The image of power in Russian society in the second half of the 19th century: the view of contemporaries

Abstract

Background. The relevance of the work is determined by the need to rethink the imperial period of Russian history in the second half of the 19th century from a new per-spective in the context of the “bureaucratic center – province” dichotomy. The purpose of the study is to analyze the dynamics of changes in the ideas of various estates about the su-preme power of the Russian Empire in the 1870s–1890s. Materials and methods. The re-search was conducted on the basis of the principles of historical science: objectivity, histor-icism and consistency. The system – structural method was used by the author to study the results of the work of the censorship department in order to identify the mechanism of in-fluence on the population to form an image of power. The historical and anthropological approach is applied in the study of letters, diaries and notes of contemporaries, taking into account the specifics of the position of various estates in the Russian Empire in the post-reform period. The principle of conformity was applied in the study of the history of every-day life as a practice of survival of the population of the Russian Empire in 1870–1890 against the background of such challenges as wars, epidemics, famine of 1891–1892, regi-cide. Results. During the writing of the article, the main task was solved – on the basis of a wide range of sources to study the mechanism of forming the image of an official of the central and local administration as a representative of the tsarist government of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century. Conclusions. In the course of the systemic re-forms carried out in the country, the need to concentrate the efforts of all state institutions and the church to form an attractive image of the supreme ruler, who decided to carry out changes that affected the lives of almost all estates of the vast empire, has become particu-larly relevant. In the post-reform period, the relationship between government and society in a modernizing society was reinterpreted in new categories – acceptance or rejection of transformations, trust or distrust of the tsarist official. Channels of influence on the popula-tion ran both through established practices used by government agencies, law enforcement agencies, religious organizations, zemstvos, and the periodical press, various public organi-zations, and charitable societies. We use the method of content-analyzing when analyzing periodical printing materials. Of course, when studying the social history of Russia during the second half of the 19th century, it is extremely important to isolate and separately exam-ine the opinion of educated society and the ideas that have developed in the peasant envi-ronment, as well as take into account the possibilities of broadcasting political experience in a large university city and a small county town. In our opinion, the ethnoconfessional characteristics of various territories of the Russian Empire play a significant role in the analysis of the problem of power and society.

Keywords

• information environment
• the image of an autocratic ruler
• spiritual and secular bureaucracy
• periodicals
• public organizations