Russian liberals' views on national minorities during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War

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Russian liberals' views on national minorities during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War

Klimova, Julia; (2022) Russian liberals' views on national minorities during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

This thesis explores the policies of Russian liberals towards national minorities from 1905 to the 1920s. By the early twentieth century, the Russian Empire struggled to control a vast territory of ethnically and religiously diverse peoples. As the last two tsars introduced harsh policies of Russification, inadvertently triggering discontent from the non-Russians, Russian liberal thinkers developed their own policy of governing national minorities based on principles of equal individual rights and universal suffrage. This thesis charts continuities and changes in Russian liberals’ views on national minorities’ rights from the Duma period through the revolutions of 1917 and the civil war, when they participated in the White Governments and lived in emigration. Drawing on published and unpublished sources from Russia, Britain and the United States, the thesis considers the nationalities question within the broader set of challenges that liberals faced both at home and abroad. It is argued that fundamental liberal assumptions came under increasing pressure in the context of the Russian civil war and the Paris Peace Conference. In particular, although Russian liberals remained committed in principle to individual rights, and some were sympathetic to demands for national independence, their perception of various minorities was increasingly coloured by their sense of patriotism and the need to preserve the boundaries of the disintegrating Russian state. Particular attention is paid to the different positions taken by Russian liberals towards national minorities in the White governments.

Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification:	Ph.D
Title:	Russian liberals' views on national minorities during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War
Open access status:	An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language:	English
Additional information:	Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
UCL classification:	UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > SSEES UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
URI:	https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10146399