This study describes and analyzes Russian nationality policy in the so-called Western region [...] of the Empire. Chronologically, the study focuses on the first part of the reign of Nicholas II, from 1894 up to and including the 1905 Revolution. However, in order to explain the rationale of most nationality policy measures implemented between 1894 and 1904, the study looks back to the 1860s.
The main emphasis of this volume is on the policy debates within the ruling bureaucracy. Focusing on one region, it reconstructs the way the bureaucracy thought about the Empire's nationality problems: what aims it pursued towards non-Russians, what methods were used to implement those aims, and how the methods were justified in internal debates. At the same time the book tries to explore linkages between various aspects of nationality policy and other political issues.
Two such issues were particularly relevant when it came to the enforcement of nationality policy: the question of legality [...], and the question of inviolability of property rights.