Russia and the United States—Comparative vs. Connected History?

Abstract

Russia and the United States—Comparative vs. Connected History? Alessandro Stanziani David Moon, The American Steppes: The Unexpected Russian Roots of Great Plains Agriculture, 1870–1930. 352 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. ISBN 13 978-1107103603. $126.00. Steven Sabol, The Touch of Civilization: Comparing American and Russian Internal Colonization. 310 pp. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2017. ISBN 13 978-1607328698. $27.95. There are two possible ways to overcome the historical determinism and Eurocentrism at work in the main approaches to history: we can more closely examine non-Western values and categories of thought (option 1)—for example, "Russian," "Chinese," or "African" categories; or we can highlight the connections between cultures (option 2). In discussing the United States and Russian history, Sabol chooses the former option and Moon the latter. The attention devoted to "specificities" is necessary and welcome, but it also carries a risk. By emphasizing more or less monolithic entities called "cultures" or "civilization," historians tend to overlook the cross-pollination and reciprocal influence that occur between "cultures," which are never monolithic entities. It is one of the chief criticisms that connected history (option 2) has leveled against subaltern studies (option 1). Values and practices have been profoundly affected by interactions and exchanges with other worlds. Recognizing such interactions and exchanges is a fundamental step toward seeing globality not as a confrontation but as a dialogue between worlds. In recent and less recent debates on global history, the opposition between comparison and connection—the first is supposedly subjective, the second objective and source-based—undermines l'histoire croisée and connected [End Page 925] history in general.1 The connections found in archives are just as subjective as the comparisons made by a historian. Archives and documents are never readymade, lying in wait of discovery; they are produced first by the historical actors in administrations or companies that originally provided them, then by the archivists who classified them, and finally by historians, who select a given document and present it in an equally individual manner.2 Yet comparison in itself takes different meanings and practices. Conventional comparisons between the United States and Russia—for example, in Peter Kolchin's works—responded to the stakes of the Cold War and sought to identify similarities between Russian serfdom and American slavery while opposing autocracy and democracy.3 To a certain extent, we still find this approach in some recent books contrasting autocracy and democracy while forgetting the marginalization of colored people or the devastating impact of the US Civil War.4 Yet it is possible to achieve less normative comparisons and/or transnational studies that seek to disclose new horizons and perspectives instead of confirming existing arguments. Sabol's book follows this trend in the wake of an increasingly outnumbered historical literature on the comparative and global history of empires. Overall syntheses in which Russian and Asian attitudes (classified as inclusive vis-à-vis subjugated people) are sometimes contrasted to those of the European empires (which excluded conquered people from management of the empire).5 Several other authors, however, contest this presumed "mild" Russian colonialism.6 [End Page 926] ________ Sabol enters this debate and is eventually inclined to the second option (harsh Russian colonialism) by focusing on two specific populations who fought against colonization: the Kazakh and the Sioux. In both cases, according to him, the colonizing power expressed absolute confidence in its civilizing mission and realized its own greatness through territorial expansion and the introduction of progress, prosperity, and stability and social, economic, and political order. The Kazakhs and the Sioux had to adapt; they resisted but were not just passive recipients. Ultimately, according to Sabol, both Russian and US internal colonization has to be set against the framework of the global European expansion in Africa and Asia at this time. Not "exceptionality" but a global process was at work, in which presumed "civilized" entities crushed equally presumed "backward" and uncivilized people around the globe. Chapter 1 examines Sioux and Kazakh societies; chapter 2 studies the early phases of contact between Europeans and the Sioux and Russians and the Kazakhs, up to the 19th century. Chapter 3 details the American and Russian conquest, as well as...