Tsarist Government Research Articles

The Activities of Nikolai Ivanovich von Bock at the Russian Imperial Diplomatic Mission to the Holy See, 1912—1917

The diplomatic activities of Nikolai Ivanovich von Bock at the Russian Mission to the Holy See in 1912—1917 are assessed in the general context of the Russian-Vatican relations. The relationship between the Vatican and the Russian Empire was never an easy one. On the one hand, the Tsarist regime and the Holy See shared a commitment to traditional values and an aversion to radicalism in any forms. On the other hand, their political dialogue was complicated by the traditional rivalry between the Orthodox and Catholic Church and the fact that the majority of Catholics in Russia was represented by the Poles, among whom nationalist feelings and a desire to secede from the Empire were widespread. There were also other points of mutual dissatisfaction, for instance, the position of the Catholic Church in Russia. In the period when Nikolai von Bock served in the Mission — and with his active contribution — Russia and the Vatican not only broke the stalemate in bilateral relations, but managed to improve them significantly. The new character of these relations, marked by a removal of limitations to the Catholic Church’s activities in Russia, to a large extent corresponded with von Bock’s convictions and his desire to continue the political line of Foreign Minister Sergei D. Sazonov, aimed at reaching compromises and agreements with the Holy See. The article relies, among other sources, on Nikolai von Bock’s memoirs and his correspondence with the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Новые нумизматические материалы XVI века из могильника Сеитово IV (Среднее Прииртышье)

Purpose. The aim of the work is to introduce for the scientific community new numismatic items of the 16th century, which allow us to date the earliest burials of the Tara Tatars living in the region and, based on this data, establish some specific features of their burial rituals. Results. We conducted a crash-rescue operation and explored grave 1 on the burial ground Seitovo 4, which is located in the southern-taiga belt of Western Siberia on the right bank of the Irtysh River, in the Tara district of the Omsk region. The burial ground contained two silver coins of the Russian kingdom, which were in use during the reign of Ivan the 4th (the Grozny), and some other funeral inventory. The analysis of the elements of the burial structure and the inventory in the grave showed similarities with the funeral rituals discovered on the burial grounds of the 17th – 18th centuries located in this region. Most researchers relate these grounds to the antique ancestors of the Tara Tatars. However, until now, nothing has been known about the characteristic features of the funeral rite of this population during their early periods. Moreover, due to the lack of dating, early graves could not be distinguished from the later burials, which made it difficult to study their features. The materials analyzed give a better understanding of the formation and genesis of the burial rite under study. Analysis of the coins showed that these were so-called Moscow-issued personal “saber-dengi”, which were minted after the monetary reform of Ivan the 4th and led to the unification of the monetary system of the Russian tsardom. These coins are rarely found in Western Siberia, and in the Middle Irtysh region they are the most ancient Russian coins referring to 1538–1561. Conclusion. Written sources of the first quarter of the 17th – first half of the 18th centuries indicate that the ancestors of the Turaly and Ayaly groups of the Tara Tatars lived in this region at that time. The research allowed us to assert that the people buried there were the ancestors of the Tara Tatars. The results help to establish the lower bound of dating this grave and explore some of the features of the funeral rite of the modern Tara Tatars’ ancestors during their early periods.

“The Prince Title” to Descendants of Bukeev Horde Khan Dzhangir

At the beginning of the 19th century tsarist government divided the Kazakh steppe territory into regions such the Siberian Kazakhs, Kazakhs of the Orenburg department and the Bukeev khanate. In each of these regions the imperial government developed political system distinctive from the other, but with the similar purpose is to make their ruling closer to imperial structure. Differences in political system in these regions built distinctive features also in social transformation of these territories. Yet if regional political transformations of the Kazakh steppe in the 19th century have been the object of historical investigation, then problem of social change in this region at the time remains largely unstudied. This essay represents an attempt to fill this designated lack. The research work investigates features of transforming process from traditional nomadic social structure to imperial order on the example of one region of the Kazakh steppe, namely the Bukeev khanate. The Bukeevs khanate differed from other regions of the Steppe because was created as special ethno political territory of Kazakh nomads with certain administrative borders between Volga-Ural where the rule of a khan preserved till 1845. Moreover, descendants Dzhangir khan (the last khan of Bukeev khanate) could enter into the titled Russian nobility that was uncharacteristic for the nomadic aristocracy of other Steppe region. Thus the purpose of article is to study the process of entry of the Kazakh aristocracy into the privileged estate of the empire and its social adaptation to imperial conditions, on the example of the Dzhangirov khan family who turned from candidates of a khan title into princes of the Russian Empire. The presented research is based on the material documents taken from the central archives of Russia and Kazakhstan most of which are new in historical science. The specifics of this essay are that it on the basis of methods of a historical personality conducts the research through sociocultural measurement of biographies of the titled Kazakh noblemen khan Dzhangir’s family who realized themselves in the period of the 19th century in space of the Russian Empire as in local ruling, and also on service in other parts of the empire is conducted.

