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434 Рецензии/Reviews Andrew GENTES И. Р. Соколовский. Служилые “иноземцы” в Сибири XVII века (Томск, Енисейск, Красноярск). Новосибирск: “Coва”, 2004. 212 с. Список источников, Литература, Таблицы. ISBN: 5-87550-203-7. Interest has grown in recent years in the history of Russian Siberia. Concerning foreign historians, this may be explained by easier access to Siberia and its archives after 1991, as well as developing interests in frontier and post-colonial studies.1 These same interests appear to be influencing present-day Russian historians as well. Despite admirable studies by L. M. Goriushkin and his acolytes at the University of Novosibirsk that began in the 1970s,2 Sovietera works tend to portray Siberia’s development alongside and in relation to that of Russia’s, rather than to stress its unique and frequently divergent path. All the same, when pinpointing Siberia (if such an enormous landmass can be said to be pinpointable), historians of the period between Ermak’s 1582 invasion and M. M. Speranskii’s 1822 Siberian Reforms face what is even by the standards of early Russia studies a dearth of sources. Sokolovskii’s study of seventeenth -century Siberia’s foreign servitors is therefore commendable for both its discussion of this historio -methodological problem and devising means to surmount it. Other scholars such as V. I. Shunkov, Basil Dmytryshyn, George V. Lantzeff, and P. L. Kazarian have discussed Siberia’s “serving people” (sluzhilye liudi) within the context of more general studies; and N. I. Nikitin has written to my knowledge the most detailed account of this group so far.3 But Sokolovskii’s monograph 1 See, f. i.:A. Remnev. Vdvinut’Rossiiu v Sibir’: Imperiia i russkaia kolonizatsiia vtoroi poloviny XIX – nachala XX vv. //Ab Imperio. 2003. No. 3. Pp. 135-198; W. Sunderland. Russians into Iakuts? “Going Native” and Problems of Russian National Identity in the Siberian North, 1870s – 1814 // Slavic Review. 1996. Vol. 55. No. 4. Pp. 806-825; Stepehn Kotkin and David Wolff (Eds.). Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East. Armonk, 1995; G. Patrick March. Eastern Destiny: Russia in Asia and the North Pacific. Westport, Conn., 1996; David Wolff. To the Harbin Station: The Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria, 1898-1914. Stanford, 1999; Mark Bassin. Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865. Cambridge, 1999. 2 See: L. M. Goriushkin, G.A. Bochanova, L. N. Tsepliaev. Novosibirsk v istoricheskom proshlom. Novosibirsk, 1978; L. M. Goriushkin. Izuchenie istorii Novosibirska dooktiabr’skogo perioda // Izuchenie Sibiri v sovetskuiu epokhu: Bakhrushinskie chteniia 1987 g. Novosibirsk, 1987. Pp. 155-169. 3 N. I. Nikitin. Sluzhilye liudi v Zapadnoi Sibiri XVII veka. Novosibirsk, 1988. 435 Ab Imperio, 2/2008 present-day national designators are anachronistic to the period under discussion. Sokolovskii discusses this and other problems in the first half of his book, which is an extended analysis of the historiography on Siberian servitors, with special attention given to the ways historians have either ignored or instrumentally highlighted foreign servitors. For example, beginning in 1982 R. F. Leshchanka (Leshchenko) and others advanced what might called the “Belorussian argument,”5 emphasizing the autocracy’s reliance upon a number of supposed Belorussians and perhaps exaggerating their significance. As with other sensitive claims, Sokolovskii treats this one judiciously, but notes that it and similar ones about Poles and Lithuanians ultimately turn on philological rather than phenomenological questions. Despite this first section being extremely erudite and historiographically informative, it is nonetheless too long and detailed for what Sokolovskii seems to intend here, which is to demonstrate his familiarity with sources and their epistemological problems. Moreover , his digressive explications of their arguments introduce much that differs from these by, on the one hand, narrowing the focus to just those foreign elements within this soslovie, and on the other, including foreign servitors assigned to eastern as well as western Siberia. These differences are significant because, as my own work demonstrates , most Siberian exiles prior to the 1649 Ulozhenie were prisoners of war enrolled in the servitor estate.4 Moreover, these foreigners sometimes accounted for half or more of certain groups of servitors , though on average throughout the seventeenth century made up perhaps one-quarter of them. This is a cohort that deserves specific attention because it formed part of Siberia’s unique (and distinct from European Russia...

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