THE DEVELOPMENT OF STATEHOOD IN RUSSIA OF THE XVIII CENTURY AND THE FORMATION OF A NEW TYPE OF BUSINESS WRITING

The article is devoted to the development of business writing as an independent style of official document flow in Russia. For centuries, documents have been compiled in a language close to the spoken language and contained the individual speech characteristics of the compiler. This continued until the 18th century, when Peter I accelerated the state centralization and reorganized the system of state administration. These changes made it necessary to systematize the document flow and unify legislative acts. Naturally, such activity has led to the ordering of language of documents. As shown in the article, two main trends in the development of business language can be observed during the 18th century: 1) active enrichment of vocabulary and speech turns due to borrowing and terminologization process, caused by the development of various aspects of social life; 2) isolation of genres, regulation of the form of documents and active formation of terminology. This process, which began in the Petrine era, continued for many decades and was not completed under Catherine II.

A Life Together

Lucas Alamán (1792-1853) was arguably the greatest statesman and certainly the greatest historian of Mexico in the three decades or so following the country’s achievement of its independence from Spain (1821) after a tremendously violent and destructive decade-long rebellion against the colonial power. Dubbed “a Metternich among Indians” by one contemporary, he was a conservative modernizer rather than the ruthless reactionary he has been branded. Several times chief minister in the national government but never president of the young republic, Alamán’s efforts to impose political stability on the country through implacable measures of state centralization, repression of political dissent, and the anti-democratic limitation of the popular electoral franchise were not aimed at building an authoritarian regime as such, but at establishing the conditions for the economic development--principally industrialization--that he believed would modernize the country and bring prosperity. This biography of Alamán portrays him against the chaotic background of nearly continual military and popular uprisings, a frail and stagnating economy, and a perennially bankrupt national treasury, and interacting with major political figures of the time, among them the ever-restive, swashbuckling Antonio López de Santa Anna. Alamán struggled as a politician against the swirling currents of liberalism, the federalism that threatened intermittently to tear the country into pieces, and the nation’s tragic confrontation with the territorial ambitions of the United States. His career as statesman, public intellectual, entrepreneur, and historian brightly illuminates the history of Mexico during a period when its very existence was imperiled.

Nubian Texts, Nubian Lives

Nubian texts provide valuable insight into Nubian social and economic history. Accounts reveal economic priorities both secular and sacred. Documentary evidence hints at the nature of state centralization and the movement of goods and coins in and out of Nubia. Magic reveals Nubia’s deep-seated hopes and fears. Literature shows innovative theology and Nubia’s sense of its place in world history. Funerary inscriptions record the careers of the elite and their sense of their own place in the cosmos. But much is missing from the Nubian textual record as well, suggesting that major literary genres never indigenized in Nubia the way they did in Egypt or Ethiopia. Other genres ebb and flow over time, hinting at the economy of Nubian literacy and the processes through which it ultimately dies.

Historical Network Research

This chapter introduces the field of historical network research. Many historical outcomes of interest to social scientists are greatly affected by network processes. These include revolutions, segregation, increasing inequality, party polarization, market development, state centralization, and the rise and fall of institutions. The chapter considers the current state of historical network research across these and other outcomes by focusing on six different network phenomena: cross-cutting ties, informal social ties, associational and organizational networks, narrative networks, cohesion, and brokerage and centrality. Extant research has presented some contradictory findings about the relationoship of these findings to major social outomes, suggesting further specification is necessary. The goal of this chapter is to provide a synthesis that illuminates a pathway to maximize future contributions.

Territorial Threats and Military Dictatorships

Many scholars consider the military dictatorship a distinct authoritarian regime type, pointing to the singular patterns of domestic and international behaviors displayed by military regimes. Existing studies show that compared with civilian dictatorships, military dictatorships commit more human rights abuses, are more prone to civil war, and engage in more belligerent behaviors against other countries. Despite their coercive capacity, rulers of military dictatorships tend to have shorter tenures than rulers of non-military dictatorships. Additionally, military dictatorships more quickly and peacefully transition to democracy than their non-military counterparts and frequently negotiate their withdrawal from power. Given the distinct natures of military dictatorships, research on military dictatorships and coups has resurged since 2000. A great body of new research utilizing new theories, data, and methods has added to the existing scholarship on military rule and coups, which saw considerable growth in the 1970s. Most studies tend to focus on domestic issues and pay relatively little attention to the relationship between international factors and military rule. However, a growing body of studies investigates how international factors, such as economic globalization, international military assistance, reactions from the international community, and external threat environments, affect military rule. One particularly interesting research topics in this regard is the relationship between external territorial threats and military rule. Territorial issues are more salient to domestic societies than other issues, producing significant ramifications for domestic politics through militarization and state centralization. Militaries play a pivotal role in militarization and state centralization, both of which are by-products of external territorial threats. Thus, external territorial threats produce permissive structural conditions that not only prohibit democratization but also encourage military dictatorships to emerge and persist. Moreover, if territorial threats affect the presence of military dictatorships, they are more likely to affect collegial military rule, characterized by the rule of a military institution, rather than military strongman rule, characterized by the rule by a military personalist dictator. This is because territorial threats make the military more internally unified and cohesive, which helps the military rule as an institution. Existing studies provide a fair amount of empirical evidence consistent with this claim. External territorial threats are found to increase the likelihood of military regimes, particularly collegial military regimes, as well as the likelihood of military coups. The same is not true of non-territorial threats. This indicates that the type of external threat, rather than the mere presence of an external threat, matters.

Warlords, States, And Political Orders

This chapter argues that warlords are not mere challengers to the state. They represent alternative forms of authority that are well suited to certain circumstances (at times better suited than states). They will not disappear under the increasing pressure of state centralization. Hence, this chapter unpacks the complex relationships between warlords and states and explains that warlords operate in realms of authority that go beyond the grasp of the formal state to ensure their survival. It then builds a typology of political orders in areas of weak and failed statehood to identify the different types of structural environments in which warlords exert their agency.

Mykhailo Drahomanov’s ideas of parliament

Ukrainian parliamentarism and constitutionalism have a long history. Its brightest episode occurred 100 years ago, in 1917–1921, when the Ukrainian activists tried to cope with the breakup of the Romanov Empire by suggesting various projects of its reconstruction. In this article, I argue that the history of these projects began at least half a century earlier, when a young professor of history at Kiev University, Mykhailo Drahomanov, started to reflect upon future reorganization of the Russian Empire into a parliamentary state. Being an ardent advocate of turning the empire into a representative democracy, Drahomanov still felt uneasy about unapologetic support of parliamentarism. Having embraced Proudhonian idea of anarchy or self-government, he realized that the existence of parliament was not a universal cure for all political ills of the Russian Empire, especially for the main one—extreme state centralization. Hence, his views of political reconstruction of the empire did not necessarily mean transforming it into the Russian Republic. It seems that a reasonable and reasoned monarch, who could turn the empire into a federal state with a wide local self-government, would totally fulfill Drahomanov’s ideas of future Russia. His enormous influence upon the pre-war Ukrainian intellectuals explains why only few of them seriously discussed an idea of Ukrainian state independence in 1917.