Repressive Policy of the Russian Government Towards the Participants of the Movements for the Restoration of the Poland Statehood (1830–1874)

The purpose of the article is a comprehensive analysis of the Russian Empire legislation directed against the participants of the November (1830–1831) and January (1863–1864) uprisings, the Polish national liberation and oppositional movements of 1830–1874 in order to identify key points of the repressive policy of the Russian authorities towards the Poles. Acts of top-level authorities – laws – were extracted from the «Full Assembly of Laws of the Russian Empire»; acts of lower-level bodies – circulars – originated from the State Archives of the Mykolaiv Region, although other state archives of Ukraine can keep the same documents. The research methodology includes methods of archival heuristics and source criticism. The scientifi c novelty consists in the introduction into scientifi c circulation in the fi eld of research of the selected topic of such sources as circulars. The names of about two thousand participants of the November and January uprisings, the Poles and representatives of other nations opposed to the Russian government were restored on their basis. The appendices of this article include fragments of the list of these persons and the texts of general nature circulars. Conclusions. The research confi rms that the imperial government used the repressive machine at full power against the population of the territories annexed to the Russian Empire after the divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the November uprising, the repressive measures were recorded in the top-level acts, which had the status of laws announced publicly. After the January uprising, the Russian Empire granted amnesty using public acts and implemented repressions covertly in sub-legal secret circulars. Using circulars, the imperial authorities organized the persecution of representatives of all strata of the population of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, regardless of region, nationality, or social status. The study of the circulars proves that the repression aff ected every family and every person, even children.