoriografii [The Russian Empire in foreign historiography], compiled by P. Werth, P.S. Kabytov, and A.I. Miller, 502–25. Moscow: Novoe izdatel'stvo, 2005. (In Russian)
Sonina, E.S. Peterburgskaya universal'naya gazeta kontsa XIX veka [St Petersburg universal newspaper of the late 19th century]. St Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 2004. (In Russian)
Suny, R.G. Looking toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Urushadze, A.T. “Armyanskii katolikos v sisteme upravleniya Rossiiskoi imperii: predely i protivorechiya integratsii” [Armenian Catholicos in the system of government of the Russian Empire: Limits and contradictions of integration]. Khristianstvo na Blizhnem Vostoke, vol. 7, no. 2 (2023): 84–98. (In Russian)
Urushadze, A.T. “The Caucasian War in the Russian Public Sphere (1801–1864).” Historia Provinciae – the Journal of Regional History, vol. 8, no. 1 (2024): 85–126,
Werth, P.W. The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Keywords:
Russian Empire, Caucasus, Armenians, Armenian Apostolic Church, citizenship, public sphere, press
For citation:
Nedopekina, А.V. “Citizenship: A View from the Center on the Outskirts: Rights and Responsibilities of Armenians in the Russian Empire according to the Public Opinion of St Petersburg and Moscow in the 1880s.” Historia Provinciae – the Journal of Regional History, vol. 9, no. 4 (2025): 1224–70, https://doi.org/10.23859/2587-8344-2025-9-4-7; EDN: VIMBOS
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