The article sets out and implements the task of summarizing the experience of implementing national‑territorial policy in the western regions of the Russian Empire: Bessarabia, Poland, Finland, and on this basis to identify its main directions in the context of strengthening state unity. Historical‑legal and formal‑legal methods were used to solve this problem. Due to the need for an interdisciplinary synthesis dependent on the complex nature of the issues under study, the historical method is used, in which specific historical events and the work of historians are considered. The need to compare the experience of different regional entities in historical retrospect led to the use of the comparative historical method (synchronous comparison). The peculiarities of the policy of the Russian Empire on the organization of governance in the western annexed territories are considered. Based on the analysis of specific regulatory legal acts, the directions of the state policy of the Russian Empire in relation to Bessarabia, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Finland have been identified. Special attention is paid to the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland, the activities of the Sejm in Finland, and the development of local law in Bessarabia. Differences in the legal status of the inhabitants of these territories compared with the population of the western part of the Russian Empire are noted. An assessment of the effectiveness of relevant measures aimed at strengthening state unity and countering separatism is given. The role of local law in the regulation of public relations in the national outskirts of the Russian Empire is shown. It is noted that the national‑territorial policy of the Russian Empire in relation to the annexed western territories assumed granting them broad autonomy, accompanied by the preservation of local government structures and local legislation. At the same time, such a policy was not unified, it had its own peculiarities in different regions and entailed different consequences.
Ilsur Metshin (Wed,) studied this question.