Uezdnye istoriki: Russkaia provintsialnaia istoriografiia (review)

Viktor Berdinskikh's new monograph presents an original overview of the development of what he and Alla Sevast´ianova call "provincial historiography." Provincial historiography, as he defines it, is "historical writing in the Russian provinces and, as its result, a range of historical works written in the regions of Russia" (22). This historiography sometimes parallels central historiography and sometimes strikes off in new directions. As Sevast´ianova did for the 18th century, Berdinskikh covers the rise of historical writing in the provinces of European Russia from 1861 to 1890, with special attention to the Volga region.¹ Making use of an impressively broad range of archival and published sources, Berdinskikh first outlines the development of institutions and then of individuals significant to the growth of provincial historiography. Berdinskikh's book contributes to a growing understanding of provincial life as a vital and often original site of Russian intellectual, cultural, and political trends.

Berdinskikh's larger project is a reformation of historiography along two lines: greater attention to the individual and to the specificities of space. He is motivated by a desire to move away from Soviet historical norms focused on collectives to history with a human face. In his section on Viatka historians, he emphasizes the historians' integrity and personal belief in their writings, which he implicitly contrasts to followers of the party line he later criticizes in a shorter piece entitled "Highs and Lows of Soviet Historiography." Berdinskikh also critiques the Soviet lack of specificity, evidenced by the use of a centralized model of progress of ideas and groups within one abstracted space. He finds that post-Soviet historians in Russia have often tended to exchange black for white without introducing new categories of analysis. At the same time, he acknowledges the need for a synthetic narrative to place a multitude of fragmented local histories into a wider context.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is at once a collective biography, an institutional history, and an overview of the work produced. This collective biography covers the populist generation of local historians who came of age in the 1860s and displayed a phenomenal productivity until the 1890s, when a new generation took over. Populism and the related desire to share the fruits of science with the folk were the main motivations for the work of the raznochintsy, who consisted of teachers, doctors, and zemstvo officials, among others. The seminal historical influence on this generation was that of Afanasii Prokop´evich Shchapov. While a professor at Kazan University, Shchapov created a regionalist school of history, which argued that history should be studied "from below" and in the provinces, not from the capitals. Shchapov also called for the creation of a decentralized federalist government as best suited to Russia's history and geography.

As institutional history, the book deals with the development of the provincial statistical committees. Established in European provinces of Russia in 1834, the provincial statistical committees collected historical, ethnographic, economic, and geographical information on their given province. Even this brief description should make clear that the subject of study was much broader than our understanding of statistics today. The statistical committees investigated the regions using an interdisciplinary approach, which Berdinskikh argues is a useful model for contemporary work. Although Berdinskikh is a bit vague on the pre-reform history of the committees, he provides an impressive overview of their growth from 1861 to the 1890s, when their scholarly functions were taken over by the scientific provincial archival commissions.

Focusing on the Viatka, Nizhnii Novgorod, and Perm´ Statistical Committees, Berdinskikh utilizes an impressive amount of central and provincial archival material to show how the statistical committees organized civil servants and private individuals to study their region. Answering to the Ministry of the Interior and subordinated directly to the civil governor, statistical committees with active leaders were able to become the main scholarly centers within their provinces. Berdinskikh takes care to place the committees within the larger system of...