Imperial Policy and Politics of Difference in the Russian, Habsburg, and Soviet Imperial Formations in the Early 20th Century

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel aims to revisit the terrain of policies and political imaginaries related to diversity in the early 20th century Russian Empire, including comparative flashpoints. Foregrounding the discussion in the theme of adaptability of imperial sovereignty and realignment of diversity, the papers explore the post-1905 imperial government policies on non-Orthodox religious education and civic associations, the electoral laws of the 1906 imperial parliament and the clash of nationalizing and hybridizing visions of imperial citizenship; and the minoritization of Jews and Muslims in the Habsburg Empire and Soviet Russia. Taken together the papers not only reaffirm the recognized historiographic consensus of the need to depart from the historical narrative of transition from empire to nation but map in specific historical contexts the alternative narratives of post-imperial trajectories of diversity.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Marina B. Mogilner, U of Illinois at Chicago

Papers

• Imperial Hybridity and the Persistence of Hierarchy: Non-Russian Rights After 1905 - Darius Staliunas, Lithuanian Inst of History (Lithuania)

• A Post-Imperial Moment in the Russian Empire: Imperial Citizenship, National Empire, Minorities, and Hybridity After 1905 - Alexander M. Semyonov, Amherst College

• What’s in a Minority?: Jews and Muslims in the Late Habsburg Empire and Revolutionary Russia - Börries Kuzmany, U of Vienna (Austria)

Discussant

• Ilya V. Gerasimov, Ab Imperio