Deutschland – Russland. Stationen gemeinsamer Geschichte – Orte der Erinnerung. Band 1: Das 18. Jahrhundert by M�ller H. (review)

Abstract

SEER, 98, 3, JULY 2020 580 Möller, H., Scharf, C., Dudarew, W. and Lawrinowitsch, M. (eds). Deutschland – Russland. Stationen gemeinsamer Geschichte – Orte der Erinnerung. Band 1: Das 18. Jahrhundert. Deutschland-Russland: Stationen gemeinsamer Geschichte, Orte der Erinnerung. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin and Boston, MA, 2018. 410 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Suggested reading. Chronology. Index. €29.96; £27.00; $42.00. In 1993–94 Russian President El´tsin and German Chancellor Kohl resolved on thefoundationofaJointCommissionforResearchintotheMoreRecentHistory of German-Russian Relations, in order to strengthen post-Soviet GermanRussian relations. It was to cover the period since 1700, and to publish parallel volumes in Russian and German. Its crowning work, a lavishly-produced trilogy,wasformallyunveiledinaceremonyattheGermanEmbassyinMoscow in 2019 (). Volume three, devoted to the twentieth century, had appeared in 2014/15; the present volume, dealing with the eighteenth century, was followed by volume two on the nineteenth. The Commission had assembled an impressive cast of authors; for the eighteenth-century senior scholars such as Manfred Hildermeier and Michael Müller, and rising stars like Andrei Kostin and Igor Fediukin. The series and volume titles refer to lieux de mémoire, the concept coined by the French historian Pierre Nora, which he explained as ‘any significant entit[ies], whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time ha[ve] become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community’. Applying this to early modern German/Habsburg and Russian history, the authors were able to single out periods and areas of German-Russian interaction which they consider most significant. The format is essays on chosen themes, usually of joint German-Russian authorship but in a few cases with separate German and Russian contributions. The essays understandably tend more to encyclopaedia entries than to research pieces; the texts are illustrated by numerous plates and by selected extracts from primary sources, evidently designed to give a more direct sense of contact with the events described. The volume is divided into five sections: Germany and Russia in 1700; Early-Modern State-building; International Relations; Enlightenment and Absolutism; The French Revolution and Europe. The last section also takes in the cultural history of Weimar, the early reign of Alexander I and the Napoleonic Years, ending with the Battle of Nations at Leipzig in 1813 — an unusual periodization, neither the ‘short’ not the ‘long’ eighteenth century. For those interested in Russo-German interactions this is an engaging and interesting volume. It is beautifully presented; much of it is well done, it appears to have few errors, and it offers both recent scholarly insights, such as Fediukin’s essay on the mechanisms of Petrine reform, and interesting different emphases, as in the Russian and the German essay on Karamzin. REVIEWS 581 It is however somewhat old-fashioned in its approach, focusing above all on Kings and Battles, Dynastic Relations, and Enlightenment and Reforms. Interpretations are also on occasion old-fashioned: thus while Frederick II’s partial but definitely incomplete relaxation of serfdom leads on to a hesitantly positive judgment of him as a monarch of his time (p. 216), Catherine II’s failure to abolish serfdom looms as a major blot on her escutcheon which meant that Russia could not ‘transform itself into a modern society’ (p. 240) — recent re-evaluations of Russian serfdom are not considered. Some items that one might expect are omitted. Christian Wolff is mentioned briefly, but the fact of the dominance of his system in Russian philosophy throughout the eighteenth century, until replaced by another German luminary, Kant, does not appear. The wide-ranging influence in Russia of cameralism, largely a German phenomenon, which equally affected Russia, Prussia and Austria, is ignored. One result of cameralist policy was the formation of a whole new social group in Russia, the Volga Germans (unmentioned, except fleetingly in connection with the 1812 formation of the Russian-German Legion, p. 367). Friedrich II’s opposition to the death penalty for infanticide or abortion is explained (p. 206) in terms of Enlightened Reform, disregarding its place in the cameralist population policies which were a major driver of his domestic regime. The volume ends with detailed military accounts of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and...