The Traditional and the Modern in the Writings of Ivan Pnin

Slavic Review ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-559
Author(s):  
Samuel C. Ramer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
High State ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Russian Empire

Studies of political reform in the Russian Empire during the first decade of Alexander I's rule have focused largely on the emperor and his most prominent advisers: the unofficial committee of four close friends who counseled him in secret during the first two years of his reign; powerful court factions, particularly those nobles who sought to augment the status and political power of the Senate; and, finally, high state officials such as Michael Speransky. The nature of reformist thought emanating from sources less directly involved in the actual preparation of legislation has been unduly neglected. There were, for instance, a number of minor writers who sought to influence state policy by submitting their ideas to Alexander. A study of the kind of society they hoped to create and the ways in which they thought social change achievable can enhance our appreciation of the variety of reformist thought in Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The Bulghar Region as a “Land of Ignorance”: Anti-Colonial Discourse in Khvārazmian Connectivity

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-204
Author(s):  
Alfrid K. Bustanov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Ural Region ◽  
The State ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Stable Bridge ◽  
Migrant Community ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Volga Ural Region

Hagiographic sources from nineteenth-century Inner Russia and Khvārazm indicate the existence of a cluster of Muslims opposed to the state-supported Islamic institutions of the Russian Empire. Many Muslim scholars of the period did not accord the Volga-Ural region the status of an ‘abode of Islam,’ as they considered it to be a ‘land of ignorance.’ This paper examines the significance attached by Muslims of Inner Russia to the pious rhetoric of resettlement from a ‘land of ignorance’ to the ‘abode of Islam’. I argue that the opposition to the already well-established imperial structures in the Volga-Urals resulted in the formation of a powerful migrant community near Urgench, Khvārazm, that used the Naqshbandiya-Mojaddediya Sufi networks as a stable bridge to home.

Prerequisites for the reforms of the Russian Empire in the 1860s: a historical analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-2) ◽  
pp. 176-184
Author(s):  
Dmitry Nechevin ◽  
Leonard Kolodkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Political Economic

The article is devoted to the prerequisites of the reforms of the Russian Empire of the sixties of the nineteenth century, their features, contradictions: the imperial status of foreign policy and the lagging behind the countries of Western Europe in special political, economic relations. The authors studied the activities of reformers and the nobility on the peasant question, as well as legitimate conservatism.

scholarly journals 1890th prison reform implementation in the Orenburg Governorate

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 118-122
Author(s):  
Sergey Valentinovich Lyubichankovskiy
Keyword(s):  
Implementation Process ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
Judicial Reform ◽  
Reform Implementation ◽  
Regional Features ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Russian Empire

This paper is about an implementation process of the 1890 law in the Orenburg province for organization of new regional structures of penitentiary management - provincial prison inspection and prison department of provincial board. Specifics of prison reform implementation in the region, the relation of the governor's power to emergence of new bureaucratic structures, features of interaction between the created governing bodies are considered as well as the place taken by representatives of prison administration in regional bureaucratic community after the reform implementation is determined. The conclusion is drawn that implementation of the 1890 law took place in the Orenburg province with essential regional features. Orenburg provincial inspection has been created later (1894) than in the Russian Empire in general because of prolonged implementation of judicial reform (1864) on the territory of the region. However this inspection became more influential than similar organizations in other regions of the Russian Empire as it has subordinated the prison department of the Orenburg provincial board and accumulated all main competences of the sphere of prison case. The status of the Orenburg provincial prison inspector was almost equal to the status of the vice-governor.

scholarly journals Barga as a part of the Russian strategic interests in Eastern Asia in the first quarter of the XX century: treaty aspect

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-25
Author(s):  
Pavel Nikolaevich Dudin
Keyword(s):  
Eastern China ◽  
Far East ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Eastern Asia ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The Far East ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Russian Empire

Based on the previously unexamined treaties and agreements, this article analyzes the civilian mechanism of ensuring Russia’s interest in Manchuria on the background of establishment and development of statehood of Hulunbuir District, also known as Barga. Having lost the Russo-Japanese War and a number of backbone territories, the Russian Empire took all necessary steps towards retention and strengthening of its influence in the region, was able to form the zones of primary interests, and this control the process of acquisition of relative autonomy by Barga. It is concluded that within the framework of considered agreements, Russia’ national interests in the Far East were reliably protected. It was achieved by the concessions, which by their legal nature significantly differed from the concessions and settlements created by the foreign powers in Eastern China, although were capable of ensuring Russia’s presence and safeguarding the strategic interests. Despite the fact that the created system demonstrated its effectiveness, it did not survive the political crises caused by the revolutionary events and demise of the Russian Empire. China’s leadership took advantage of the situation that unfolded in Russia, and liquidated the autonomy of Outer Mongolia, and later the status of Hulunbuir, stipulated in the agreements.

scholarly journals Visual Stereotypes of Tatars in the Finnish Press from the 1880s to the 1910s