ALMAN KAYNAKLARINA GÖRE I. DÜNYA SAVAŞI NDA RUSLARLA ALMANLAR ARASINDA BREST-LİTOVSK BARIŞ SÜRECİ MÜZAKERELERİ VE BARIŞ ANTLAŞMASI

World War I began with Serbia declaring war on Austria-Hungary after the Austro-Hungarian Empire Velaihti Ferdinad was killed by a Serb nationalist during his visit to Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. After the polarization between War Alliance (Britain, France and Russia) and the Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy), it has passed among the states involved. With the Ottoman State and its allies winning the sea and land battles on the front of the Dardanelles with a superior success, the First World War lasted more than expected. Between the Entente Powers and Tsarist Russia, land and sea transportation has not been provided, and since the long history of internal politics, Russia has experienced a Bolshevik Revolution and the Tsarist regime has collapsed. This is the beginning of negotiations to end the war between the Bolsheviks and the Allied Powers, which came to power in Russia. The aim of this research is to investigate the peace negotiations between the Bolsheviks and Germany, according to German sources. The research was carried out using the document analysis method in the qualitative research design. German sources were used in the research. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the negotiations between Germany and the new administration in Germany, the points of concern and the process of the Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk were put forward.

Linguistic russification in Russian Ukraine: languages, imperial models, and policies

The paper deals with the vagaries of linguistic russification among the Ukrainians from the mid-seventeenth century to 1914. The authors explore the major stages in the implementation of the policies of russification in Russian Ukraine, starting with first bans on books printed in Church Slavonic of the Ukrainian recension via the decrees and edicts issued by Peter I together with the Holy Synod to the punitive measures taken by the tsarist regime against new literary Ukrainian in the second half of the nineteenth century. The authors distinguish three languages (Church Slavonic of the Ukrainian recension, Ruthenian, and new literary Ukrainian) which were consecutively exposed to various forms of hostile language management by the tsarist administration. Based on these three languages and the classification into different models of imperial policy, a new periodization of linguistic russification and denationalization is substantiated. The material analyzed with the help of this new periodization proves that Russia’s rulers had special reasons for treating Ukraine more severely than other non-Russian areas, resulting in a constant, consistent, and long-lasting policy of linguistic russification in Russian Ukraine.

The “Kerch Matter” of Bryansk Factory Joint Stock Company (1899–1903)

The tsarist government and foreign businessmen had a great influence on the economic development of the Russian Empire. In the early 20th century, the position of Western capital in Russia became stronger, but how significant was this increase? Could foreign business have been able to take over the functions of managing and regulating the national economy from the Russian government? The author attempts to answer this question by examining it on a specific example: the “Kerch matter” of 1899–1903. This is the name contemporaries gave to the conflict between the Russian government and French capitalists close to the Company of Bryansk Factory, which arose because of metallurgical facilities on the Kerch Peninsula. The analysis of the case and its results is conducted on the basis of published sources and documentary materials from Russian archives. The results of work done have shown that the imperial state machine represented by the then Minister of Finance Sergei Witte managed to emerge victorious from the “Kerch matter”. Having succeeded in stopping production at the Kerch factory and preventing the bankruptcy of the Bryansk Company, the Russian authorities were able to contain the infiltration of financial groups such as the Société Générale into the metallurgical market of the South of Russia, which, in the conditions of the industrial recession of 1900–1903, threatened to cause a massive collapse in prices. The “Kerch matter” was the last attempt of Western European capital to intervene in the issues of control over the economy, which were subordinated to the Russian state.

Cultural-Educational Policy of Tsarism in the Dnipro Ukraine (the second half of the 19th and early 20th century)

The purpose of the article is to analyze the cultural and educational policy of tsarism in the Dnipro region of Ukraine in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries clarifying the role and significance of entrepreneurs in this process. In the modern Ukrainian economy there are transformation processes that are aimed at ensuring sustainable development of the country. The Dnieper region of Ukraine plays an important role in this transformation. Culture and education of the population are an important component in the formation of a highly developed industrial society. After the peasant reform – the liquidation of the feudal system, the tsarist government carried out a series of reforms that were supposed to accelerate capitalist transformations. Modernization in the country required raising the level of culture and education of the population. The tsarist government tried to root out Ukrainian culture, mother tongue. According to the census of 1897 in the Russian Empire, the number of illiterates in the Ukrainian provinces amounted to 83.6 %. In schools and high schools only 30% of children studied. In the 60's and 90's, special institutions of higher education were opened in the Dnipro region of Ukraine: in Odesa, Kyiv, Nizhyn, Kharkiv and Katerynoslav. The tsarist government understood the need to open new schools and improve education, but reluctantly allocated resources for the maintenance of schools and gymnasiums. For example, in the Kherson province in 1883, the tsarist government allocated only 2.7 % of the money from the total, while the rest was allocated by zemstvos, organizations and private individuals. Entrepreneurs, intellectuals and private individuals donated significant amounts to education and culture and played a significant role in spreading and supporting culture and education in the Dnipro region of Ukraine.

