The Debate on Political Autonomy in the State Duma of the Russian Empire and the Trial of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay in 1914.

The research is devoted to the analysis of the political trial of famous Russian-Polish linguist and political writer Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845 – 1929) in 1914 in the context of the debate on political autonomy in the late Russian Empire and the intellectual history of Central Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century. Baudouin’s ideological constructs and his conflict with imperial authorities were a part of not only the political crisis in the Russian Empire but also the result of deep conceptual changes in the political language of the region. It was the period when new ways of envisioning the political arrangement in a multicultural society became possible after a methodological shift in the late nineteenth century. On the other hand, exactly in this period the political agenda of Autonomist fraction in the Second State Duma changed radically. This study was conducted with reliance on a significant number of sources, both public and personal, and explains the interrelations between the processes described above. The combination of intellectual and political history makes it possible to understand the ideas and practices of autonomy in the broad context of the epoch. The political inventions of Russian autonomism at the beginning of the 20th century played an important role later, during the revolution, civil war and post-imperial state building on the territory of the former Romanovs' empire.