International Journal of Economics and Society April 2015, Issue 1 18 PEASANT SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE: COMMUNITY TRADITIONS UNDER THE TERMS OF MODERNIZATION (SECOND HALF OF XIX – BEGINNING OF XX CENTURIES). Iryna Verkhovtseva Ph.D. (Historical studies), Associate professor Izmail State Humanities University Ukraine Abstract. The author analyzes use of community traditions in peasant self-government in the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth - early twentieth century. The factors that contributed to "dedication» of the Russian establishment leading representatives to the idea of using community traditions during the social and political modernization of the country are investigated in paper. The author believes that the use of the villagers government bodies by imperial power with punitive and repressive purpose while taming peasant uprisings in 1905-1907, against the activation of peasant gatherings and it`s organized effect for the rural protests, in fact, has made a split in the peasant self-government system and triggered civil strife in the villag. Parish institutions were now opposed with eternal representative of the peasant masses - community, which even in 1861 was a basic element of peasant self-government. This had disastrous consequences for the whole country in the future, when during the Stolypin agrarian reform and during the First World War it has given impulse for the activation of protective mechanisms elaborated in previous centuries by peasant communities. Keywords: peasant self-government, modernization, community, rural assembly, parish assembly 1. Introduction Improving democratic institutions in Eastern Europe, the past of which is associated with being a part of the Romanov Empire, among other things, provides for study of these countries` experience in local government, in particular, the study of the peasants self-government that was introduced in 1861 in their territory (it was in force before the February Revolution of 1917) and included about 9/10 of the population. Introduction of peasant self-government has become a major component of the agricultural system modernization and general socio-political and economic renewal of Russia. It has started with upgrading by imperial elite during deep systemic crisis that the country was after the defeat in the war with Turkey in 1853-1856. However, the project of peasant reform, including plans for the changes in rural management, was developed during several previous decades in the discussions between those who preferred the use during of European experience of modernization in building local governance on the basis of self-government (they were called «Westerners») and those who insisted on the need to follow their original way of using communal tradition (such called «Russification»); and other representatives of «enlightened bureaucrats» who insisted on bringing fiscal functions in the village and to avoid social upheavals in the empire as a whole. A kind of compromise between the different positions and restructuring projects in the rural system of management reform was the introduction of peasants self-government in 1861 that the majority reforms «fathers» considered as the initial phase of the introduction of self-government in the rural areas and in the future as general local governments and involvement of the peasantry in it. [1; 2] 2. Materials and Methods The issue of patriarchal peasant traditions of self- government using that was developed within the community, has provoked sharp debate. The views of the Russian establishment representatives, the public, the political forces opposition about the role of the peasant communities in the villages self-government during the following decades and all over the country have not only consolidated, but rather represented a whole palette of different thoughts, ideas, projects, sometimes diametrically opposite to one another. In fact, the public debate that has raged in the Russian intellectual field in the second half of XIX - early XX century, has indicated the inability of the Russian elite to develop an optimal strategy for the socio-political and economic life updating of the rural country that ultimately had disastrous consequences for the Romanov empire: that community, or all people (read - the peasantry) during the tumultuous revolutionary events of 1917 were revolting against the government and in fact had led the rest of the Bolshevik regime to the government. In light of these events, the author of the paper puts forward the task to analyze what factors contributed to the “dedication” of Russian establishment idea’s leading representatives to use community traditions during the social and political modernization in the second half of the nineteenth - early twentieth century and what impact it had on the events of the fateful early twentieth century. The role of traditional community structures of peasant self-government in the Russian Empire of the late nineteenth - early twentieth century were analyzed by historians of the last third of the nineteenth - early twentieth century [3; 4] and several Soviet scientists [1; 5]. If the first mainly were interested in practical issues of the rural government institutions and problems of these institutions`