Усиление российского политического влияния и административная реформа в Туве

Introduction: The article studies a number of archival materials — some of the latter being newly introduced into scientific discourse — and examines the incorporation of Tuvans into Russia’s political space through the establishment of its protectorate over Tannu Uriankhai. The Tsarist Government would elaborate different plans to spread its influence, including somewhat military annexation of the territory. The problems were negotiated at multiple levels of the Russian power structures. A most debating point proved the task of administering both the native and Russian populations. The consultations resulted in shaping a moderate policy aimed to strengthen their positions through inflows of ethnic Russian peasants into Tuva. Goals: The paper aims to investigate some issues of administrative and territorial management in Tuva after the establishment of Russia’s protectorate in 1914. Methods: The applied empirical methods included comparisons, descriptions, interpretations, and system analysis; the theoretical ones comprised historicism patterns and those of formal and dialectical logic. Results: The actual political situation required that certain corrections be introduced into the regional management system, namely: Russian administrative bodies were to be organized, their competences to be delineated, protocols for liaison between the Commissariat, Migration Department, and their relations to local authorities, Russian and Tuvan populations to be clarified. Representatives of the Russian Government employed experienced, initiative officials (A. Tsererin, V. Gabaev, V. Grigoriev) whose efficient and active efforts largely contributed to the establishment of the protectorate and facilitated the subsequent implementation of administrative and territorial reforms in the region. A number of important tasks (e.g., construction of the Usinsky Tract, conflicts between natives and newly arrived groups) required the involvement of the Governor-General of Irkutsk. Conclusions: The Xinhai Revolution gave Russia an opportunity to strengthen its positions in Tuva. The Russian officials chose the path of indirect governance through establishing close contacts with khoshun (Tuv. kozhuun ‘district’) rulers or appointing loyal individuals. The approach facilitated the formation of new political elites in Tuva. As a result, the Mongols were removed from power, and all Tuvan khoshuns and sumons (Tuv. sumon ‘township’) were governed by natives. So, Lama K. Chymba was elected as head of one of the multiple khoshuns, and four sumons were transformed into two new khoshuns. The then Tuvan political elites failed to come to a consensus about national self-determination, which partly stemmed from somewhat indifferent attitudes of theirs towards Tuva’s future and the still lingering inclinations to former administrative procedures.

Enlightening Activities of the Tsarist Government in Semirechye in the early XXth century (According to the Documents from the Fund of the Head of the Semirechye Region’s Resettlement Administration)

Enlightening Activities of the Tsarist Government in Semirechye in the early XXth century (According to the Documents from the Fund of the Head of the Semirechye Region’s Resettlement Administration)

Stockdale, Melissa Kirschke Mobilizing the Russian Nation: Patriotism and Citizenship in the First World War (review)

