Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700-1930

Preface and Acknowledgments

Preface and Acknowledgments This project was conceived at Sobinka, a holiday camp on the outskirts of Vladimir in 1996. It spent a second summer idyll near Iaroslavl’, took a winter break at Sestroretsk and another in New York, attained adolescence in Siberia (Omsk),and came to maturity in Samara.The project had generous parents—the Moscow Social Science Foundation,the Ford Foundation, and the Harriman Institute—and wonderful institutional hosts. Above all, we thank Petr Savel’ev,rector of the Samara Municipal Institute of Administration , historian, one of the founding members of our collective, and organizer of our ¤nal meeting on the Volga. Two other scholars guided us along our way: Steven Smith of Essex University and Mary McAuley, then director of the Ford Foundation of¤ce in Moscow. Throughout, we had a wonderful nauchnyi rukovoditel’—Boris Vasil’evich Anan’ich—to whom this book is dedicated. Later, Ronald Meyer helped us transform individual manuscripts into a collective volume, much improved by his superb editing and translating skills. Dominic Lieven, in turn, read the manuscript, generously shared with us his vast knowledge of empires, and offered just the right balance of enthusiasm and caution.We profoundly thank our editor , Janet Rabinowitch, historian and director of Indiana University Press, for seeing this multi-year, transcontinental project to completion. Finally, we are deeply grateful to Robert Belknap, leader of the Columbia University Faculty Seminars, and Richard Foley, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at New York University, for their material and intellectual support when we most needed it. Our transient seminar brought togetherscholars from Russia,the United States, and the United Kingdom, three polities with experience of empire . Russian participants come from Taganrog, Samara, Omsk, Kazan, Petrozavodsk, and Arkhangel’sk as well as the two capitals. American and British contributors also live and work in cities, towns, and villages widely dispersed over their continent and island. Our disciplines are history—the majority of us—as well as anthropology and political science. What unites us is our effort to escape from the nationalizing assumptions of most studies of the Russian empire. We began our collective work by using “region” as a provisional category, an approach that permitted us to recast tradi- tional questions of ethnicity, social history, and high politics. This book makes use of the extensive and growing literatures in these areas, but its major focus is on the geographies of rule in Russia. Core members of our group published a volume of essays on the regional problematic: Imperskii stroi Rossii v regional’nom izmerenii (XIX– nachalo XX veka) appeared in Russian in 1997. Our seminar expanded upon this earlier project, drew in new people, and worked over several years to develop new perspectives on the empire, with the goal of producing a larger study in English. Our workshops were conducted in Russian. Russian-language articles were translated by members of the seminar, a process that pushed forward our knowledge and interpretation. Our project does not set region and metropole in opposition to each other. Instead we pro¤ted from the creative intersection of people of different backgrounds and from our chance to experience new territories ourselves. An openness to uncertain outcomes and a willingness to let diversity take its own form—these attitudes shaped our times together and this book. The Editors xii Preface and Acknowledgments Russian Empire Russian Empire in 1700 Russian Empire in 1825 Asian Russia, ca. 1900 Russian Empire in 1914 U.S.S.R. in 1930 ...