Academic literature on the topic 'Imperial russia - 1881-1917'

The End of Imperial Russia, 1855-1917, which is part of St. Martin's European History in Perspective series, analyzes the decades leading to the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Peter Waldron focuses his attention on one of the most important and controversial eras in Russian history. Most historians of Russia agree that the changes and turmoil of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries set the stage for the events of 1917 and afterwards. In this work, Waldron divides his era into five major themes. First, the Russian autocracy, often seen as one and the same with the state in Imperial Russia, initiates reform and counterreform. The author clearly shows that the nobility was not united, especially during the reign of Nicholas II (1894-1917). Some of the nobility supported reform, while others vehemently opposed it. Waldron emphasizes the reign of Nicholas II, while leaving the reform efforts of Alexander II (1855-1881) and the counterreform initiatives of Alexander III (1881-1894) relatively unexplored. A fuller explanation of the Great Reform era (1860s) and the Counterreform era (1880s) would have provided the reader with a better understanding when analyzing the end of the Romanov monarchy.

Secondary education is one key area in which academic disciplines build their identity and legitimacy in the public realm. The public image of a science is, of course, constructed by a variety of means and on different platforms, including the generalist media and the lively industry of scientific popularization. However, the school occupies a unique role in representations of science because of its greater degree of formal continuity with the academic environment. The successful institutionalization and maintenance of any discipline depends on it taking root, in some form at least, in the system of public instruction. Because education both fosters and depends on disciplinary reproduction, the concrete shape that school subjects take is of great consequence to the long-term development of related sciences.

This article analyzes the possibility of development of liberal constitutionalism in the Russian Empire during the post-reform period in the late 19th – early 20th century within the context of European history, of which Russia was an integral component. It argues that the Russian autocracy had the potential to transform itself into a constitutional monarchy during the period that followed the Great Reforms of the 1860s (1861–1881) and, second, during the Revolution of 1905–1906 and in its aftermath. This promising evolutionary process was cut short by World War I and rejected by the Soviet period of Russian history that followed. Obstacles to constitutional government were mostly objective in character, but perhaps the most significant problem was the fragmentation and insufficient development of Russian political culture, or better said, cultures that failed to produce the consensus required for effective creation and functioning of a constitutional regime. This failure was further exacerbated by an evolutionary radicalization of revolutions in modern European history that culminated in October 1917. The author concludes that the events of the late 1980s and the Revolution of 1991 changed the character of the Russian historical landscape and provided the potential for renewed development of a pluralistic political system and a strong civil society that is its precondition.

AbstractThis article utilizes material from archives in Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan as well as published Chinese sources to explore the opium trade between Tsarist Turkestan and Xinjiang from the early 1880s to 1917. It focuses on two different levels: the borderlands economy and society, and state policies towards illegal (or ‘grey’) markets. The main groups active in the trade were Hui/Dungan and Taranchi migrants from China, who had fled Qing territory after the repression of the great anti-Qing Muslim revolts during the 1860s and 1870s. After settling in Tsarist territory, they grew poppies and exported opium back across the border to China. This article shows how the borderland economy was influenced by the late-Qing anti-opium campaign, and especially by the First World War. During the war, the Tsarist government tried to create a state opium monopoly over the borderland economy, but this attempt was botched first by the great Central Asian revolt of 1916, and later by the 1917 revolution. Departing from the prevailing historiography on borderlands, this article shows how the international border, far from being an obstacle to the trade, was instead the main factor that made borderland opium production and trade possible. It also shows how the borderland population made a strategic use of the border-as-institution, and how local imperial administrators—in different periods and for different reasons—adapted to, fostered, or repressed this most profitable borderland economic activity.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Velyaminov was born in 1855 in St. Petersburg. He studied at the gymnasiums of Wiesbaden and Warsaw. In 1872 he entered the Moscow University in physics and mathematics, and in 1873 transferred to the faculty of medicine. In 1877 he was sent to the army in the Caucasus. In 1878-1879, Nikolai Alexandrovich became ill with typhus, developing a chronic process in the lungs, which requires long-term treatment abroad. After recovery in the years 1880-1881 N. And. Velyaminov works in Central Asia as a surgeon of the Akhal-Teke expedition, develops a system of medical sorting and evacuation of the wounded, writes "Memories of the surgeon from the Akhal-Teke expedition." In 1883 he received the degree of doctor of medicine and worked as an assistant to Professor K. K. Reyer, lectured on operative surgery in Women's medical courses. In 1884 N. Ah. Velyaminov becomes an assistant to the chief physician and surgeon of the Holy cross community of sisters of mercy. In 1885 he founded the first in Russia authoritative scientific surgical journal "Surgical Bulletin". Since 1887 N. Ah. Velyaminov as a Junior doctor of the life guards of the Preobrazhensky regiment heads the surgical Department in Krasnoselsky hospital, since 1893 works as the Director of the Maximilian hospital in St. Petersburg, since 1894 the senior doctor of the Semenovsky regiment, is appointed the life-physician and honorary surgeon of the Highest Court, and then the senior doctor of the Imperial headquarters. In 1889 he defended his doctoral thesis. In 1894 N. Ah. Velyaminov is elected Professor of the Military medical Academy. In 1896 he designs the device for the first time in St. Petersburg service of "Ambulance", organizing children's sanatoriums. In 1900, Velyaminov was elected an honorary member of the Royal medical College in London, the Chief Commissioner of the Russian red cross society for assistance to the sick and wounded in the far East. In 1905 N. Ah. Velyaminov was awarded the rank of privy Councilor, and in 1907 was awarded the order of St. Anne of the 1st degree. In the same years N. Ah. Velyaminov was the first in Russia to study occupational injuries, insurance of workers and organized the "Bureau of medical examination for workers" (1907). In 1910 1912 N. Ah. Velyaminova works as the head of the Imperial Military medical Academy in St. Petersburg. In 1913, the conference of the Military medical Academy elected him academician of medicine. At the beginning of World war I. Ah. Velyaminov took part in the work of the Main Directorate of the red cross, and from the end of August he was a surgeon-consultant at the Headquarters of the commander-in-Chief to inspect the surgical case in the army. By the beginning of 1917 N. Ah. Velyaminov held many positions: Director of the Mariinsky hospital for the poor, Alexandrinsky women's hospital and Maximilian hospital; Chairman of the Medical Commission for reception in the sanatorium "khalila", the Russian Society for the protection of public health, the Interdepartmental Commission for the revision of medical legislation; Vice-Chairman of the Committee of the Community of the Seaside sanatorium for chronically ill children; editor of the magazines "Surgical archive" and "Hygiene and sanitary Affairs"; inspector of the court medical unit; honorary consultant of the Alexander-Mariinsky hospital and hospital for incoming patients; consultant of the Royal office for the institutions of the Empress Maria Feodorovna, member of the Board of the Community. Kaufman red cross and the Medical Council of the interior Ministry. In 1919-1920 he headed the Department of surgical pathology with desmurgy at the Women's medical Institute. In March 1920, he was offered the post of Chairman of the Commission for the reform of medical education, from which N. Ah. Velyaminov refused. By this time the new government took away the Professor's apartment, and he found refuge in the utility room of the Petrograd hospital named after Peter the Great. N. And. Velyaminov author of over 100 scientific medical works, including 8 monographs. He described thyrotoxic polyarthritis, gave the classification of diseases of the joints and thyroid gland, one of the first pointed to the importance of the endocrine glands in the development of surgical diseases, used phototherapy; opened the first Russian light therapy room. A lot of new N. And. Velyaminov contributed to the doctrine of surgical treatment of bone tuberculosis and abdominal surgery. April 9, 1920 N. Ah. Velyaminov died and was buried at the Volkov cemetery.

