Modern Challenges of the Russian Empire: Nationalism, Imperial Governance, and Hybridity

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The problem of modern trajectories in development of the Russian imperial formation continues to be discussed by historians: how significant was an element of archaic and dynastic empire (hence Tsarist and Romanov) in shaping the policies of the post-reform and post-revolutionary period; how widespread and omnipresent was the impact of nationalism and class politics; how antagonistic or symbiotic were traditional imperial politics of difference and policies of colonization? Papers in the present panel will address key aspects of the modern challenges in the context of the Russian imperial formation: territoriality and linguistic groupness; agrarian question and colonization; the system of administrative reforms and new political imaginaries of governance by focusing on the Kingdom of Poland, North Western region, the Baltic provinces, and Siberia and the Steppe region.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Alison K. Smith, U of Toronto (Canada)

Papers

• Linguistic Regimes and Territorial-Administrative Divisions on the Western Borderlands of the Russian Empire after 1905 - Darius Staliunas, Lithuanian Institute of History (Lithuania)

• The Tensions of the Colonializing and Hybrid Empire: The Colonization Question in the State Duma Debates, 1905-1911 - Alexander M. Semyonov, Amherst College

• Intermediaries, Model Subjects, or Lost Souls?: Assessing the Transformations of North Caucasians Converted or Trained by Western European Expatriates - Stephen Badalyan Riegg, Texas A&M U

Discussant

• Steven Seegel, U of Texas at Austin