The article is devoted to the issues of conceptual justification and ideological support of the measures of the government of Alexander III, carried out in the 1880s — early 1890s and aimed at unifying the Ostsee region (the Baltics) with the rest of Russia. The author shows that this policy was caused not only by the desire for administrative unification of the region, but also by the realization that the deep cultural and historical foundations on which the established order in the Baltic provinces was based were deeply alien to the way of life of indigenous Russia. In the second half of the 19th century, influential members of the Russian ruling class believed this situation was becoming intolerable. Change was required, and change, in turn, had to be based on a compelling ideological justification. This justification was based on the thesis that the indigenous peoples of the “Baltic borderland” — Estonians and Latvians — were initially close to Russia, gravitated towards Orthodoxy, and that a social structure close to the Western order was forcibly imposed on the region by the German conquerors. Measures to bring the region closer to the rest of Russia thus acted as a manifestation of a deep historical pattern, the return of the Baltic lands to their natural path of development. The policy pursued in the 1880s and 1890s, based on such concepts, was accompanied by a whole series of cultural and symbolic measures designed to emphasize the unity of the Baltic lands with indigenous Russia. These include changing the region’s toponymy, building parish churches for Estonians and Latvians who converted to Orthodoxy, holding mass celebrations, and creating significant sacred centers — the founding of a monastery in Pühtitsa and the construction of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Reval (Tallinn). These measures had a certain impact on the spiritual and cultural life of the region. However, without significant socioeconomic reforms, they failed to significantly alter the direction of its social development.
Alexander Polunov (Thu,) studied this question.