Does the word “official” have a proud ring? Communicative aspects of Russian officialdom history in the mid-nineteenth century

The history of Russian civil officialdom in the XIX century, including its regional aspects, has attracted research interest over the past fifty years. Many local history publications, however, are still characterized by narrative or story-like structure, although modern historical science uses a much broader range of methods and approaches. This paper is aimed at using Jürgen Habermas's communicative approach for analyzing local narratives by studying a particular case of a conflict among the officials in the city of Petrozavodsk in order to test the validity of his theory when applied to local historical material. The author makes a conclusion that Habermas's approach can be used for local history research and specific case studies. To that end, the source base should enable the researcher to analyze communication between the historical actors or the state's public institutions and reveal the social response to their actions. Sources should also somehow identify the value standards of the society under study and represent the specific historical circumstances of the conflict, which provide an opportunity to settle it peacefully. In addition, all sides to the conflict should have their own justified positions determined by their perceptions of the involved values. Such approach is expected to result in a new value that will be a product of social consensus, viable at least for a short historical period