N.B. Selunskaya Politicization of society in early XX-th century (testimonies of those in power)

Abstract: the involvement of Russian population into a democratic election process in early XX-th century played an important role in the political history of this country. Politicization of Russian society was a necessary condition, and one of the manifestations of the birth of a democratic culture, the forming of a political identity of the citizens and their political consciousness. The author explores politicization in the context of interaction between government and society on the basis of introducing the average citizen into the political sphere. The author is basing the research on the testimonies of contemporaries and analyzes a broad number of sources, including written letters of governors to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Research on this particular kind of documents requires us to pay attention to historical context during research, minding other documents of a different origin, but similar in content. The testimonies of the people in power do not offer an accurate or complete picture of social and political life in early XXth century Russia, but they cannot be ignored by a historian that seeks to understand and explain the motivation of Russian electorate at the very beginning of democratization in our country.

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