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This article explores the measures taken by the institutions of state government, the nobility, communities and charitable committees to relieve suffering in Estland during the hunger crisis of 1867–9, examining the share of relief borne by local resources and central administration. Through comparisons with Russian and Finnish famine experiences, it demonstrates that the functioning and efficiency of famine relief were strongly influenced by patterns of landownership as well as political and social factors. Estonian peasants received their share from the imperial funds but these were clearly inadequate to meet their needs. The government not only spared the purse but was also determined to follow the laissez-faire policy of non-interference in markets. The communities were unwilling to provide for the landless and the Baltic German landlords kept aid to the minimum for both farmer peasants and the landless. Institutional responses were shaped by the belief that all able-bodied persons had to provide for themselves, which was hardly possible due to the extreme lack of jobs and the legal restrictions on out-migration from the province. The severity of famine in Estland was a result not of inadequate resources but of inadequate responses, which were shaped by the dynamics of class relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a speech by University of Delaware professor of history Peter Kolchin, delivered on November 14, 2014, at a meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Atlanta, Georgia, in which he discussed the emancipation of slaves in U.S. southern states during the 19th century as compared to the emancipation of slaves throughout the world, particularly to the emancipation of Russian serfs. He discussed the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, and Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the U.S. Civil War.

This article considers the origins of the Russian obsession with culture. Focusing on the last third of the nineteenth century, when in the aftermath of the Great Reforms of the 1860s Russia experienced a conspicuous expansion of public sphere, I examine public debates in the contemporary press that tackled the question of national culture, deliberating on what it was and whether Russia needed it. Contemporary periodicals demonstrate that the Russian tradition of locating positive identity in culture was originally highly contested territory. Russian culture thrived on debate. What is more, even such prominent makers of the national tradition as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy assumed an explicit stance against culture. The article nevertheless contends that it was precisely this negative take that contributed to the glorious mythology that surrounds Russian tradition today. In the course of the many heated debates of the day, culture became a household word and a familiar marker of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]