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Ainur Elmgren
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Grand Duchy

Visual stereotypes constitute a set of tropes through which the Other is described and depicted to anaudience, who perhaps never will encounter the individuals that those tropes purport to represent.Upon the arrival of Muslim Tatar traders in Finland in the late nineteenth century, newspapers andsatirical journals utilized visual stereotypes to identify the new arrivals and draw demarcation linesbetween them and what was considered “Finnish”. The Tatars arrived during a time of tension inthe relationship between the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and the Russian Empire, withthe Finnish intelligentsia divided along political and language lines. Stereotypical images of Tatarpedlars were used as insults against political opponents within Finland and as covert criticism ofthe policies of the Russian Empire. Stereotypes about ethnic and religious minorities like the Tatarsfulfilled a political need for substitute enemy images; after Finland became independent in 1917,these visual stereotypes almost disappeared.

Interethnic contradictions in Transylvania (middle of the nineteenth — early twentieth centuries) as seen through the eyes of Russian observers

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
Aleksandr S. Stykalin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Remote Region ◽  
Interethnic Relations ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
The Status ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
The Russian Empire

Reorganisation of the Austrian Empire into the dual Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1867 was followed by an attempt to cancel the special status of the Grand Principality of Transylvania, which had a long tradition of autonomous statehood, and absorb it into the Kingdom of Hungary. This caused a reaction by the Romanian nationalist movement in the region that intensified decade by decade. That this movement became a threat to the integrity of Austria-Hungary could not help but become an object of observation for Russian diplomats in the neighbouring Kingdom of Romania, where the issue of the status of Transylvanian Romanians was gaining more and more political attention. In this essay, based on archival and published sources, it is shown how Russian observers, first and foremost Russian diplomats in Bucharest, described not only the complex interethnic relations at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also the attitude of the Romanian political elite and Romanian public opinion towards the status of Romanians in Transylvania - subjects of the Habsburgs. The author comes to the conclusion that a glace thrown from outside on this remote region, loosely con-nected with Russia, nevertheless allows conclusions to be drawn that help to reassess issues that concerned the Russian Empire (such as the Bessarabia question).

Fugitives, Vagrants, and Found Dead Bodies: Identifying the Individual in Tsarist Russia

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 366-388
Author(s):  
Alison K. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Proper Place ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Eye Color ◽  
Physical Measurements ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Identification Practices

AbstractIn the middle of the nineteenth century, in the Russian Empire, a new set of state-sponsored provincial newspapers began to include notices seeking fugitives and trying to identify arrested vagrants and found dead bodies. The notices were part of a larger effort to match individuals with specific legal identities based in social estate (soslovie). In principle, every individual subject of the Russian Empire belonged to a specific owner (in the case of serfs) or to a specific soslovie society (in the case of nearly everyone else). The notices were an effort to link people who had left their proper place to their “real” identity. To accomplish this, the notices also made use of a kind of simple biometrics or anthropometrics in order to move beyond an individual's telling of his or her own identity. By listing height, hair and eye color, the shape of nose, mouth, and chin, and other identifying features, the notices were intended to allow for more exact identification. This version of identification developed out of previous practices grounded in the documentary requirements of the tsarist state, and they were slightly ahead of their time in the context of nineteenth-century developments in the sphere of identification practices. They were also distinct from other kinds of anthropometric practices of classification developed at the same time or soon thereafter—where many sought to use physical measurements to classify people by race or by inclination to criminality, the Russian system had no such goals.

Reflective Colonization: Domination, Consent, and the Self in Imperial Russia

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Fournier
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The Self ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Russian Politics ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Historical Periods

Historians have pointed out that as a terrestrial rather than an overseas empire, the Russian empire has had to grapple with a blurry boundary between imperial center and periphery. Ektind goes a step further to show that the Russian empire was the stage for intensive colonization of the imperial core itself and the attendant processes of self-orientalization and self-alienation. The review identifies and explores three dimensions of the process of internal colonization. In the first, colonization by consent, Russian historical writers’ interpretations of the origins of the state in terms of consent to (foreign) domination are contextualized by drawing on colonizers’ fantasy of consent across contexts and historical periods, and by pointing to resistance as an important aspect of the relation between Russian imperial elites and the colonized. The second dimension is the idea of colonizing “one’s own,” whereby elites not only coerced people of the imperial core into various practices, but also viewed them through an orientalizing lens, and this, from the beginnings of serfdom through the nineteenth-century populists’ efforts at rapprochement (the perceived divide between rulers and ruled is, it is argued, still salient in Russian politics). The last dimension, strangers to ourselves, deals with the “splitting of the self” from a postcolonial studies perspective but it is pointed out that the use of psychoanalytic frameworks and literary theory may reproduce orientalist interpretations of the Russian imperial self. Instead, it is argued that self-orientalizing discourses in the Russian context may serve to divert attention away from one’s actual power.

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