Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the XX century: on the publications of the magazine «Finland»

Abstract

In this article authors investigate the problems of interaction and relationship between the imperial authorities and the local community of the Grand Duchy of Finland at the beginning of the XX century in the publications of contemporaries, which was reflected in the polemics on the pages of the magazine «Finland» in 1908–1910. The authors of this publication devoted their articles to such issues as the situation of Finland within the Russian Empire, the policy of the Russian authorities in remote parts in relation to the centre of empire. The most important problem of the national policy of late Imperial Russia was the need to develop a unified model of management of the remote parts, based on the principle of ethnocentrism on the basis of established national and state traditions. The differences in the views of Russian and Finnish statesmen and public figures and publicists were connected with the decision on the transition from the imperial to the national principle of imperial policy on the outskirts, which, first of all, related to the remote parts of the Russian Empire, starting from the second half of the XIX century. The autonomous status of Finland predetermined the preponderance of the national principle of marginal politics over the imperial one.