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Abstract. The Baltic provinces, which became part of the Russian Empire in the 18th century, for almost a century and a half had a special status that secured the presence in the region of special legislation, its own judicial system, local self-government, as well as wide privileges that the German elite of the region had, subjected to severe exploitation of the indigenous Latvian and Estonian population. However, the modernization processes that swept Russia in the middle of the 19th century, as well as the growth of nationalpatriotic sentiments in society, as well as the real threat of the Germanization of the region, contributed to the revision of the relations that remained in the region. The initiative for extensive reforms in the Baltic region, aimed not only at its administrative, legal and linguistic unification, but also at protecting the interests of the local population, did not come from government officials, but from representatives of the Russian central and regional public. Among the latter, the most prominent place was occupied by the editor of the newspaper “Rizhsky Vestnik”, which openly defended Russian state interests in the Baltic states, Evgraf Vasilyevich Cheshikhin, whose letter to the prominent Moscow publicist N.P. Gilyarov-Platonov is presented in this publication. An analysis of the content of this letter allows us to get an idea of the causes and main directions of the reform program in the Baltic region and the role of the regional Russian public in its formation.
Keywords: Russian Empire, Baltic provinces, Riga, E.V. Cheshikhin, “Rizhskiy vestnik”, Baltic nobility, Latvians, Third branch of His Imperial Majesty’s Chancellery, germanization, public education.