Liberal funerals, political resistance and sites of martyrdom in the late Russian Empire

Abstract

This article will explore on a series of political funerals held for major liberal figures during the early years of the twentieth century within the Russian empire. Using three major figures of the philosopher and university rector Sergei Trubetskoi, lawyer Lev Kupernik and politician Sergei Muromtsev as its primary examples, it will consider the importance of both space and place in the Russian Empire, exploring demonstrations held in support of these individuals in Moscow and Kyiv. Drawing on a range of sources including the periodical press and hitherto untapped police records, it will consider the circumstances behind the appearance of liberal political funerals, and whether the novelty of such events concerning well-established traditions surrounding the political funeral in the Russian Empire. It will look at who attended, the size and intensity of the disturbances that followed, and how onlookers and supporters interacted with these events. Conceptually, it will assess whether the causes that the subjects of these political funerals stood for such as selfhood, subjectivity, and citizenship spoke to a particularly liberal tradition of protest which intersected with the wider currents of dissent by then endemic in different parts of the Russian empire. Finally, it will consider whether there was a liberal tradition in terms of political martyrdom in the Russian Empire and to what extent this was used to advance the political causes espoused by supporters of these liberal figure heads.

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