Constructing Lithuania: Ethnic Mapping in Tsarist Russia, ca. 1800–1914 by Vytautas Petronis (review)

Abstract

399 Ab Imperio, 3/2010 “Грозный”), и публикации источ- ников (запись Василия Шуйского 1606 г. и русско-польский договор августа 1610 г., опубликованные в английском переводе по русской публикации начала XIX в. Р. Хел- ли), и гендерные исследования (очерк Даниэля Кайзера (Daniel H. Kaiser) о завещаниях москвичек “третьего сословия” XVIII века) и т.д. Взятые вместе, они если и не меняют радикально наших представлений о русской истории (большинство авторов, что впол- не естественно, выбрало темы, к которым уже обращались в фундаментальных монографиях), то, по крайней мере, показывают перспективность и многообразие подходов, существующих в со- временной славистике, важность междисциплинарных исследова- ний, потенциал культуральных штудий, а также еще раз убеди- тельно демонстрируют уникаль- ность исследовательской манеры Флайера и его продолжающееся плодотворное влияние на исследо- вания средневековой Московской Руси. Daniel RODRIGUES Vytautas Petronis, Constructing Lithuania: Ethnic Mapping in Tsarist Russia, ca. 1800-1914 (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2007). 309 pp. (=Stockholm Studies in History, 91; Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations, 21). ISBN: 9-789185445 -79-0.1 During the end of the nineteenth century, the Western Provinces constituted the area of the most intense Polish–Russian rivalry, presenting two different nation-building projects (“Russianness” and “Polishness ”). At that time, what is now modern Lithuania, was a borderland of the Russian Empire. The struggle of Russian authorities to curb the Polish elite’s influence and, at the same time, to integrate this periphery within the territorial core of the Empire dictated a multiplicity of approaches to reshape the ethnic and confessional borders used by both the central and local administration . Vytautas Petronis’s book is a published dissertation that analyses the construction of Lithuania as an “imagined community” through ethnic mapping. His approach pretends to be interdisciplinary (combining history, cartography, and symbolic geography); the stated purpose of 1 See also the review of this title by Steven Seegel, earlier published in: Ab Imperio. 2008. No. 1. Pp. 289-293. 400 Рецензии/Reviews are very helpful for those who intend to analyze ethnic or other kinds of mapping in Russia, and must be at the top of the reading list. The same applies to Kivelson’s book Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in SeventeenthCentury Russia (2006),4 published only a year before Petronis’s study, as well as her article Cartography, Autocracy and State Powerlessness (1999).5 Within the field of studies on cartography in conjunction with political and ethnic discourses, another scholar, Jeremy Black, is worth mentioning as the author of some very inspiring books such as Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past (1997) and Maps and Politics (1997).6 Furthermore, the link between cartography (in this case, ethnic mapping), power and nationalism(s) should be highlighted . Quoting Nailya Tagirova, Existence in a constantly expanding territory dictated the need to find an effective mode of administration for the state and its population. The results to a large his doctoral thesis is to observe the evolution of the ethnic Lithuanian territory on imperial and nationalist maps, and thus to understand the extent to which their appearance and meaning change. In order to achieve this, he based his methodology on archival sources, the historiographical corpus, and, naturally, cartographical analysis. Even a brief overview of the historiography of cartography shows the importance of this topic, in particular , in the dimension of a case study and important references to what is known now as a (new) field of imperial history.2 It should be noted (and Petronis acknowledges this in his work) that several authors, such as Alexei V. Postnikov, Leo Bagrow, Mark Bassin, Rostislav I. Sossa and Valerie Kivelson, among many others, have produced significant work in this field of research. Thus, Bagrow’s A History of the Cartography of Russia (1975) or Postnikov’s Russia in Maps: A History of the Geographical Study and Cartography of the Country (1996)3 2 Novaia imperskaia istoriia postsovetskogo prostranstva / Pod red. S. Glebova, I. Gerasimova , A. Kaplunovskogo. Kazan, 2004. 3 Leo Bagrow. A History of the Cartography of Russia up to 1600. Wolfe Island, Ont., 1975; Alexei Postnikov. Russia in Maps: A History of the Geographical Study and Cartography of the Country. Moscow, 1996. 4 Valerie Kivelson. Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and its Meanings in Seventeenthcentury Russia. Ithaca, 2006. 5 Valerie Kivelson. Cartography, Autocracy and State Powerlessness: The Uses of Maps in Early Modern Russia // Imago Mundi. 1999. Vol. 55. No. 11. Pp. 83-105. 6 Jeremy Black. Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past. New Haven, 1997; Idem. Maps and Politics. Chicago, 1997. 401 Ab Imperio, 3/2010 as a whole and the position of Lithuanian lands within it. Consequently, they develop Petronis’s main idea by presenting maps as instruments of national construction independently of their scientific or political orientation. Since the integration of previous Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lands into the Russian Empire, the Polish question had been a major problem for Russian rulers. As a...