„Hier eröffnete sich vor unseren Augen ein neues, schillerndes, von uns noch nirgendwo gesehenes Bild...“ Die gedankliche Neuvermessung des Zarenreiches im Eisenbahnzeitalter

Abstract

The paper deals with discourses of mental mapping in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. The focus is on the reports of Russian railway passengers who wrote down their impressions of the travelled territory in corresponding texts. The travel reports are analysed as case studies documenting these journeys through the western provinces of the Russian Empire. It is suggested that the construction and use of railroads in the 19th century contributed significantly to the integration of nation-states and empires in the sense of their “territorialisation” (Charles Maier). Using the example of the Russian Empire, it will be shown that the construction and use of the railway had both integrative and disintergrative effects in terms of the representation of Russia in the mental maps of Russian travellers. The spatial experience of an integrated transportation system evoked notions of Russia as a large, indivisible whole. At the same time the railroad created completely new opportunities to personally experience the cultural frontiers within the multi-ethnic Empire. This promoted not only the pride felt in the size of the Empire but fears about the foreign in one’s own country. In the western regions of the Russian Empire these experiences were made above all in encounters with the Jewish population in colonized districts.