Imperial Jubileemania of the Early 20th Century and Local Government Bodies: the Case of Perm Province

This article analyses the activities of local government bodies in the Perm Province in implementing imperial anniversary projects at the regional level: the 50th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom, the 100th anniversary of the Patriotic War, and the 300th anniversary of the reign of the House of Romanovs. The theoretical basis of the work is the concept of symbolic politics developed by O. Yu. Malinova It allows interpreting the politics of memory as an aspect of symbolic politics associated with the production and struggle for dominance of certain interpretations of the past. Based on a wide range of archival materials, the institutional mechanisms for organising the celebrations have been reconstructed, including the receipt of circulars, the creation of provincial and district committees, as well as financial aspects – budget allocations and their insufficiency. It is shown that local authorities did not simply carry out the instructions of the central government, but formed their own commemorative practices, sometimes in contrast to the official, ceremonial format. They entered into symbolic competition with the administration, promoting their preferred forms of commemoration (monumental, nominative, social and charitable projects) and consolidating their interpretations of historical events in the public sphere. The participation of zemstvo and municipal institutions in anniversary celebrations cannot be viewed as purely auxiliary and subordinate – commemorative initiatives became a field not only of cooperation, but also of competition between different levels of government and within local self-government itself. In particular, the independent position of zemstvos and dumas manifested itself in the celebration of the anniversary of the 1861 reform, which ran counter to official priorities. Thus, in the space of symbolic politics during the period of ‘anniversary mania,’ local government bodies became independent political actors.