Les res publicae russes. Discours sur la propriété publique à la fin de l'empire

This essay analyzes the emergence of the discourse of "public property" in late imperial Russia and traces how things (the essay focuses on the case of water) came to be seen as "public". While in Western Europe, the political and social transformations after the French Revolution resulted in the emergence of domaine "public" and its affirmation in the legislation, in monarchial Russia, the doctrine of public property had other, both political and non-political origins: the changing role of the state and the rise of economic etatism; Russian colonialism in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, which forced the invention of new forms of power and ownership, the commoditization of natural resources (water, minerals), and the broadening of the sphere of "public", through the growth of public concerns about things of common value (nature, national art and architecture); finally, the development of Russian liberal ideology and the reconsideration of the values of individualism that constituted the bulk of liberal thought in Russia.