Late Imperial Russia Research Articles

Who’s Afraid of Jadidism?: Reckoning with the Legacy of a Cold War Paradigm

Abstract Since the 1990s, scholars in the fields of Central Asian, Volga-Ural, North and South Caucasian, and Crimean history have debated the role of Jadidism in the study of the history of Muslim societies under Russia imperial rule. The concept of Jadidism – variously described as a program for teaching literacy in Turkic languages, a set of educational reforms, and a movement advocating a broad range of cultural, social, and legal reforms designed to “modernize” Muslim communities – made its first appearances in Soviet historiography in the 1920s–1930s. In the 1960s, as the Cold War reached new heights, the Jadid paradigm made its way into English- and French-language historical studies, whence it became the primary lens through which Western audiences encountered and interpreted the histories of Muslims in late imperial Russia. The opening of archival and library collections following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the embrace of new theories and paradigms in Russian studies broke the hold of the Jadid paradigm over Western scholarship. At the same time, a series of heated disputes began over the legacy of the Jadid paradigm and how best to research the intellectual history of Russia’s Muslims in a post-Cold War context. In this essay, I will present a history of the rise and fall of the old Jadid paradigm in European and American scholarship. I will consider how the study of Central Asian intellectual history has evolved since the paradigm’s decline and what this evolution and the contributions to this journal issue suggest about how historians can continue to examine the nature, extent, and meaning of Muslim reform movements without reviving the old Jadid paradigm.

The Labor movement and Revolutionary Social Democracy in the borderlands of late Imperial Russia

A review of a new monograph by Professor Eric Blanc of Rutgers University (USA) is presented. The book is devoted to the history of the labor movement and the development of revolutionary social democracy on the outskirts of the Russian Empire from 1882 (the year of the creation of the first social democratic organization in Poland) to the revolutionary 1917. Blanc focuses specifically on the "non-Russian" socialist parties in the territory of modern Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Georgia and Armenia. The author concludes that the development of the socialist and labor movement in the border areas of late Imperial Russia was characterized by greater radicalism, a more developed structure and popularity among the local working class. At the same time, the situation in Finland with its autonomy and legalized party struggle, which could include socialists, differed from the virtually illegal life of social democracy in Poland and the Caucasus.

Midwifing Modernity: Popularizing Modern Health Care for Women in Late Imperial Russia

AbstractThis article examines the discourse on Russian women’s health care in the late Imperial period within the context of modernization. One of the hallmarks of modernity, health care is also one of the most intimate areas of contact between the agents of modernity and the public at large. The discussion was starkly divided between those concerned with peasant women and those concerned with educated women, but both were firmly situated in the overarching project of healthification (ozdorovlenie). While the authors concerned with peasant women’s health sought to overcome traditional beliefs and practices and replace them with the findings of modern science, the literature directed at the educated public illustrates the anxiety that accompanied the modernity project. The authors writing to and about educated society were far more conflicted about the array of problems they observed developing as traditional beliefs and practices were challenged by changes in society. The article explores the development and role of women’s health care, the tensions between professional and popular health care practitioners, and their relationships with the population from cultural, political and gendered perspectives, and analyzes modernization as a site of contention over women’s agency as well as a social and cultural process.

State power and society of Late Imperial Russia in the assessments of V. A. Maklakov

The article describes the publication of part of the memoirs of a prominent political and public figure in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, one of the leaders of the Kadet Party, the famous lawyer Vasily Alekseevich Maklakov. The excellent style and content of the memoirs are noted, reflecting the development of the social movement in Russia, the relationship between government and society, the fate of the Kadet Party, and vivid portraits of contemporaries through a biographical context. This publication is very important for the study of the social movement and Russian liberalism of the early twentieth century.

Corporations and partnerships: Factory productivity in late Imperial Russia

Using factory-level data from an official manufacturing census, I examine productivity among two forms of enterprise in the Russian Empire from around 1908. I find that despite having 60 times more financial capital, factories owned by corporations did not outperform those owned by ordinary and limited partnerships. Although corporations were more mechanized per worker, both enterprise forms attained equal capital and labor productivity and total factor productivity. Corporations attained higher labor productivity than partnerships only in the metals and machinery industry. These findings suggest that Russian factories used the corporate form's unique advantages in a rather limited way: to build larger factories and undertake larger projects, but not to enhance productivity beyond the level of the partnership form. I also find that there were fewer accidents per worker at partnership-owned factories than at corporations.

