Антрополо-гия власти. Казанские губерна-торы первой половины XIХ века by А. Н. Бикташева (review)

More than anything else it was the title of this book that stimulated the interest of the reviewer: to use the rich archival material on local government in Russia in order to write an “anthropology of power” appeared to be a promising enterprise. The institution of the governorship in the first half of the nineteenth century, which is at the center of Biktasheva’s book, seemed to be a fortunate choice for such a research project: torn between the dynamically evolving bureaucracy in the center, a personal relationship with the tsar, and local interest groups, the governors and their local policies reveal much about how state power and politics in general functioned in the provinces of the Russian Empire. The rapid succession of seventeen governors in Kazan in the first half of the nineteenth century, also typical of the development of the institution in other cities of the Russian Empire, promises a rich archival record full of conflicts, intrigues, and changing political alliances.

As Biktasheva’s well-arranged introduction points out, there is already a substantial literature on the history of local administration in imperial Russia, although few studies focus directly on the role of the governors. In the Russian Empire itself, scholars who examined the history of individual state institutions often related critically to the governors and the combination of state authority and control that they represented. The historiographical interest in local government and bureaucracy initially declined after 1917, only to be partially revived by Soviet historians such as P. A. Zaionchkovskii in the 1960s and 1970s. This tendency increased in the 1990s and 2000s, when several studies on the institution of the governorship appeared and also the role of contemporary governors became politically contested between advocates of a “vertical of power” and defenders of local autonomy. In Western scholarship, there were also several classical studies on bureaucracy and local government in imperial Russia: Biktasheva mentions, for example, the research project directed by W. Pintner, who used a broad sample of 8,000 files to examine the structure of the Russian bureaucracy, as well as works by Marc Raeff and John LeDonne.¹

Apart from Biktasheva’s ambition to add to this literature through a focused study concentrated on a specific region, she also formulates a research program that sets broader historiographical goals. Her aim is to study the specificity of the “administrative culture of pre-reform Russia” (P. 9). Apart from official documents, she wants to examine memoirs so as also to include “unofficial factors of social control” (P. 10), for example, rumors. Rather than just approaching key sources, such as the annual reports of the governors, through their factual content, she intends to study the “textual strategies” (P. 15) of the authors. Thus, Biktasheva’s approach is shaped by the influence of anthropological concepts on political history—she refers to a programmatic article on this issue by M. M. Krom.² The sophisticated overview of different types of sources, their limitations and their specific strengths that Biktasheva presents in the introduction will be very valuable to anyone working on the history of provincial cities in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century.

After setting this agenda, Biktasheva devotes the first chapter of her book to the formal status of the governors within the power structure of the Russian Empire. She elucidates the legal development of the institution and then turns to the selection process through which individual governors were chosen, illustrating the role of protection and patronage. Next, she points out that the governors as the representatives of the center in the provinces also had a symbolic role that was reflected in changes in urban architecture: here, Biktasheva describes the impact on Kazan of attempts to harmonize the appearance of provincial towns in the Russian Empire. A final point in the chapter is the financial situation of the governors: apart from a regular salary, gifts, decorations, and special payments from the tsar as well as bribes played a substantial role in improving their economic situation. On...