For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia by Robert D. Crews (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 553 of Radishchev's main work; it ends with a consideration of Zhukovskii's Siberian diary. This book has its origins in a 1995 doctoral thesis. It is perhaps regret table that in revising the author was unable to take into account more recent work, since this is an area in which advances have been made and worthwhile arguments about the shape of the Russian Enlightenment are happening. In particular, not engaging with Andreas Schonle's account of the same corpus of texts (Authenticity andFiction in the Russian Literary Journey, iygo-1840, Cambridge, MA, 2000) seems like a missed opportunity to underscore the difference in these two complementary studies. But its value lies, above all, in the comprehensive coverage it gives to the canonical texts of Russian travel writing and more obscure works. Throughout Dickinson is attentive to the tension between the prescriptive nature of travel writing, which combined the utilitarian function of the travel guide, and itsother functions as a narra tive of personal growth and, most importantly forDickinson, a statement of national pride inRussia's achievement of parity with theWestern countries encountered by these writers. BreakingGroundhas littlenew to say about any of its constituent texts, but it offers a comprehensive account of the genre as a whole. The study ismarred by conceptual fuzziness in places. Dickinson consistently refers to the texts considered in thisbook as travel literature.But in fact her corpus of texts contains works that are not literaryand fall into the category of travelwriting of a much larger description. There isa tendency to use the term 'Grand Tour' too loosely as neither Kiukhel'beker nor Karamzin follow the the highly prescribed itineraryassociated with that rite of passage in the education of British elitemen. The term 'scientific' as a description of Radishchev's technique really needs to be unpacked in order to be helpful. Is itany different from empirical? Is itLinnaean or does it show the impact of advances, largely in the area of the chemical sciences, in theAcademy of Sciences? Given Radishchev's interest in natural philosophy itwould have been helpful to know. At times, her close readings are arguably off themark and do not corroborate the conclusions. Batiushkov's account of his military travels smack more of jingoism than literary sophistication. But ifone takes them more seriously as 'travel writing', then Dickinson's reading is open to questioning since Cirey, where Batiushkov found himself, is more than the place where Voltaire spent many of 'his most productive years'. It is the place where he wrote his most important works on Newtonian physics, which is surely to the point when Batiushkov records how he and his comrades affirm theirRussian identityby boasting of the immortal Lomonosov. These criticisms notwithstanding, this book makes an insightful contribution to a burgeoning area of research. StEdmundHall, Oxford Andrew Kahn Crews, Robert D. For ProphetandTsar: Islam andEmpire in Russia and Central Asia. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006. viii + 463 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $29.95: ?19.95. The last ten years have seen something of a revolution in the study of Russia's Imperial past. Beginning, perhaps, with thework ofJames Forsyth and Yuri 554 SEER, 86, 3, JULY 2008 Slezkine on Siberia (Forsyth,A History of the Native Peoples ofSiberia,Cambridge, 1992; Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North, Ithaca, NY, 1994), we now have excellent regional studies of the Volga-Kama Region and the Steppe ? Allen J. Frank's Muslim Religious InstitutionsinImperialRus sia (Leiden, 2001), Virginia Martin's Law and Custom in theSteppe (London, 2001); Robert Geraci's Window on the East (Ithaca, NY, 2001); Paul Werth's At the Margins ofOrthodoxy(Ithaca, NY, 2002); Michael Khodarkovsky's Russia's Steppe Frontier (Bloomington, IN, 2002) and Willard Sunderland's Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, NY 2004) ? the Caucasus ? Moshe Gammer's Muslim Resistance to the Tsar (London, 1994), Austin Jersild's Orientalism and Empire (Montreal, 2002) and Nicholas Breyfogle's Heretics and Colonizers:ForgingRussia's Empire in theSouth Caucasus (Ithaca, NY, 2005) ? and Central Asia ? Adeeb Khalid's The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform (Berkeley, CA, 1997), Daniel Brower's Turkestan and theFate of theRussian Empire (London...