Political Practices of Late Imperial Russia: S.Yu. Witte and His Financial Reform

This article examines S.Yu. Witte’s perception of certain political practices in late Imperial Russia, with a special focus on his memoirs. The financial reform introduced by him and the «struggle» for its implementation, both in the bureaucratic field and public political communication, are considered in detail. The primary sources used in the analysis include S.Yu. Witte’s «Memoirs», accounts from his contemporaries, periodicals, correspondence, and unpublished materials stored in the archives of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The results obtained reveal that the Russian Empire pursued contradictory political practices during the studied period. Key algorithms of the political behavior of public officials and their characteristics in the «Memoirs» as a valuable source are outlined.

The Demands of the Disabled: Masculinity, Disability, and Citizenship in the Late Imperial Russian Military

AbstractIn the years after 1905, catastrophic war, widespread political and social unrest, and rising demands from across all segments of the empire’s population forced the Russian imperial state to develop a rudimentary social contract with military personnel and implement a series of reforms to prevent the reoccurrence of military disaster and mass social unrest. These reforms entitled disabled veterans to some forms of state support that were denied to their civilian counterparts, including assistance finding work, pensions, and free prosthetic devices. These entitlements were part of a broader shift away from paternalistic approaches to social welfare provision toward the early germinations of a gendered and selective welfare state. Disability support was dependent on proximity to the military, which cemented the idea that civic inclusion—and by extension, Russian manhood—was something achieved only through military service. This article examines interactions between veterans with disabilities and representatives of the Russian imperial state to explore shifting conceptions of masculinity and the development of new political subjectivities in the aftermath of war. The Russian imperial military can be regarded as a test site within which masculine identities were negotiated and reconfigured amid the social, economic, and political transformations of the late imperial period.

К вопросу о труде и образовании женщин на страницах журналов «Женский вестник» и «Женщина и война» в конце XIX – начале XX в.

Women’s right to work and education was formed under the influence of life realities and socio-political events of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. Women’s magazines served as a conduit for conveying the political interests of women, where they could learn about the prevalent issue of inequality in society and potential avenues for addressing it. These publications featured stories of women’s oppression in employment, wage disparities, and admission to higher educational institutions. Prior to the 1917 revolution, attitudes towards female labor in Russian society underwent numerous transformations, with working alongside men becoming a vital necessity for women. The exigencies of the First World War greatly contributed to the demand for labor, prompting many women to join the workforce and serve on the front lines as nurses and volunteers, fulfilling their duty to the Motherland. In conclusion, the narrative of women’s rights to labor and education in late Imperial Russia reflects a complex interplay of societal shifts and historical contingencies. As we reflect on this historical trajectory, it is imperative to recognize the ongoing struggle for gender equality and the enduring legacy of women’s activism in shaping the contours of society.

К истории концепта “Общество как государственное установление”: Памяти Дитриха Гайера (1928-2023)

Dietrich Geyer’s article “‘Gesellschaft’ als staatliche Veranstaltung. Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte des russischen Behördenstaats im 18. Jahrhundert,” had a significant impact on both German and American historiography, which is not the case with the Soviet historiography of the 1960-1980s. Nevertheless, late Soviet and early post-Soviet historiography was preoccupied with the same problems of the relationship between “state” and “society” in Imperial Russia and sometimes followed the line of D. Geyer’s thinking. In the 1990s, when the “grand narrative” of modernization was called into question, historians engaged in a polemic about the very productiveness of the opposition of “state” and “society” as categories of historical knowledge. They turned to the local level of late imperial Russian society, or adopted new methods of examining legislative sources, avoiding access to “backwardness” or “underdevelopment,” preferring to examine the language and rhetoric of eighteenth-century documents.

Siberian Regionalism as a Phenomenon of Social Thought in Late Imperial Russia

Abstract This article considers regionalism (oblastnichestvo) as an independent direction in the history of Russian thought and culture. Four varieties of regionalism are pointed out: Russian, Ukrainian, Siberian, and Western Russianism (zapadnorussizm), which held the principles of federalism in common. The philosophical and methodological basis of regionalism was narodnichestvo (populism)—the ideology and movement of the intelligentsia in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Narodnichestvo was against serfdom and capitalist development in Russia, and for the overthrow of the autocracy by means of a peasant revolution, positivism, and Slavophilism. The program of the regionalists was addressed to the provincial intelligentsia and was largely aimed at the formation of an intelligentsia called to serve their region. The program of Siberian regionalism is considered in more detail.

