The Winding Paths of Russian Imperial Politics: On Die Geburt des russländischen Imperiums: Herrschaftskonzepte und -praktiken im 18. Jahrhundert by Ricarda Vulpius

The article discusses the book Die Geburt des russländischen Imperiums by Ricarda Vulpius, a publication that tracks the emergence of the conceptual background for governing the growing Russian Empire in the eighteenth century, when territorial gains rendered the country increasingly multinational, multi-faith and multicultural. In this paper, the book was treated as an inspiration for examining the relationship between the practices employed by Russia on newly acquired territories in the east and south of Asia, described by Vulpius in the book, and the Russian Empire’s policy towards Poland.

The Armenian Apostolic Church in the Politics of the Russian Empire: the Search for an Administrative Optimum

The article analyzes governmental debates on the functions, rights and privileges of the Armenian Catholicoi in the context of inter-institutional controversies. The author attempts to identify and analyze the most influential programmes for solving the “Echmiadzin issue” and their origins presenting at the same time certain aspects of political interaction between the Russian Empire and the Armenian Church as overlapping processes and related events. The history of relationships between Russian state and Armenian Church in XIX–XX centuries shows that different actors of the imperial politics had different ideas about the optimal model of cooperation with Echmiadzin. The divisions took place not only between the various departments (the Ministry of Internal Affairs versus the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), but also within them, where individual officials could hold “anti-departmental” views in each particular case. All this hindered administrative consolidation, slowed down the empire's response to important political challenges and dragged the imperial structures into protracted service-hierarchical confrontations. The “Etchmiadzin Question” and the governmental discussions around it show in part the administrative paralysis of the autocracy and the decompensation of the system of power in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. The article employs a rich documentary base of archival materials from the collections of the Russian State Historical Archive. These materials are introduced into the scholarly discourse for the first time ever.

Emplotment beyond the Human Scale: On Deep Time and Narrative Nonlinearity

In the second volume of Time and Narrative (1985, 101–12), Paul Ricoeur distinguishes between two layers of temporality in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925): he calls them “monumental” time and “mortal” time. The former is connected with authority and British imperial politics; the latter is the subjective, highly malleable time of human experience. But there is another time, also active in Woolf's novel and in her oeuvre more generally, that Ricoeur seems to overlook. It is the “deep history” (Shryock and Smail 2011) of geological and planetary phenomena that vastly surpasses the time scale of individual humans or human societies, or even of the human species. This is not to say that narrative is at ease with this deep temporality; as a practice, it seems fundamentally skewed toward the ethical and hermeneutic concerns that Ricoeur foregrounds in his work. But deep time does surface in narrative; this article is concerned with the formal challenges raised by such surfacings.

The language of the empire and the image of the "noble savage" in French travel essays of the second half of the 18th century

В статье рассмотрен образ «благородного дикаря» на примере очерков о кругосветных плаваниях – «Кругосветном путешествии на фрегате “Будёз” и транспорте “Этуаль”» Луи Антуана де Бугенвиля и «Путешествии по всему миру на “Буссоли” и “Астролябии”» Жан-Франсуа де Лаперуза. Показано, как межкультурный контакт привел к возникновению шаблонов восприятия европейцами «других» народов. Отмечено, что эти очерки способствовали определению места и роли европейцев в мире. Данный шаблон включал как положительные, так и отрицательные элементы. Империя могла извлекать пользу из романтизированного образа «благородного дикаря», тем самым стимулируя новые колониальные захваты. В то же время на практике европейцы находили варваров агрессивными, лживыми и недалекими. Автор приходит к выводу, что межкультурный диалог, показанный во французских очерках о кругосветных путешествиях второй половины XVIII в., вряд ли можно назвать успешным, так как эти травелоги привели к возникновению очередного шаблона, рассматривающего «других» сквозь высоту европейского знания, основанного на привычной для европейского мира системе ценностей. In the article we use the round-the-world travel essays "Around-the-world trip on the frigate "Boudez" and the transport" Etoile" by Louis Antoine de Bougainville and "Travel all over the world to "Bussoli" and "Astrolabe" by Jean- Francois de La Perouse to show the image of the "noble savage". These travelogues show that the intercultural contact led to the emergence of patterns of perception of "Others" by Europeans. It is noted that travelogues contributed to self-examination and determined the place and the role of Europeans in the world. Moreover, this pattern includes positive and negative elements as well. The empire could have a benefit from a romanticized image of the "noble savage" thereby stimulating new colonial conquests. At the same time, travel essays could contradict the Enlightenment ideas, when Europeans found barbarians to be aggressive, deceitful and dimwitted. The purpose of this study is to consider the problematic aspects of describing "Others" and to define the role of travelogues in imperial politics. We will argue that the intercultural dialogue shown in French round-the-world travel essays of the second half of the 18th century can hardly be called successful. These travelogues led to the appearance of fascinating pattern of "other". That pattern looked at the “others” through the European knowledge based on system of values typical for the European world.