The article is devoted to the study of legal norms regulating the service of special units, which were entrusted with the protection of the emperors of the Russian Empire and members of the august family from assassination attempts in the period from 1881 to 1917, that is, from the moment of death of Alexander II at the hands of revolutionary terrorists until the moment of liquidation of the imperial power. These werethe Security agents and secret security units, acting behind the scenes. The operational-search techniques used by these units were developed by highly qualified specialists, heads of outdoor surveillance services, but it was for the first time when they were used for the purposes of personal protection and required practical training and gaining experience. It is also very important to compare the development of legal regulation of the protection of the sovereign in time; for this three documents of 1883, 1887 and 1913 were studied. The research is based on dialectical, formal-legal and comparative-legal methods, which made it possible to determine the recommended procedure for all participants in security measures, to identify the general and specific matters in the documents, to show the practical experience of protecting the highest persons. The result of the protection is the absence of attempted terrorist acts against the imperial family. This made it possible to draw a conclusion about the effectiveness of protection, that is, the adequacy of the measures taken. In spite of the repeated requests of researchers to this subject under examination, such analysis was not made by them, therefore this article is an attempt to close one of the gaps in our historical and legal science.

The purpose of this work was to analyze the participation of domestic and foreign morphological scientists in the activities of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. From 1724 until 1917, a number of outstanding morphologists were elected as full members of the Academy, among them - anatomist and embryologist K.F. Wolf, anatomist A.E. Protasov, embryologist, geologist and paleontologist H.G. Pander, naturalist K. E. Beer, embryologist A. O. Kovalevsky, physiologist, histologist and zoologist F. V. Ovsyannikov, histologist A. S. Dogel, anthropologist, ethnographer and geographer D. N. Anuchin. The academy’s connections with foreign scientists also developed, many of whom were elected corresponding members and foreign honorary members of the academy, among them a number of morphologists, comparative anatomists and histologists. Thus, the following were elected as foreign honorary members: René Antoine Reaumur (1683 - 1757, elected in 1737); Albrecht Haller (1708 – 1777, elected 1776); in 1802 Georges Cuvier (1769 – 1732) was elected; in 1826 – Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 – 1832); in 1905 - Camillo Golgi (1844 - 1926). Correspondents were elected as foreign members: in 1826 - Robert Brown (1773 - 1858), who in 1827 became a full member of the academy; in 1826, Karl Ernst Baer (1792 - 1876) was elected foreign corresponding member, who after moving to Russia became its ordinary academician (1827), and then after his resignation, its honorary member (1862); in 1832 - Johannes Peter Müller (1801 - 1852); in 1836 - Jan Evangelista Purkinje (1787 - 1869); in 1850 – Matthias Jacob Schleiden (1804 – 1881); in 1857 - Rudolf Albert Kölliker (1817 - 1905); in 1881 - Rudolf Virchow (1821 - 1902); in 1897 - Franz Leydig (1821 - 1908). Communication between foreign corresponding members and foreign honorary members was carried out with the academy in several directions, of which the main one was sending their works to the academy and publishing their works in the academy’s publications. Another direction was the training of students who were subjects of the Russian Empire, as well as the internship of young Russian researchers who were preparing for a professorship.