REVIEWS 579 of his distinguished radical past, and in the 1920s he took an active part in what Eklof and Charushin call the ‘Memory Wars’ — that is the struggle to preserve and promote the contribution to revolution made by men and women who refused to join the Bolshevik Party or endorse its vision and policies. One of the most valuable aspects of these later chapters is the extensive use made by Eklof and Saburova of archival material to reconstruct Charushin’s life and views in his later years. There are inevitably a few shortcomings in A Generation of Revolutionaries. The use of a methodology derived from the (amorphous) genre of Memory Studies is rather ad hoc and undeveloped. Nor are Eklof and Saburova entirely convincing when seeking to define their understanding of ‘generation’ as a chronological, ideological and experiential phenomenon. Yet such weaknesses should not be exaggerated. The scholarly literature on Russian Populism in English has always been somewhat unsatisfactory, often focusing on questions of ideology and tactics, rather than setting the phenomenon in its full historical complexity. A Generation of Revolutionaries will be of value to all historians interested in the longue durée of the Russian Revolution. It deserves to be read widely. Department of History Michael Hughes Lancaster University Stockdale, Melissa Kirschke. Mobilizing the Russian Nation: Patriotism and Citizenship in the First World War. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2016. xvii + 284 pp. Illustrations. Chronology. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. £75.00. The intertwining of the Russian Revolution with the First World War makes analysis of the Russian wartime experience a particularly complex task. Melissa Stockdale’s richly textured book discusses how Russian — and, by extension, Soviet — identity was fashioned by the war, showing how a variety of very different groups were instrumental in creating a patriotic discourse that had an impact even after the war had ended. In the summer of 1914 a rhetoric of ‘sacred union’ was deployed to encourage national unity right across the Russian empire. Stockdale emphasizes that this was based not just on the traditional bond between tsar and people, but that it was intended to develop a much wider conception of national unity, drawing together the empire’s varied national and social groups to develop a discourse that could accommodate Russia’s polarized politics. The government itself SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 580 promoted support for the war by press campaigns and widespread publicity for its war loans, while the Orthodox church marshalled its extensive resources to promote the virtues of service and sacrifice, as well as providing material help for soldiers and their families. Wartime patriotic discourse extended beyond the traditional institutions of state and church, however, as a variety of public and voluntary organizations acted to support the war effort. The tsarist regime was compelled to accept that wider society must play a major role in the war effort and at both national and local level a wide variety of organizations provided assistance for Russia’s armies. Stockdale argues that this helped in developing the concept of citizenship, with the fostering of expectations that work for the war effort would provide the opportunity for real engagement in the ‘national community’ once the war was over. More than 15 million Russians served in the armed forces during the war, and the direct engagement of so many people in the conflict extended its impact into every corner of the empire. Soldiers’ families received state aid, while those disabled in the war would receive pensions and, for soldiers who were killed, the question of memorials quickly came to the fore. The Society for RemembrancewasestablishedinApril1915andrewardingandcommemorating Russia’s soldiers, Stockdale argues, was a central way in which common ground could be established right across the empire. In trying to cement the ‘sacred union’, the regime also tried to identify groups — such as Russia’s German population — that could be used as scapegoats who could be blamed for the shortcomings in the war effort. But this focus on internal betrayal proved to have fatal consequences for the Romanov regime: as Stockdale emphasizes, it was the imperial family that became the eventual target for accusations...

October Revolution and Soviet Class Struggle Policy in Kyrgyzstan

In the middle of the XIX century, the territory of contemporary Kyrgyzstan was conquered by the Tsarist Russia. Later, in 1917, as a result of the October Revolution, the Tsarist regime was replaced by the Soviet rule. In the territory of Kyrgyzstan, it was established firstly in the southern and western regions of the country, such as Suluktu and Kyzyl-Kiya, Osh and Talas, where the largest industrial enterprises, mines, railway junctions and most of the workers and soldiers were concentrated. However, already by the mid 1918, the Soviet government managed to spread its power to the entire region of Kyrgyzstan.
 In 1924, the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, established on April 30, 1918, was reorganized into a new administrative division. As the part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), on October 24, 1924 the Kara Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was formed. On May 25, 1925 the Kara Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was renamed into the Kyrgyz Autonomous Region. Then on February 01, 1926 it was restructured into the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On December 05, 1936 it became a separate constituent republic of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) known as the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic. Along with other 15 Soviet Socialist states, Kyrgyzstan had been the member of the USSR for about 70 years, from 1919 till 1991.
 The current paper focuses on the processes of social transformation under the Soviet regime, especially the implementation of class struggle policy and its impact on Kyrgyzstan. In comparison with the interventions from the Tsarist Russia, the social transformation process undertaken under the Soviet system was quite different. In the territory of the Kyrgyz traditional society, the Tsarist Russia made only some social reorganization, but the Soviets brought radical changes in to the socio-political organizations of the Kyrgyz people. The paper seeks to understand how the Soviet Union tried to reconstruct the Kyrgyz society during the 1920s and 1930s. In addition, the paper will analyze the methods and mechanisms of the social transformation processes and the measures used by the Soviet government in their socio-political ‘battles’ against the local elites, and the influence of the new system on the existing socio-economic stratification in the context of the Kyrgyz society. During the Soviet period the prevalent scientific vision about the major historical events of the time was based on the Communist ideology. Therefore, the main aim of the paper is to analyze and describe an objective overview of the history of Soviet class struggle policy. The paper is based on the research of local archival documents, published sources and oral materials.

A Horse Derby, A Missed Connection, and Hiking through the Alps: John Dewey's 1928 visit to the Soviet Union

After December 6, 1917, the government of the United States led by President Woodrow Wilson decided not to recognize the new government of Russia, which was led by the Bolshevik Party. Some of the reasons for this lack of recognition came from the Bolshevik government’srefusal to honor prior debits owed by the Tsarist government and the seizure of American property. The next three presidents would continue this policy.1 For the next sixteen years, many Americans visited and wrote about the Soviet Union. Amongst those visitors was a delegation of twenty-five who visited the Soviet Union in the summer of 1928. Their stated purpose was to,“study methods of public instruction in Soviet Russia this summer.” 2 The most influential amongst the twenty-five was John Dewey, a professor of philosophy at Colombia University and one of the leading educational reformers in the United States. In the time during and after this trip Dewey wrote a series of articles for the “New Republic” and later collected these articles andplaced them in his book, Impressions of the Revolutionary World.3 This book also dealt with his travels to China in 1920, Turkey in 1924, and Mexico in 1926. This book does not tell the full story of the trip. By analyzing his letters that he sent during this time, one can recreate a partial itinerary of his daily activities and those that he met with. Those letters also reveal that this trip influenced not only the twenty-five educators from the United States but also had an impact on Soviet educators because they had the ability to finally meet the man that they had studied for so long. The United States Department of State was also interested in this trip and used it to learn more about the Soviet Union. The Department of State was also dealing with anticommunism at this time and this caused Dewey’s trip to be closely monitored. The New York Times and other newspapers reported on this trip and the aftermath of this trip can be seen through these reports. This trip impacted not only those within the Soviet Union but also the State Departments and the American public’s view of the Soviet Union.

