Introduction

Among the several monuments that the tsarist government chose to erect in Vil'na, the capital of its Northwest region at the turn of the century, two were especially prominent. The first, unveiled in 1898, was dedicated to the Vil'na governor-general in 1863–65, Mikhail Murav'ev; the second, unveiled in 1904, honored Catherine the Great, Russia's empress between 1762 and 1796. ¹ The two edifices in fact symbolized two different visions of the Romanov Empire. In government circles, Murav'ev earned praise for his role in quashing the uprising of 1863 and as a statesman who played a key role in efforts to reestablish the region's Russianness. The monument's construction and unveiling unfolded principally as a Russian affair in Russian discourse, and indeed, government representatives' anti-Polish sentiments were evident without ever having to be stated explicitly. ² Thus, the monument's appearance illustrates how the Romanov Empire acquired elements of a national (Russian) monarchy in its later decades. ³ Yet by 1904, the city's governor-general Petr Sviatopolk-Mirskii contended that the unveiling needed to involve not only Russians but also people of other nationalities, above all the Polish-speaking social elite. ⁴ His position on the matter reflected his approach to nationality issues in the region more generally. He moreover proposed easing elements of discrimination against non-Russians, believing that their commitments to non-Russian national identification did not necessarily undermine their loyalty to the emperor. ⁵ In short, the two visions of the Romanov Empire embedded in the monuments were these: one perceived the empire as primarily an ethnic Russian (russkii) state, where the interests of Russians were promoted at the expense of nonRussians; the other embraced the idea of imperial heterogeneity, whereby political elites sought to ensure the loyalty of non-Russians by tolerating rather than suppressing their diverse cultures.