Valentyna Shandra

What should be the relationship between the authorities and society so that the state, presumably an all-purpose governing mechanism, is as effective as it can be? Historical practice has seen at least three typical patterns. One is when governmental institutions rule a society without the latter...

Continued from The Day, no. 22 County and gubernial leaders of the nobility were responsible for the election procedure, which could last up to 15 days. As a representative of the administrative branch, the governor did not have the right to interfere with the noble elections, but were obliged to...

Because of the excessive costs connected to holding elections, as well as the electorate’s bribability and its foolishness, which verges on indifference, today many Ukrainian citizens think that elections are unnecessary and that something else should play the key role in shaping the powers that be...

Continued from The Day, #13, April 24, 2007 Bibikov decided to accelerate the increase in the numbers of Russian landlords in his gubernia: he was astonished that the local four- million-strong population was still under Polish rather than Russian influence. He blamed it for the absence of an...

The November 1930 Polish uprising rippled across Right-Bank Ukraine, causing a radical change in the imperial government’s policy toward the nobility, the majority of which was in opposition to Russia. Part of the nobility supported the liberation movement financially, if not by immediate...

Another innovation was that defendants could have access to qualified legal assistance in the person of barristers (defense attorneys). The latter could be represented by lawyers aged 25 and over, who were Russian subjects, had no criminal record, and were not gainfully employed at a state or...

Any society sooner or later grapples with the problem of judicial power, an indicator, among other things, of the development of a state ruled by law. At different times this power could belong to a monarch, who used it to strengthen his supreme authority, be subject to outside control and...

(Continued from The Day, No. 42, 2006)The Cossacks were a considerable regional problem for Nikolai Repnin. Harsh measures were used to resettle them to the south in 1820. The Cossack settlers left their homeland in late fall but failed to reach the new place of residence by winter. The government...

Nikolai Grigorievich Repnin (1778-1845), the prominent Russian military and statesman of Left-Bank Ukraine in the first half of the 19th century, was born into the Volkonsky Russian noble family. The well-known Decembrist, Sergei Volkonsky was his younger brother. He began using his maternal...

(Conclusion. For beginning, see The Day, No. 14) In search of allies against the rebellious Poles, the imperial center had to satisfy the longtime aspirations of the Ukrainians for their own university in Kyiv, an issue they had repeatedly raised since the 1760s — first with Catherine II (1766,...