СОСЛОВНО-ПОЗЕМЕЛЬНЫЕ ОТНОШЕНИЯ В ДАГЕСТАНЕ ВО ВТОРОЙ ПОЛОВИНЕ XIX - НАЧАЛЕ XX В.

The article examines class and land relations in Dagestan in the middle of the XIX century on the eve of the reforms that were carried out by the government, as well as the class structure. The measures of the tsarist government on changing the estate-land system in Dagestan in the XIX century are shown. Relying on archival and other sources the author describes the social and legal status of different categories of the peasantry and class and land relations in certain parts of Dagestan. The paper analyzes the feudal duties, which were performed by dependent peasants in return for land, and land rights of the upper class. Having analyzed documentary sources the author concludes that private (mulk) landownership was widely practiced in Dagestan long before its attachment to Russia.

Shaping Up the Stubborn: School Building and “Discipline” in Early Modern Russia

This article uses the genealogy of school building in Russian school as a lens to explores the articulation of “disciplinary” sensibilities and practices in the empire in the first half of the eighteenth century. While in pre‐Petrine and Petrine Russia school building as an instrument of control over students remained unarticulated and “invisible” to policymakers, by the time of Catherine II’s accession it was perceived as a tool of power central for organizing surveillance over students and manipulating their space and time in order to achieve internalization of prescribed models of behavior and thought. By exploring the shifting meanings of school building in educational projects, regulations, and official correspondence across the decades the article highlights the role of “administrative entrepreneurs” in promoting the new, “disciplinary” understanding of special arrangements. On the other hand, it illustrates the ways in which these religiously‐inspired techniques were domesticated and “secularized” in the Russian context by actors who reinterpreted the school building and ascribed a variety of different meanings to it.

Diplomacy, Ceremonial, and Culture in Early Modern Russia

Diplomacy, Ceremonial, and Culture in Early Modern Russia Damien Tricoire Jan Hennings, Russia and Courtly Europe: Ritual and Culture of Diplomacy, 1648–1725. 310 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. ISBN-13 978-1107050594. $99.99. Christian Steppan, Akteure am fremden Hof: Politische Kommunikation und Repräsentation kaiserlicher Gesandter im Jahrzehnt des Wandels am russischen Hof (1720–1730) (Actors at a Foreign Court: Political Communication and the Representation of Imperial Envoys in a Decade of Change at the Russian Court [1720–30]). 546 pp. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2016. ISBN-13 978-3847104339. €65.00. Recently, diplomatic history has undergone a profound renewal thanks to four approaches.1 First, historians have explored the history of agents of foreign policy. Diplomats are not considered mere executors of state policy anymore but agents in their own right. Scholars analyze their strategies, careers, and (patronage) networks.2 Historians now also take into consideration the importance of subaltern and informal actors: interpreters, secretaries, women, [End Page 445] or churchmen.3 Second, diplomacy draws the attention of scholars interested in the perception of cultural difference and the shaping of identities. Processes of “othering” are being explored, even if many scholars maintain that the perception of the “Other” was usually not as monolithic as Edward Said suggested in his Orientalism.4 Third, diplomacy is now studied as a set of transcultural practices. According to this stream of scholarship, diplomacy was less a product of existing cultural patterns than a transcultural framework shaped by actors of different cultures. Usually, conflicts were not the product of intercultural misunderstanding but rather a sign that agents of foreign policy shared a common symbolic system.5 Fourth, the study of rituals and ceremonials in early modern times, which has been especially intensive in the German historical literature and has greatly contributed to the renewal of political history in recent decades, has also contributed to the renewal of diplomatic history.6 It is now widely accepted that ceremonial was not a matter of secondary importance but constitutive of the hierarchies between princes. Jan Hennings’s Russia and Courtly Europe and, to a lesser extent, Christian Steppan’s Akteure am fremden Hof make contributions to this fourth stream of scholarship. They offer insights into the way rituals shaped politics in the 17th and 18th centuries by integrating Russia further into European diplomatic history. In addition, Hennings’s book deepens our knowledge on the history of diplomacy as a transcultural practice, and Steppan’s gives some insights into the agency of diplomats. Both monographs focus on Russian-European diplomatic contacts in early modern times. However, they are very different in character. Steppan’s [End Page 446] focus is much narrower than Hennings’s: it explores the history of the Viennese envoys and ambassadors in Petersburg in one decade only, whereas Hennings presents case studies of diplomatic contacts in Moscow, London, Paris, and Vienna from 1645 to 1717. Steppan’s book, an only marginally revised version of his PhD dissertation, barely presents general analyses and theses about European and Russian diplomacy. It offers instead a “thick description” of diplomatic events in the relations between the imperial courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg during the 1720s. By contrast, Russia and Courtly Europe offers a broader not only temporal and spatial, but also thematic and theoretical perspective. Hennings studies the discourse on Russia of scholars specializing in ceremonial questions and analyzes how Russian diplomacy was organized (Steppan does neither). Above all, Hennings asks questions of critical importance for Russian history: to what extent was Muscovite Russia part of the European state system? How far can we speak of a Russian cultural otherness, and did this otherness influence relations between emperors? Hennings’s central thesis is that Muscovite diplomacy was not as foreign as scholarship generally argues. Steppan’s Akteure am fremden Hof aims to consider envoys as agents of international politics and explore the conditions that shaped their actions and communication strategies. It closely follows the reports of imperial diplomats and adds information from other diplomatic reports, descriptions of ceremonies, and the Vienna court newspaper. The result is a classical study of diplomacy enriched by an analysis of symbolic communication. The central hypothesis of Akteure am...

