The return of Vyborg governorate to the "inner" Russia: the legal dimension of the search for national borders

The article is devoted to the analysis of projects for joining first part and then the entire territory of the Vyborg province of the Grand Duchy of Finland to the St. Petersburg province bordering it. The features of the government discourse that emerged during the discussion of the planned transformations are considered, and a comparative analysis of cases of "symbolic" confrontation of the imperial administration with alternative national projects for territories with a special institutional structure is carried out. The object of the study is the national policy of the Russian Empire towards Finland in the 1910s, the subject is the office materials of the Special Meeting on the Affairs of the Grand Duchy of Finland and the interdepartmental Commission chaired by Secretary of State S. E. Kryzhanovsky. The main attention is paid to the draft law "On the accession of the Kivineb, Novokirk and Teriyok communities of the Vyborg province to the St. Petersburg province." The author used traditional methods for historical and legal research: analysis, synthesis, a systematic approach and formal legal. It is concluded that the projects under study, on the one hand, reflected a change in the priorities of the national policy of the Russian government from a broad program of Russification of the outskirts to the formation of the "national core" of the empire, on the other hand, represented a unique attempt to harmonize two different institutional systems and alternative approaches to political modernization. In this regard, the work places special emphasis on the limits of social and political transformations acceptable to the highest Russian bureaucracy in such matters as the class affiliation of subjects, the organization of local self-government and the unification of the legal system. The results of the study make it possible to correct traditional historiographical approaches to the national policy of the late Russian Empire, and also highlight the complex internal logic of the legislative process during the Duma monarchy.

Vyborg Governorate, Grand Duchy of Finland, national policy, modernization, national core, territorial appropriation, unification, assimilation, lawmaking, local self-government