Regions and Republics of Russia in Historical Context: Compliance, Resistance, or Liberation?

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel will explore the development of regionalism in the Russian Federation over the long term. Bringing in approaches from history, anthropology, and political science, it seeks to identify the trajectory of regionalist ideas among a wide range of ethnic groups in the Russian Federation today. All the papers are grounded in a longer historical narrative even as they have an interest in the current state of regionalism in Russia. This is especially important now, as the question of whether the Russian Federation will break up is being discussed, sometimes without the requisite historical context. Susan Smith-Peter’s paper will look at the history of regionalism among Russians in Siberia and the Russian North from the 1830s to the present in order to see long-range continuities and discontinuities in the troubled development of political regionalism in those areas. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer uses the anthropological literature on indigeneity to chart the development of nested sovereignty from the Russian Civil War to the present among Buryats and the Sakha (Yakut). Adam Lenton similarly looks at long-term factors in the development of political regionalism in the Caucasus, the Volga region, and Siberia, arguing that pre-colonial institutions have a continuing impact on the growth of regionalism. These approaches provide a more deeply grounded answer to the question of what the liberation of Russian regions and republics could and should look like.

Sub Unit

• History: Since 1990

Chair

• Anna Smelova, Georgetown U

Papers

• Siberian People Power: Indigenous Resistance Legacies - Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Georgetown U

• Colonial Origins of Post-Soviet Ethnic Mobilization in Russia - Adam Charles Lenton, Wake Forest U

• Liberating the Regions?: Russian Regionalism Yesterday and Today, 1830-Present - Susan Smith-Peter, CUNY College of Staten Island

Discussant

• Edward Christian Holland, U of Arkansas