Juniper: From Medicine to Poison and Back Again in 17th-Century Muscovy

JuniperFrom Medicine to Poison and Back Again in 17th-Century Muscovy Rachel Koroloff (bio) Early modern Russians were well aware of the natural world that surrounded them. They knew that plants, minerals, and animals had value, were abundant in their own realm, and could be traded domestically and exported internationally to generate profit. Imports like tobacco, exports like fur, and transport goods like rhubarb were all natural resources that early modern Russians sought to control. But how did Russians in the 17th and 18th centuries go about doing this? How did they come to know the natural world, and what ultimately did they make of it? This article attempts to answer these questions by focusing on the tree known as juniper, an evergreen that grows widely throughout the northern hemisphere. In the 17th and 18th centuries juniper was so abundant it was hardly worth cultivating or exporting, but so valuable a medicine was it that an entire state apparatus, that of the juniper obligation (mozhzhevel´ovaia povinnost´) sprang up to secure great quantities of it for Moscow’s medical community. This essay traces the collection, processing, distribution, and use of common juniper or Juniperus communis to illustrate the infrastructures that gave Muscovite officials and their Western doctors a steady supply of the important plant. The comparison in the second half of the essay between common juniper and its close relative, savin or Juniperus sabina, suggests one of the more intangible ways in which those infrastructures influenced Muscovite knowledge of the plant world. Ultimately a somewhat liminal object, juniper was one of many plants that comfortably inhabited both sides of the boundaries that Muscovites routinely drew between magic, [End Page 697] medicine, and poison. From collection, processing, and distribution to use and belief, juniper in its many forms helps uncover some of the ways that Russians came to know the natural world in the 17th and 18th centuries. The focus in recent years on the natural world in early modern Russian history has resulted in new work looking at nature across the Muscovite and imperial periods using a largely top-down, market-centered approach. The most prominent among these works demonstrate just how thoroughly Muscovites understood the natural world in distinctly mercantilistic terms, an attitude exemplified by state monopolies on such natural resources as potash, caviar, and rhubarb and quasi-monopolistic state control over the fur and tobacco trades.1 From the 17th century on, it was becoming increasingly clear to some that the products of the forest and the field constituted a deep well of resources that if properly tapped could free the Muscovite state from specie-draining imports. Domestic production if suitably robust would result in an increasingly favorable balance of trade and ultimately the greater integration of Russia into the wider global economy.2 It was in this spirit that Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, for instance, explored establishing domestic silk manufacture along the southern Volga River—importing mulberry trees, silk worms, and silk “masters” from across the Caspian Sea.3 Medicinal plants were also considered valuable resources, and as Matthew Romaniello has demonstrated with rhubarb, doctors and naturalists in Russian employ were sent to investigate medicines as fair afield as China in what was “not a disinterested pursuit but rather Russian ‘bioprospecting,’ a search for materia medica that could become valuable commodities.”4 In addition to this literature putting “nature” into a mostly economic framework, another recent body of literature sheds a great deal of light on [End Page 698] Muscovy and the natural world by detailing instead how various aspects of nature served as symbols of divine order and acted as repositories for popular belief and folk traditions. Valerie Kivelson’s studies of maps, religious imagery, and witchcraft trials are perhaps the best example of this approach.5 Equally important, however, is the recent work of Russian- and German-speaking historians who, using a combination of techniques from linguistics, folklore, and anthropology reanimate the dynamic and meaningful associations early modern Russians derived from the natural world that surrounded them.6 All these studies have opened and enriched the discussion of the natural world in early modern Russia by starting with the economic and the cultural systems that...

