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18th – 19th century

Languages of Russian Diplomacy in the 18th Century in the European Context

Vladislav Rejèoutski (MWNO Helsinki/DHI Paris) with Sophie Holm (MWNO Helsinki)

DFG-project

The project explores how the use of different languages by European diplomats evolved across the ‘long’ 18th century, especially how French became the lingua franca of diplomacy. It is no secret that French was the eminent language of European elites in general. But research is surprisingly sparse when it comes to the ways in which this cultural and linguistic trend impacted specific professions like diplomacy. The project analyses the speed, mechanisms and reasons for this change. While research primarily looked at Western countries and distinct time periods, this project has a broader perspective. It traces this development not just across the ‘long’ 18th century but also turns towards Russia and other European ‘peripheries’ such as Sweden and Spain.


Laboratories of Conscience: Conscience Courts as a Trans-Confessional and Trans-cultural Phenomenon in the Russian Empire 1775–1866

Ekaterina Makhotina – MWNO-Fellow (Helsinki)

Conscience, too, has a history. The Russian term sovest’ emerged later than its Western European counterparts, which were shaped in the context of Latin Christianity. Its semantic and conceptual roots lie in a synthesis of English, German, and Ukrainian traditions. This project investigates the Russian courts of conscience (sovestnye sudy), which existed from 1775 to 1866, as cultural and legal phenomena.

Previous scholarship has tended to emphasize only one model of origin for these local judicial bodies—namely, the English courts of chancery or courts of equity. However, this perspective overlooks a key influence: the Ukrainian institutions of customary law, in particular the tretejskij sud (arbitration court). The design of the Russian courts of conscience drew significantly on the Codex by which the Little Russian People are Judged (1743), itself a legal hybrid that combined elements of the Sachsenspiegel, Magdeburg law, the Lithuanian Statute, and local customary law.

The courts of conscience were tasked with assessing not the gravity of the crime but the consciousness of the accused. The innovation lay in the focus on awarenessreason, and the ability to understand and evaluate one’s own actions. For the first time in Russian legal practice, the concept of criminal responsibility was linked to the offender’s mental state, intentionality, and capacity for moral judgment—ultimately, to the presence or absence of conscience as the inner seat of justice. This brought about a significant distinction in legal evaluation of criminal acts as intentional or unintentional. And the presence of repentance could lead to mitigation of punishment, pointing to a nascent moral psychology within Russian legal culture.

The Judicial Reform of 1864 formally abolished the courts of conscience as institutions. However, their legacy persisted—particularly in the volostnye sudy. On the discursive level, the courts of conscience had a lasting influence on Russian legal and intellectual culture. They helped spark public debates about the meaning and purpose of punishment—debates that would engage not only writers such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but also the leading legal scholars of the nineteenth century.


Old Russia on the Dock. The Trial against Abbess Mitrofaniia before the Moscow District Court (1874)

Sandra Dahlke (MWNO Helsinki)

In October 1874, one of the most spectacular trials of the Great Reform Era was taking place in the Moscow District Court. On the dock sat abbess Mitrofaniia, principal of the Vladitsnii Women’s cloister in Serpucho, head of several charitable sisterhoods, daughter of the general adjutant Baron Grigorii von Rozen and former lady-in-waiting to Tsarina Alexandra Federovna. Mitrofaniia was accused of defrauding and extorting rich merchants to finance her ambitious charitable projects. The whole range of society was involved directly or indirectly in the trial – the Tsarist family, ladies from the high nobility, high-ranking public servants, the highest authorities from the Church, up-and-coming lawyers and journalists as well as merchants, Skopcy, Jewish retailers and peasants. By way of a ‘thick description’ of the criminal trial and its numerous adjacent trials in civil court, the project wants to explore the kaleidoscope of social, juridical, economical, religious and political relationships that cut across the case of Abbess Mitrofaniia as well as the behavior and mentalities of a society during the upheaval of the Great Reforms.


Foreign expatriates in the Caucasus. The Case of Finnish, Swedish and German Citizens at the Nobels’ Enterprises in Azerbaijan and Georgia

Dmitrii Frolov – MWNO-Fellow (Tbilisi)

Since the industrial revolution of the mid-19th century a growing modern industry began to exploit many natural and synthetic resources, such as oil, gas, kerosene or paraffin. The oil fields on the Absheron peninsula and near Baku in Azerbaijan made this region very important for the growing industry since the mid-1860s. Many foreign companies turned their attention to this oil region. The largest foreign company in Baku was founded by the Nobel brothers (Branobel) in 1876.

The project is a pilot study intended to map documents about Finnish, Swedish, and German expatriates at the Nobels’ enterprises in Azerbaijan and Georgia. The Nobel archive’s collections contain documents about administrative personnel from 1882–1920 and correspondence about foreign workers, lists of workers who arrived from Finland, Germany and Sweden, personal profiles and personal information of emigrants, correspondence regarding expats’ property, complaints and applications of foreigners, lists of foreign workers who have returned to their home countries, etc. The results of the research carried out as part of the project will fulfil previously separately run projects and will make Finnish-Swedish-German history available for a broader group of researchers by revealing the archive materials preserved in archival institutions in Azerbaijan and Georgia. The aim of the project is also to study Branobel’s employees and their everyday life, different aspects and practices of paternalistic employer policies and to understand how a Nordic identity was constructed and maintained in multiethnic and multicultural Baku. The research project aims to understand the significance of the Villa Petrolea and Branobel paternalistic policies in the Russian Empire.


Russia’s North Pacific

MWNO – network project  (2017-2026)

Academic coordinator: Anna Mazanik

Partners: Andreas Renner (LMU München), Joonseo Song (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul), David Wolff (Hokkaido Universität, Sapporo), Frank Grüner (Universität Bielefeld)

The network project ‘Russia’s North Pacific’ explores the multiple entanglements with China, Japan, (North and South) Korea, Canada and the United States as well as different indigenous communities. Its goal ist to foster research on the region and academic cooperation. The network has its own book series ‘Russia and the Asia-Pacific’ with Heidelberg University Publishing. The series examines political, economic, societal, cultural and ecological interactions of the Russian Far East with the Asia-Pacific on the one hand, and with the capital on the other in past and present.