Imperial Janus: Patterns of Governance in the Western Borderlands of the Tsarist Empire
Journal: Scholarworks (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Year: 2020

Why did the Tsarist Empire opt for different governance strategies in each of the territories of the Western Borderlands (here defined as Poland-Lithuania, the Baltic territories, Finland, and Hetman Ukraine)? The existing political science literature tends to reduce such a question to a distinction between direct and indirect rule, usually developing in the context of a Western European maritime empire. This literature falls short of explaining the Tsarist case and requires the addition of inte