Constructing Social, Political, and National Identities in Late Tsarist Russia

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel seeks to emphasize that social, political, and national identity remained fluid concepts and acted as lens through which individuals interpreted and structured their actions. In the first paper, the author highlights the potential of Social Network Analysis as a tool for tracing the evolution of provincial elites in the second half of the nineteenth century. The author seeks to explain the disenfranchisement of these provincial elites and explain their absence from Russia's political life in the lead-up to 1905. For the second paper, the presenter intends to examine various political factions’ differing interpretations of works by leading members of the World of Art Movement. Through an analysis of specific paintings, the presenter will demonstrate that political affiliations acted as filters through which individuals understood these artistic creations. The third presenter will analyze the government’s reformulation of national identity with emphasis upon the newly introduced categories of nationalities as defined in the 1907 electoral law. Specifically, the presenter will examine criteria used by tsarist authorities to define the Russianness of some voters in the western borderlands so as to include them into the Russian curia. All three papers speak to this year’s Convention theme of Transgressions. The provincial gentry’s absence from their anticipated leadership roles; political factions’ recastings of an artist’s message; and the official refashioning of voters’ nationalities evidenced the instability of social, political, and national identities during an era in which the Russian Empire officially supported the continued acceptance of the traditional social, political, and national order.

Sub Unit

• History: Russian and Eurasian, 1800-1924

Chair

• Aileen Friesen, Conrad Grebel U College (Canada)

Papers

• 'The Political Web': Elite Networks and Network Formation in the Era of Great Reforms, 1861-1881 - Georgios Kyriakos Regkoukos, King's College London (UK)

• Politics and Paintings: Political Interpretations of the World of Art - Cadra Peterson McDaniel, Texas A&M U

• The Imperial Government and Its Politics of Nationalities During the Elections to the Third Duma in 1907 - Mariya Melentyeva, U of Alberta (Canada)

Discussants

• Alexander M. Semyonov, NRU Higher School of Economics (Russia)

• David Matthew Borgmeyer, St. Louis U