ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian imperial government revised its so-called Russification policy directed toward the empire's western border regions and decided to allow the education of languages described as “native” (rodnye), “natural” (prirodnye), and “local” (mestnye). Was this a temporal retreat from the “Russification policy” in the face of national movements, or was it a fundamental change in the policy toward the non-Russian population, or something else altogether? In order to answer these questions, we need to explore the nuanced context of what actually happened.