Органы политической полиции Саратовской губернии в конце XIX – начале XX века: институциональные изменения, направления работы и специфика межгубернского взаимодействия

Introduction. The relevance of the chosen research topic is of lasting importance, since the place, role and importance of the political police is always of paramount importance in order to ensure the security of the state and its power structures. Theoretical analysis. During the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, the gendarmerie bodies underwent gradual reform and serious intradepartmental and interregional reorganization. As a result, by the beginning of the last century, two main, interconnected and interacting structures of the political police operated in the Russian Empire – a separate corps of gendarmes (with a network of provincial gendarmerie departments and gendarmerie police departments of railways) and Security (search) departments (points). Empirical analysis. It was revealed that the political police bodies operating in the early twentieth century on the territory of the Saratov province (Saratov Provincial Gendarmerie Department, Tambov-Ural Gendarmerie Police Department of Railways, Saratov Security Department and Volga Region Security Department), which underwent organizational and structural changes in accordance with the directive acts of the authorities, purposefully performed their functions of search, covert supervision and surveillance of unreliable elements, inquiry and political investigation, as well as the execution of court sentences in political cases. Results. The process of reorganization and restructuring of political police bodies at the local level, in particular, in the Saratov province, testifies to the contradictory and ambiguous nature of the ongoing transformations. The empirical material studied shows that the authorities of late imperial Russia failed, to the necessary extent, to create an effective system of political investigation, which was supposed to resist the rapidly developing revolutionary movement at the beginning of the 20th century.

A study of secondary vocational school in the context of the realities of modernization changes in late imperial Russia. Review of the book: Magsumov T.A. Secondary vocational school of the Kazan educational district in the conditions of modernization of domestic education at the end of the XIX – beginning of the XX century. Kursk: Zakrytoe aktsionernoe obshchestvo «Universitetskaya kniga», 2022,

A review of the book by T.A. Magsumov: «Secondary vocational school of the Kazan educational district in the conditions of modernization of domestic education at the end of the XIX – beginning of the XX centuries». The authors concluded that this study is a worthy scientific contribution to the study of secondary vocational education of late imperial Russia. The relevance of the work is determined not only by the insufficient knowledge of a number of issues relating to the field of vocational education in the context of modernization changes, but also by the potential opportunity to use the educational experience accumulated in the Russian Empire at the turn of the XIX – XX centuries to solve currently existing problems in the field of vocational education. T.A. Magsumov consistently and thoroughly presents the development of secondary vocational education in the context of imperial modernization processes during the period under study.

Praskovia Uvarova’s Archeological Ambitions: Sex, Science, and Empire in Nineteenth‐Century Russia

AbstractIn this article I merge the three of the nineteenth century’s dominant markers of modernity—gender, science, and modernity—in the person of Praskovia Sergeevna Uvarova. Arguably the most influential character in prerevolutionary archeology through her multiple functions at the Imperial Moscow Archeological Society, she is at best a shadow figure in the history of Russian science. Although Uvarova herself must be held to blame in large measure for this, the connections that this female draws between science and empire are crucial to our understanding of the implications of the three analytical categories come together in late imperial Russia.

The Births, Lives and Deaths of Corporations in Late Imperial Russia

Abstract Enterprise creation, destruction and evolution support the transition to modern economic growth, yet these processes are poorly understood in industrialising contexts. We investigate Imperial Russia's industrial development at the firm level by examining entry, exit and persistence of corporations. Relying on newly developed balance sheet panel data from every non-financial Russian corporation (more than 2,500 of them) between 1899 and 1914, we examine the characteristics of entering and exiting corporations, how new entrants evolved and the impact of founder identity on subsequent outcomes. Russian corporations evolved within a market environment, conditional on overcoming distortionary institutional barriers to entry that slowed the emergence of these leading firms in the Imperial economy.

The Policy of the Provincial Authorities of the Southern Urals in Relations with the Kazakh Population in Late Imperial Russia (1911—1916)

This article is devoted to the policy of the provincial authorities of late imperial Russia in the southern Urals in relation to the Kazakh population, its acculturation, using the example of four main aspects of interaction, namely education, health, cattle breeding, as well as agriculture, which appeared among the nomads under the influence of the Russian population. The policy of incorporation or acculturation of the nomadic Kazakh population was necessary to ensure stability in the multi-confessional and multicultural regions of the country, such as the southern Urals and the Volga region. This policy especially affected the formation of the education system in the 19th century, but only from the second half of it became systemic. This allowed the formation of the Kazakh intelligentsia. As for health care in the region, it can be said that the local authorities saw their main task as fighting epidemics, which they successfully coped with. In the field of agriculture and cattle breeding, attempts by the authorities to influence the nomadic population have been manifested since the second half of the 19th century, but only in 1911—1912 the policy in these industries became systematic and effective.

