Russian Imperial Reforms

After the Polish uprising of 1830, the imperial government resolved to amalgamate the so-called western provinces that had once belonged to the Polish Commonwealth – that is, Right-Bank Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania.

Although their primary goal was to reduce Polish influence on the Right Bank, Russian policies also had a great impact on the Ukrainian peasantry and the Jewish townsmen of the region. In November 1831, Tsar Nicholas I formed a special commission for the western provinces, based in Kiev. Viktor Kochubei, the commission’s chairman, was ordered “to bring these western lands into conformity with the Great Russian provinces in all respects.”⁷ Within months, all the Polish schools (there were almost no Ukrainian ones) were closed and the school system was reorganized along imperial lines, with Russian as the language of instruction. The famous Polish college at Kremianets was also closed. In its place, a Russian university, named after St Vladimir, was founded in Kiev. As far as the goals of the new university were concerned, Sergei Uvarov, the minister of education, did not mince words in his inaugural address: “The university of St Vladimir is my creation. But I will be the first to repress it if it does not fulfill its assignment… and this is to disseminate Russian education and Russian nationality in the Polonized lands of western Russia.”⁸

The incarnation of the harsh new regime on the Right Bank was General Dmitrii Bibikov, governor-general of Kiev, Podilia, and Volhynia provinces from 1837 to 1852.

Backed by powerful military forces, Bibikov carried out his policies unrestrained. On his order, about 60,000 Polish noblemen were deprived of their patents of nobility and demoted to the status of commoners. Many were exiled to the depths of Russia. About 3000 confiscated nobles’ estates were transformed into military colonies and Russians were brought in to replace Poles in the bureaucracy. The abolition of the Lithuanian Statute (a law code based on medieval Western models) in 1840, together with the earlier abolition of Kiev’s Magdeburg Law, marked the end of what had essentially been Western legal practices in Russian-ruled Ukraine.

Some of Bibikov’s measures were aimed at the Ukrainian masses. In 1839, he renewed a campaign (originally launched by Catherine 11) to convert – or rather reconvert – the Greek Catholics to Orthodoxy. In the provinces of Volhynia and Podilia, as well as in Belorussia, the Greek Catholic church, which acknowledged the supremacy of Rome, was well established, consisting of over 2 million adherents. By means of mass deportations, bribery, and even executions, Bibikov succeeded in practically eliminating the Greek Catholic church in the empire. Only a small number of Greek Catholics in the region of Kholm managed to retain their adherence to it.

Although it had certainly not been the governor-general’s intention, some of his policies had unforeseen advantages for Ukrainians. For example, by supporting St Vladimir University, which had been set up as a counterbalance to Polish cultural influences in Kiev, he helped to develop an institution that would play an extremely important role in the coming Ukrainian cultural resurgence. Similarly, by organizing a commission in 1843 to assemble ancient Ukrainian documents that he hoped would prove that Ukraine had been Russian “from time immemorial,” Bibikov inaugurated the first systematic collection of Ukrainian archival materials and gave Ukrainian patriots working on the commission an opportunity to delve into their land’s non-Russian past.

His approach to the peasantry also had unexpected results. In 1847, hoping to gain the goodwill of the Ukrainian peasants and to alienate them even more from their Polish landlords, the governor-general introduced the Inventory Regulations. These stipulated exactly the amount of land a peasant had at his disposal and the type of work he owed his landlord. It abolished private taxation by landlords and limited their right to interfere in the peasants’ personal affairs. However, in a fashion that was typical of the Russian bureaucracy, Bibikov’s successors added so many amendments to the regulations that they became impossible to implement and the nobles carried on as before. Instead of being grateful to the authorities, the confused and frustrated peasants on the Right Bank staged a series of minor revolts against them. These miscarried measures were merely one of the many indications during this highly regimented age that, despite the seemingly unshakable control the imperial regime exercised over society, it could never be sure of the full impact of its policies or of the course of social developments.