West-Russian Publicists of the 19th Century

Abstract. In the Russian imperial discourse of the second half of the 19th century, the North-Western Territory was often integrated with the South-Western Territory – speaking of the North-South-Western Territory region as a cross point of various burning social and national issues, relevant to the Western Russian periphery: such as the Polish question and other related issues, which would eventually turn into the Russian question – that is the issue of the boundaries of Russian political nation. Among the peripheral Russian nationalists, two conditional trends can be distinguished – the “southern” (Kievan) one, which tended to favor Katkov nationalism, and the “Northern” one (Vilna), which favoured the Slavophile version of nationalism. The first belonged primarily to the editorial stuff of the newspaper “Kievlianin” – V.Ia. Shulgin and his associates, including a prominent local public figure M.V. Yuzefovich. The most prominent representatives of the Vilna circle were I.P. Kornilov, M.O. Koialovich, K.A. Govorskii, I.G. Kulzhinskii, P.A. Kulakovskii. Their political outlook was a peculiar combination of “elements” typical of their era: nationalism, democratism, monarchism and a service ethos. By the end of the century, the differences between the two directions had finally levelled out, forming the environment from which Russian political nationalism of the 20th century grew: P.A. Stolypin and his followers, “Russian outlying society”, the Kievan club of Russian nationalists, etc.

Keywords: nationalism, conservatism, Western Russianism, the Polish question, Slavophilism, Katkov, Shulgin, Yuzefovich, Govorsky, Kulakovsky, Koyalovich.