Between the Tsar and People: Public Enlightenment Organizations in Prerevolutionary Russia

The term Non-Profit Organization (NPO) has a negative connotation in modern Russia. This is primarily due to the 2012-law on foreign agent NPOs that may result in the ever-increasing hypertrophy of the state and atrophy of society. However, what can the history offer in such a situation? As a rule, historians refer to analogous cases in other historical periods in order to better understand what is happening in the society. Therefore, authors of the present research focused on this issue particularly the period of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. It also focused on social organizations (voluntary organizations) in the late 19th to the early 20th century in the Russian Empire and rexcognized them as NPOs. It is not decisive to study results of the historical experience of how non-profit organizations functioned in the Russian Empire in the late 19th to the early 20th century. At first glance, it may seem that authors are seeking to modernize the term “voluntary organizations” and violate principles of applying historical terminology (since the term NPO was not used in Russia at that time). Similarly, the fact that such organizations became widespread in late pre-revolutionary Russia and did not pursue profit-making or the distribution of profits among their members allowed us to define them as NPOs of the 19th century.