The Pro-Russian Oriented Public of the North-Western Territory about Current Problems of Our Time on the Pages of the “Vilna Bulletin” in the second half of the 1860s

In a publication based on an analysis of articles, letters and notes sent by local correspondents to the newspaper "Vilna Bulletin" in 1865-1867 the views of the pro-Russian oriented public of the North-Western Territory on current issues of the development of the Russian Empire and the region are revealed, and the features of the socio-political position of its individual representatives are revealed.Based on the application of a communicative approach, newspaper materials are considered as a form of expression of political loyalty and a single "communicative flow", within the framework of which value judgments and assessments were developed that are significant both for the regional administration and for the local public.Local correspondents of the Vilna Vestnik, in the context of overcoming the socio-political crisis in the North-Western region in the second half of the 1860s, acted as participants in the official imperial discourse aimed at developing the ideological foundations of the integrative course implemented by the Russian authorities.It is concluded that in 1865-1867 Vilna Vestnik correspondents from the northwestern provinces, following the newspaper's editorial policy, supported the task of "moral conquest of the region" and actively participated in the process of forming the concept of Russian nationalism, both in its religious-ethnic and political dimensions.Representatives of the local educated society, loyal to the Russian authorities, sent their materials to the Vilna Bulletin, contributed to the formation of the image of Emperor Alexander II as a "renovator tsar", "a new organizer of the whole of Russia" and insisted on the need for further reforms under the auspices of autocratic power.Representatives of the local public, who supported the policies of the Russian government, proposed a set of measures that, in their opinion, would make it possible not only to oust the Polish element hostile to Russian government principles from the region, but also to deepen the integration vector of the government course aimed at forming an all-Russian identity among the residents of the Northwestern Territory.