Collective Petitions and Reforms in Russia in the First Quarter of the 19th Century

The established approaches to understanding the historical experience of reforms in nineteenth-century Russia emphasise the attention of researchers to identifying the political and socio-economic reasons that determined the need for reforms. At the same time, historians do not consider the feedback mechanisms of power institutions with their subjects, which allowed the government to assess the degree of necessity and possibility of reforms. One of the elements of such feedback in modern Russia were complaints, petitions and projects of Russian subjects. The analysis of their content and the process of their consideration makes it possible to reconstruct how the institutions of power reacted to such appeals and, most importantly, what factors determined the constructive nature of the dialogue between officials and petitioners. To solve this problem, the author analyses the content of collective appeals and records of the proceedings in the case of the proposal of the nobility of Dinaburg Uyezd to free serfs, as well as the petition of the noble assembly of Grodno Governorate on the organisation of local judicial proceedings, finance, and various aspects of interaction with the governor. The research identifies factors that facilitated constructive dialogue between the authors of collective petitions and representatives of higher government structures. In addition to the formal requirements for drafting petitions, it was necessary to clearly argue the need for change, using several key concepts that emphasised commitment to the publicly proclaimed course of restoring the rule of law and preventing acute social conflicts. It was found that a necessary condition for the establishment of a constructive dialogue was a high level of detail and practical orientation of the proposals, as well as their consistency with the expectations of the emperor. However, even when all these conditions were met, joint projects did not always come to fruition. The reason for this could be disagreements between those who presented the project, as well as in the circles of high-ranking officials. However, from a historical perspective, the options proposed by the Russian subjects for solving urgent socio-economic and administrative-legal problems created the basis for the development of principles and methods of reform throughout the nineteenth century.