Modernism and Public Reform in Late Imperial Russia: Rural Professionals and Self-organization, 1905–1930 by Ilya V. Gerasimov (review)

255 Ab Imperio, 1/2010 и сведений о религиозной жизни подданных империи. Несомненно, интересны лингвистические на- блюдения о различиях и сходствах языков, например, караимов и татар или татар и ногаев, вообще о тюркских языках и диалектах, сделанные человеком, знавшим эти языки. Ну и конечно, перед нами – любопытнейший источник по деятельности европейских миссионеров в России в начале XIX века. Эта книга – во многом очерк истории и современного автору состояния миссионерства. Наконец, публикация перевода данного травелога в очередной раз заставляет задуматься о прин- ципах перевода и публикации источников. Думается, обсужде- ние некоторых базовых аспектов такой работы в исторической (не филологической!) периодике дав- но назрело. Alexandre SUMPF Ilya V. Gerasimov, Modernism and Public Reform in Late Imperial Russia: Rural Professionals and Self-organization, 1905–1930 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). x+325 pp. Bibliographical References, Index. ISBN: 978-0230 -22947-1. In an elegantly written monograph bridging the tsarist and early Soviet eras and confronting discourse with practices and varying research focuses, Ilya Gerasimov studies a social group of agronomists forged by the revolution of 1905. Inspired by a Progressivist ethos, 20,000 to 30,000 rural professionals belonging to the milieu of educated society shared identical views on their mediating role between the state and society.1 The apolitical type of modernization they promote found its way between tsarist order and revolution, triumphing shortly about 1914, when their expertise was needed to organize the (Great) war effort. After the February revolu1 Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow, and James L. West (Eds.). Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia. Princeton, 1991; Harley D. Balzer (Ed.). Russia’s Missing Middle Class: The Professions in Russian History. Armonk, NY, 1996; Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter. Structures of Society: Imperial Russia’s “People of Various Ranks.” DeKalb, 1994; Eadem. Social Identity in Imperial Russia. DeKalb, 1997. On the agronomists’ case, see a recent study that is not, however, connected with a profession-building focus in research: James W. Heinzen. Inventing a Soviet Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917–1929. Pittsburgh, 2004. 256 Рецензии/Reviews 2 As conclusively demonstrated in: Alessandro Stanziani. L’économie en revolution: Le cas russe 1870–1930. Paris, 1998. tion, experts became the pillar of the Provisional Government’s political agenda.2 It was the Civil War that triggered the group’s disintegration, before its final disappearance in the turmoil of the 1930s. Three thematic parts of Gerasimov ’s study analyze (I) the social structures facilitating the emergence of a new conception of social agenda driven by a renewed intelligentsia; (II) activity of the professionals and their social interactions and confrontations ; and (III) their participation in nation-building. Agriculture became central in the Russian perception of public good after the 1891 famine. The catastrophe stimulated the need for reliable information circulating among a growing nationwide audience that did not trust the government but believed in the technical competence of the zemstvo employees and the sense of obshchestvennost’ articulated in multiplying agro-journals. To transcend the rivalry for legitimacy between the “three elements” of Russian rural society (the government agencies, the elected zemstvo deputies, and the hired specialists in zemstvo service), journals promoted self-organization and rational production by modernizing agricultural planning. Yet not only specialized publications offered an original formative experience for future agronomists. In addition, agricultural training courses and congresses played a prominent role in professionalization . After 1905, a quickly developing job market and public interest boosted the number of vocations. No longer working for the gentry, agroprofessionals entered the zemstvos, and then cooperatives in great numbers . Special technical schools multiplied at various levels, welcoming more and more students – including women. Their model was the MoscowAgricultural Institute (Petrovka) where Alexander Chaianov, Sergei Fridolin, and Ekaterina Sakharova studied. Prosopographic analysis shows that their generation (most of them graduated in 1910) was very active in the formation of the “virtual reality of emotional rapport, cultural affinity and common life experience” (P. 44) that mobilized rural professionals. This bonding spirit compensated in practice for the somewhat theoretical lessons they received in one-way cultural transfer, yet despite their number (in 1915, one-third of them studied at Petrovka), this reviewer doubts that students of peasant origins “brought to higher cultural education their knowledge of peasant life and needs” (P. 37). They mainly tried to perform a new language and behavior, to act professional, 257 Ab Imperio, 1/2010 wealthy zemstvo bosses” (P. 96) found a common language. In the second part of the book, the fourth chapter demonstrates how the relationship of the state to rural professionals evolved from suspicious control (Department of Police) to tolerant patronage (Ministry of Agriculture). The Stolypin administration fully adopted the discourse of modernization and systematic action in the countryside, instead of...