Revolutionary Students on the Move in the Baltic Provinces of Imperial Russia

In the wake of the assassination of Alexander II and the promulgation of the University Statute of 1884, the Imperial Russian government sought to restrict the rights of students across the empire. Concessions had failed to quell periodic student unrest, so repression was understood to be the only guarantor of stability. In order to escape the worst of these restrictions, many students preemptively transferred to institutions of higher education in the Baltic Provinces (the University and Veterinary Institute in Tartu as well as the Polytechnikum in Riga) as they enjoyed greater autonomy than their Russian peers. Others, expelled from their local universities, transferred there as well after having been forbidden from studying in Russia proper.

The data contained within students' matriculation data reveals the different revolutionary experiences these institutions underwent. While the Veterinary Institute and University in Tartu admitted a great number of politically suspect students, the Polytechnikum in Riga managed to largely avoid the accompanying radicalism. This resulted from conscious decisions both on the part of the university administrators as well as the students themselves, who appear to have actively coordinated with one another after having been expelled from Russian universities. Visualizing this spatial data highlights the important role the Baltic Provinces played as a meeting point for members of the Russian Revolutionary movement beyond St. Petersburg and Moscow.