Introduction: Political Martyrdom in Late Imperial Russia

Introduction: Political Martyrdom in Late Imperial Russia

ПРАКТИКИ ОБРАЩЕНИЯ К ПРОШЛОМУ В ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОМ ПАРЛАМЕНТСКОМ ДИСКУРСЕ (НАЧАЛО И КОНЕЦ ХХ ВЕКА)

The paper deals with the practices of appealing to the past in the parliamentary debates of the first sessions of the State Duma of late imperial Russia (1906) and the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation (1994), as well as the first few Congresses of People's Deputies of the USSR (1989) and the RSFSR (1990). These cases meet two criteria: first, these representative institutions were fundamentally new institutions in changing political systems, and second, the principles of forming their composition ensured competition in the process of discussing symbolic discourses. Cross-temporal research has made it possible to identify a universal set of techniques, at least for the Russian experience, for the instrumental use in parliamentary discussions of knowledge/ideas about the past when solving modern problems, including an appeal to the past as an argument in the discussion; interpretation/evaluation of the past as a marker of group identity; a call to consign to oblivion / to forget/ to forgive the past; articulation of historical grievances/traumas; criticism of historical government policies; discreditation of a political opponent: pointing out the ignorance of history / falsification of history.

Masculinity and (Hetero)Sexuality in the Late Imperial Russian Military

AbstractThis article examines how sexual health became an important component of ideal military masculinity in the final decades of the Russian Empire. Rising rates of venereal diseases (VD) in the military in the final years of the nineteenth century forced the Russian imperial state to increasingly turn their attention to the sexual health and hygienic habits of military personnel. State officials enlisted the help of military physicians, who prepared sex education brochures and lectures with the aim of reducing venereal infection. Sex education materials encouraged conscripts to abandon the habits and practices of rural life and embrace “modern” hygienic manhood. Physicians saw military personnel as an important link to the Empire’s vast lower-class population and regarded the inculcation of new norms of health and hygiene within military populations as a key method for improving public health more generally, especially in the countryside. Within this context, expert knowledge became intertwined with visions of ideal military masculinity, and good sexual health and hygiene were presented as important markers of manhood.

Building an Archival Persona: The Transformation of Sufi Ijāza Culture in Russia, 1880s–1920s

Abstract This article analyses the uses of education certificates (ijāzas) as a tool of self-expression by Russia’s Muslims in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While the transmission of ijāzas as such served as a means of constructing the ideal Muslim personality, manuscript evidence suggests that a selective approach to compiling ijāza miscellanies could successfully be employed in building one’s own archival persona – the way how an individual wanted to appear on pages of future biographical books: not only as an important transmitter of prestigious lineages, but chiefly as a unique performer of their selective combinations. The presence of Sufi certificates on multiple lineages within and beyond the borders of the established Sufi ‘orders’ suggests the increasing heterogeneity of Sufi organization and practice that was part of the phenomenon of a broadening cultural repertoire, from which individuals could draw upon for their archival persona. The type of ijāzas that we analyse here, namely the separate documents and miscellanies listing the transmitted practices, were very much the product of their time and their wide circulation in late imperial Russia suggests, as we argue, an unprecedented rise of ijāza culture, imported from the Ottoman realm.

Political vs intellectual? Russia’s late Imperial archaeology and the Russian Cause

Drawing on the writings of the founding representatives of late Imperial Russia’s Oriental studies, and documents from Russian archives, this article first traces Professor Nikolay Veselovsky’s (1848-1918) formative origins as an influential historian and archaeologist of the East on the national level. He came to be, as pointed out by Vasily Barthold (1869-1930), one of those scholars ferociously ‘counteracting the influence of the West through reliance on the study of the Orient’. The article then studies the impact of his educational background and of the nationalist discourses that were widespread among Russian intellectuals during Veselovsky’s academic formation and mature professional activities. The ongoing international debates on Russian Orientalism and the imperial practices of the time help re-examine the Veselovsky case from new theoretical perspectives and situate it within the broader methodological context of relationships between knowledge and power, academic institutions and state as well as political ideas and scholarship. This further allows us to investigate how Veselovsky’s controversial contribution to Russian scholarship was perceived by his contemporaries as well as the generations of Soviet and post-Soviet scholars, and to conclude by identifying the reasons for such perceptions and the impact of Veselovsky’s scholarship and activities.