Imperial Russia

by Burbank, Jane; Ransel, David L.

• ISBN13: 9780253334626
• ISBN10: 0253334624
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-11-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire brings together innovative scholarship on the history of the Russian Empire from the time of Peter the Great to the 1880s. The collection introduces a variety of methodologies to the field, including demography, family and gender studies, legal history, microhistory, and semiotics, and explores neglected topics, such as the reading public, the imperial family, missions and missionaries, educational and scholarly societies, and religion. Essays address the symbolic politics of autocracy, the lived experience of people in both central and outlying regions, the institutional foundations of the empire, and the debates sustained in public discussions of the polity. Broad chronological, methodological, and topical coverage combined with analysis of the possibilities for a more expansive understanding of imperial Russia make this volume an ideal resource for students and scholars working in this field.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi	(2)
Introduction	xiii
Jane Burbank
David L. Ransel
PART I Autocracy: Politics, Ideology, Symbol	1	(86)
1 Kinship Politics/Autocratic Politics: A Reconsideration of Early-Eighteenth-Century Political Culture	5	(27)
Valerie A. Kivelson
2 The Idea of Autocracy among Eighteenth-Century Russian Historians	32	(28)
Cynthia Hyla Whittaker
3 The Russian Imperial Family as Symbol	60	(27)
Richard Wortman
PART II Imperial Imagination	87	(56)
4 Collecting the Fatherland: Early-Nineteenth-Century Proposals for a Russian National Museum	91	(17)
Kevin Tyner Thomas
5 Science, Empire, and Nationality: Ethnography in the Russian Geographical Society, 1845-1855	108	(35)
Nathaniel Knight
PART III Practices of Empire	143	(108)
6 Lines of Uncertainty: The Frontiers of the Northern Caucasus	148	(26)
Thomas M. Barrett
7 An Empire of Peasants: Empire-Building, Interethnic Interaction, and Ethnic Stereotyping in the Rural World of the Russian Empire, 1800-1850s	174	(25)
Willard Sunderland
8 The Serf Economy, the Peasant Family, and the Social Order	199	(11)
Steven L. Hoch
9 Institutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750-1850	210	(41)
Gregory L. Freeze
PART IV Individuals and Publics	251	(82)
10 An Eighteenth-Century Russian Merchant Family in Prosperity and Decline	256	(25)
David L. Ransel
11 Freemasonry and the Public in Eighteenth-Century Russia	281	(24)
Douglas Smith
12 Constructing the Meaning of Suicide: The Russian Press in the Age of the Great Reforms	305	(28)
Irina Paperno
In Place of a Conclusion	333	(14)
Jane Burbank
Contributors	347	(2)
Index	349