It was Deliberate Way to a Famine

The article analyses one of the most grievous chapters in the history of Ukrainian nation – the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–1933. It is referred to the massive famine that was deliberately organized by the Soviet authorities, which led to many millions hu-man losses in the rural area in the territory of the Ukrainian SSR and Kuban. Planned confiscation of grain crops and other food products from villagers by the representatives of the Soviet authorities led to a multimillion hunger massacre of people in rural area. At the same time, the Soviet government had significant reserves of grain in warehouses and exported it abroad, since without collectivization and Ukrainian bread it was impossible to launch the industrialization that demanded Ukrainian grain to be contributed to foreigners in return for their assistance. Ukrainian grain turned into currency. The authorities of that time refused to accept foreign assistance for starving people and simultaneously banned and blocked their leaving outside the Ukrainian SSR. The so-called “barrier troops” were organized in order to prevent hungry people from flee to the freedom and not let anyone enter the starving area. The situation is characterized by the fact that the idea and practice of barrier troops tested on Ukrainians were lately used on the battlefields of the World War II. Among three Holodomors, the government did not conceal only the first one (1921–1922), as it could be blamed on the tsarist regime that brought the villagers to the poverty, and post-war devastation. The famine of 1946–1947 was silenced, but the population generally perceived it as a clear consequence of two horrendous misfortunes – the World War II and dreadful drought. Especially rigid was position of the government regarding the very fact of genocide in 1933–1933 not only its scale. The author emphasizes that the Great Famine is refused to be admitted not because it was unreal but to avoid the assessment of its special direction against Ukraine and Ukrainian nation, saying instead that it affected the fate of all nations. The article describes the renovation of internal passports system and the obligatory registration at a certain address that took place in the USSR in 1932. Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR stipulated the fact that people living in rural areas should not obtain passports. Therefore, collective farmers of the Ukrainian SSR actually did not obtain passports. The villagers were forbidden to leave collective farms without signed agreement with the employer, that deprived them of the right to free movement. Even after the introduction of labour books the collective farmers did not obtain them either. The author describes the destruction of the collective farms system that his parents dedicated their entire labour life to. Instead of preserving productive forces, material and technical base and introducing new forms of agrarian sector management and the whole society to the development path, this system has been thoughtlessly destroying and plundering. Keywords: Holodomor, Ukrainian villagers, collectivization, genocide, confiscation, barrier troops.

1897: The Year of Jewish Revolutions?

1897: The Year of Jewish Revolutions? Derek Jonathan Penslar 1897 marked the beginning of twin Jewish revolutions, one national and one social, that started out separately but took on aspects of each other as they drew closer together over time. The one was embodied in the Zionist Organization, which held its first congress in Basel in August of that year. The other was promoted by the General Jewish Labor Bund in Russia and Poland, which was founded in Vilna in October. Neither revolution appeared out of the blue, unfolding rather over a long arc of time. Across the nineteenth century, Jews had figured in radical politics throughout Europe, particularly in Russia from the late 1870s. Jewish nationalism assumed many forms, some of them oriented toward Palestine, such as the Hovevei Tsion (Lovers of Zion) societies, which sprang up throughout Eastern Europe and Romania after 1882, and which were organized into an international federation in 1884. Just as Jewish radicalism and nationalism preceded 1897, so did they continue to develop outside the framework of the Bund and the Zionist Organization. Why, then, should we look to 1897 as a turning point in the history of both Jewish nationalism and radicalism? In that year, both the Zionist Organization and the Bund formalized and pushed forward previously inchoate revolutionary political projects, and within a few years they would become the most dynamic Jewish political institutions in Eastern Europe, with global influence. Their ideologies were mutually influential: Zionism quickly attracted socialists, and over time the Bund cautiously embraced the goal of Jewish autonomism in a postrevolutionary Russian federation. Many of the competing forms of fin de siècle Jewish political life such as territorialism and middle-class, nonsocialist diaspora nationalism responded to, and in turn influenced, Zionism and Bundism. The word "revolution" is multivalent, and its meaning and consequences for Zionism and Bundism are not identical. The word is commonly associated with upheaval and the attempted supplanting of one [End Page 520] regime (be it political, social, or epistemic) by another. The revolutionary project of the Bund is obvious enough, as it sought to overthrow the Tsarist regime and construct a social democratic Russian federation. The extent to which that project succeeded, however, is debatable. The Tsarist regime fell, but the Bund did not bring about the revolutions of 1905 or 1917. During the early years of the Soviet Union, Jews enjoyed the fruits of emancipation, but in time they fell victim to oppression and persecution. The Bund's legacy was, therefore, ambiguous. Jews in North America still continue to identify more with the left than the right, but "left" almost always means liberalism, not radicalism, which is the province of small but vocal congeries of Jewish intellectuals, often cloistered in colleges and universities. Zionist achievements have been more concrete than those of the Bund. A Jewish state was established in 1948. That state has recently marked its seventieth anniversary, and it has deeply affected Jewish consciousness across the globe. In most accounts of the history of Zionism, and in Jewish popular memory, the 1897 congress and its convener, Theodor Herzl, are accorded pioneering roles in the Zionist project. Herzl himself contributed to that perception, writing in his diary shortly after the conference's conclusion, "In Basel I founded the Jewish state."1 Did he? The congress was indeed a momentous event, but its participants were divided about its goals and cautious in formulating them. Its platform, thenceforth known as the Basel Program, aspired to the "creation of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine to be secured by public law."2 This program represented a compromise between those who wanted a clear declaration of aspirations for statehood and those who feared that such boldness would endanger the status of the movement in Tsarist Russia and of those Jews living under Ottoman rule in Palestine. In the debate that preceded the adoption of the platform, some delegates demanded assurance that this "home" would be intended only for those Jews who did not wish to remain in their current lands of residence. Orthodox rabbis demanded that the movement limit itself to the improvement of the Jews' political status and not engage in religious affairs...

