Author views the problem of migrations of Latvians and Estonians to the Russian gouvernments in 1860s. It was thouroghly discussed in the Russian press. Analitical articles about Latvian and Estonian migrants were the part of the so called Baltic question discussed in the Russian press of that time. It included the debates about political, law, peasant and language reforms in the region. Migrations reflected poor economical conditions of the Latvians and Estonians, interest of the representatives of the different political and social groups – the desire to present their own point of view on the Baltic question as a whole and the peasant question in particular. The polemics gives a spectrum of different points of view. One can mark out the flollowers of administrative Russification (M.N. Katkov, I.S. Aksakov), defenders of the Baltic Germans, representatives of the national intelligensia of the provinces (Kr. Valdemars). It could be stated that in spite of wide polemics the structure of the Baltic German land ownership was not changed until World War I.