Stephen Lovell1; 1 King's College London, Department of History,
Discussion
Since the last third of the eighteenth century, elections had been an integral part of the institutional functioning of the Russian Empire, serving above all to select office-holders for various levels and types of local administration. Until the 1860s, social estate trumped all other considerations: rural elected offices were dominated by the gentry, urban by the merchants and townspeople. In the reform era, however, new legislation created a more complex electorate defined by property ownership more than estate. This paper will investigate how the conduct and meaning of urban elections shifted from the early 1860s to the end of the century and explore the implications for the political culture of the Russian Empire on the eve of the revolutionary upheaval of the early twentieth century.
