The "German Question" in the Context of Colonial and National Discourses of the Russian Empire in the Late 19th – Early 20th Centuries

In this study, the author examines the problem of the so-called "German question", reflecting broad problems of national and ethnic relations in the multinational empire. Studying this topic allows us to understand how different ethnic groups interacted with each other and how government policy influenced these relations. The study is aimed to identify the underlying causes of this national issue in the socio-political space of the empire, as well as to analyze its essence. In his research, the author comes to the conclusion that it is possible to trace the obvious similarity of the "German" question with other national "questions" of the empire, in particular with the "Finnish" one. By comparing two seemingly different "questions", we can trace the following pattern: firstly, the actors and founding fathers of this questions were conservative officials who professed the ideals of a "united and indivisible" Russia. The actors of the "Finnish" question aimed at preventing special Finnish rights, and the actors of the "German" question aimed at the inadmissibility of creating German "unity" (through the creation of separate German "states") in Siberia as one of the main threats in the national project of region colonization, which should have been included in the imperial space.