Национальный вопрос во внутренней политике царизма (XIX-начало XX вв.) по В. С. Дякин (review)

Abstract

Рецензии 568 to address a wide range of issues that may have contributed to the failure of Ukraine to achieve economic growth. Among many other things, the author examines the overall state of economic affairs, tests the validity of the argument that Ukraine suffered from Russian exploitation, and assesses the degree of rent-seeking in Ukraine. The article expands dramatically the narrow conceptual focus of the book by bringing to reader’s attention such issues as the quality of state administration, nature of Ukraine’s ruling elite and rentseeking mechanisms developed in Ukraine. The book may be of interest for scholars, policymakers and development practitioners who may benefit from the experiences of Ukraine’s complex way of reforms. Seymour BECKER В. С. Дякин. Национальный вопрос во внутренней политике царизма (XIX-начало XX вв.). Санкт-Петербург: ЛИСС, 1998. 1042 с. Предментный и именной указатели. Valentin Semenovich Diakin (1930-1994) is an historian well known in the West, the Soviet Union , and today's Russia for his many scholarly monographs, published over three decades, on the relationships between the autocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the nobility, particularly in the period between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. The volume under review is an unusual one, lying somewhere between an author's notes and a book – the book that Diakin was unable to complete before his untimely death. I. V. Lukoianov, one of the volume 's editors, describes it as an “analytic abstract of archival materials , primarily from the fondy of the Russian State Historical Archive ... mainly intra- and interdepartmental correspondence, journals of meetings, memoranda, certificates , draft laws... most of all, documents representing the views of central, and partly local, authorities on various aspects of nationality policy... practically nothing on the history of relations among natio- Ab Imperio, 3/2001 569 nalities, and little on the history of national movements.” (p. 11) The extracts from such documents that constitute the volume are characterized by Lukoianov as an “intermediate link between a mere abstract and an author's first draft. Often found in them are the author's evaluations , remarks, establishment of linkages among separate facts, and exposure of hidden tendencies in policy.” (Ibid.) All abstracts contain full citations (fond, opis', delo, and list); unless labeled as from GARF, the documents abstracted are from RGIA. Excerpts from the originals are in quotation marks. The volume will consequently serve as a very useful guide to the archives for future researchers. The number of pages devoted to various geographic regions varies as follows: Caucasus 39% (mostly on general matters and Georgia, little on Armenia or Azerbaidzhan specifically ), Western gubernii including Ukraine 16%, Central Asia 13% (much more on Turkestan than the Steppe oblasti), Poland 11%, Volga region 4%, Siberia 2%. General questions on nationality policy occupy 15% (more than half of this concerns Muslims and Jews). Chronologically , the documents range from the 1860s to 1916, but only a minority are from the period before the latter 1890s. Diakin's fifty-page overview of his topic, “The Nationalities Question in Tsarism's Domestic Policy in the 19th and Beginning of the 20th Centuries (Formulating the Problem ),” written in December 1993 for discussion in the Section on Modern Russian History, Institute of Russian History, St. Petersburg, is an appropriate and welcome introduction to the volume. The text of this essay, according to the editors, is closer to the author's original than that published in Voprosy Istorii, 1995, No. 9 and 1996, Nos. 11-12. Diakin's essay offers a rather pessimistic, as well as deterministic, view of Russia's nationalities problem . In his view, Ivan IV's conquest of Kazan was a “tragedy not only for the Tatar but also for the Russian people.” Without the incorporation of Kazan, Muscovy “would have remained more or less mononational and free from ethnic contradictions , and the energy of the Russian people would have been employed not for extensive colonization of huge expanses... but for the intensive mastery of their own lands. In that case the Russian state's economic, and consequently its social and political, development would have proceeded more rapidly , with a greater probability of escaping a revolution on the scale of 1917.” (p. 14) Surely this is too heavy a burden to be placed on one example of empire -building. Would not Russia's expansion to the west...