A Settler Revolution: Post-Imperial Citizenship in the Russian Far East

• In Event: Decentralizing the Revolution: The 1917 Transformations from a Transregional Perspective

Abstract

The collapse of the Russian Empire left the issue of post-imperial citizenship in an ambivalent state. On the one hand, civic nationalism of left-liberal intellectuals was inclusive, but, on the other hand, it remained unclear what role minority nationalisms were to play in it. Post-imperial dynamics in the Russian Far East demonstrated that there were several possible resolutions to the issue of civic delimitation after the collapse of the empire. Following the February Revolution of 1917, Ukrainian, Estonian, and other minority intellectuals in Vladivostok attempted to define and rally the corresponding rural communities of settlers – the Far Eastern Ukraine/the Green Wedge and the Far Eastern Livland/the Estonian Colony – to the federalist and autonomist projects of imperial transformation. The collapse of state structures during the Russian Civil War made intellectuals interested in independent statehood and national citizenship, but split rural communities on the issue. In 1918, the creation of the Soviet Republic of the Far East offered a third option of regional citizenship, while the Far Eastern Republic which was formed by the same actors in 1920 established non-territorial autonomy for Ukrainians and recognized Estonian consulates as international bodies. The talk foregrounds the alternative nationalist and citizenship discourses among Russian, Ukrainian, and Estonian intellectuals in the Russian Far East and their attempts to mobilize the respective rural settler communities challenging the linear interpretation of subjecthood's transformation into citizenship.

Author

• Ivan Sablin, Ruhr U (Germany)