“The Temple of Idleness”: Associations and the Public Sphere in Provincial Russia

Häfner, Lutz

doi:10.1057/9781403982261_9

Cited by 2 publications

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“…"These phenomena," Lutz Häfner wrote, were "largely lacking trans-regional networks and platforms" and "developed nationally only in a rudimentary form." 76 But the realists' petition, with its provincial yet not exclusively local origins, suggests otherwise: it is but one example of what appears to be a significant field of secondary students' informal activism, one profoundly rooted in local social practice, but at the same time inseparable from broader, imperial horizons. 77 While this form of social organization may not have evolved into a full-fledged civil society, it nonetheless functioned as a powerful agent of supra-local, imperial, socialization toward civil activism.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

School, Empire, and the Provincial Roots of Civil Activism in Late Nineteenth‐Century Russia

Valdman¹

2023

The Russian Review

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In spring 1879, news reached the Russian Ministry of Education that students from several Real Schools in the Russian Empire’s western provinces were planning to send a coordinated petition to the Minister of Education, asking for permission to enroll in university. The petition initiative was arranged in secrecy and involved more than a dozen schools from Odessa in the south to St. Petersburg in the north. Drawing on materials from several archives, this article traces the evolution of the petition initiative and addresses three main questions. First, the article demonstrates that the petition initiative was understood by students and officials alike as a severe breach of school discipline, but not a political crime, and it explains how and why the initiative is representative of the limited yet distinctive space of legitimation created by the authorities for non‐radical student activism. Second, it contextualizes the petition initiative against the backdrop of the discussion on civil activism in Russia, highlighting how secondary students were influenced and inspired by the contemporary public discourse and the idea of public activism. Finally, the article analyzes the internal social mechanisms of the petition initiative, demonstrating how it combined local self‐organization with imperial networking, mobility, and imagination.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%