During the period of the first revolutionary unrest in the Russian Empire, riots and violent attacks also broke out in the Russian Baltic province of Livonia in 1905–1906. One of the main targets was the large estates owned by German-Baltic landowners. To counter the revolutionary unrest, self-defense measures were taken in the “open countryside.”
A comprehensive collection of documents (approx. 2,800 pages) relating to these self-defense measures has been preserved. This collection is part of the Livonian Knights’ depository in the Herder Institute’s document collection (DSHI 190 Livonia 322–329). It constitutes a multifaceted source of information on these turbulent times. The collection includes reports from the self-defense forces to the District Council in Riga, as well as information on the organization of the self-defense forces, a chronicle of events, propaganda material from all parties to the conflict, maps, newspaper articles, translations of Latvian writings, and much more. The aim of the project is, on the one hand, to produce a high-quality printed selected edition of the documents with introductory chapters and commentaries, and second, to attach to the entry records in the online finding aid for the document collection the transcriptions (typescripts) and digitized versions of the original documents, which were created by Gert v. Pistohlkors as early as the 1970s and later digitized and captured via OCR.
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Further information about the project
Duration
- 2024 - 2027