Subversive Patriotism: Aleksei Suvorin, Novoe Vremia, and Right-Wing Nationalism during the Russo-Japanese War

This essay explores the particular type of nationalism expressed by the publisher Aleksei Suvorin and his newspaper, Novoe vremia, during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 and the ways it led to conflicts with some of the empire's highest-ranking officials. Suvorin and his newspaper depicted the war as both a linchpin of Russian national and international prestige and a project of national reinvigoration. Novoe vremia's articles, Suvorin's diary, and the files of the imperial censorship bureau show that these ultranationalist sentiments ultimately pitted the usually loyal newspaper against a tsarist government that could not deliver victory. The back and forth between the newspaper and foreign ministry in particular demonstrates the virulent international focus of the newspaper's rhetoric about the war. Moreover, it shows the seriousness with which the regime took these ideas and Suvorin's position as an arbiter of public opinion.

TÜRKİSTAN MUHTARİYETİNİN YIKILIŞININ 80. YIL DÖNÜMÜ MÜNASEBETİYLE SOVYET RUSYANIN 1937-1938 YILLARINDA TÜRKİSTANDA UYGULADIĞI KIZIL TERÖR VE SONUÇLARI

Due to its geopolitical and geostrategical location in the centre of the Great Silk Road and its underground and surface resources, Turkestan was a region that foreign states want to obtain throughout history. Thus, there have been many occupation wars along history, for centuries, and Turkestan Turks have always been able to protect their independence. Nevertheless, in the second half of the 19th century, Turkestan was occupied by Tsarist Russia. After the occupation of Turkestan, the Russian Empire declared Turkestan as its own colony, and exploited its wealth to a maximum extent. For decades, Russians have tried to Russianize and Christianize Turkestani people by sending scientists and missionary pastors. Turkestan Turks, unable to withstand this pressures, had rebelled against the tsarist government many times for the sake of their belief, language and freedom. But every time their uprisings had been/were repressed with heavy losses. This situation changed with the negative end of the I. World War and with the Bolshevik Revolution. Turkestanis, who were fooled by the leaders of Bolshevik movement Lenin and Stalin with the promise of giving "political independence" to Turkestan, played a key role in collapse of the Tsarist Empire. After the 1917 revolution, the Turkestani intellectuals founded a state called "Turkestan Autonomy" in the same year. The Soviets declared this as a betrayal to themselves and by shedding blood of many people destroyed "Turkestan Autonomy". When Turkistanis realized that political rights can not be obtained with political way, then they fought against the Soviet Union throughout the Turkestan by resorting to the armed struggle. These warriors called as "Basmachi", and their movement called as "Basmachi Movement" by the Soviets. The National Struggle Movement of Turkestan, which was deprived of material, military and political support, was liquidated by the Red Army in the mid-1930's. After the armed struggle of the Turkestanis was supressed by order of the chief of USSR Stalin, poets, writers, rich people, scientists, politicians, governors…etc. in short, the whole entellectual staff of Turkestan were liquidated by Russian espionage organization NKVD. The peak point of these liquidations has occured in 1937-1938 years. Hundreds of thousands Turkestanies were either executed or exiled to frosty Siberia labour camps with false accusations as: pan-Turkist, pan-Islamist, religionist, chauvinist, spy, traitor, enemy of the people. This policy that followed by the Soviet government was called by the historians as "Red Terror", "Katağanlık", "Repression" and "State Terror".