The solution to the Chelm question: discursive practices in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century

In 1912, a new Chelm province was created in the eastern part of Lublin and Siedlce Governorates.Considered as part of the Russian"indigenous"territory,a new governorate was separated from the Warsaw Governorate-General and subordinated directly to the Minister of Internal Affairs. The project of administrative separation of Chelm region with mixed Polish and East Slavic (Rusins / Little Russian / Ukrainian) populations from the Polish provinces was repeatedly discussed since the 1860s. The article analyses the last stage of discussion of the Chelm question, which resulted in the formation of Chelm governorate. The author analyses the government and Duma draft laws as well as debates in the Duma commission, at general sessions of Parliament, and in the public media to trace the connection of the draft law with the plan for the decentralisation of Russian empire developed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The article shows that the discussion on this particular issue reflected a wide range of approaches to the structure of the empire as a whole, the statuses of national regions, the principles of the country administrative division, difference in understandings the category "nationality" and its importance for the state policy. The ethnonational (Polish, "all-Russian", Little Russian) traditional imperial-statist, imperial-russianizing, regional, social discourses in the discussion of the Chelm question are investigated.

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