Social Identity in Imperial Russia

Social Identity in Imperial Russia PDF

Author: Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1997-10-01

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1501757571

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A broad, panoramic view of Russian imperial society from the era of Peter the Great to the revolution of 1917, Wirtschafter's study sets forth a challenging interpretation of one of the world's most powerful and enduring monarchies. A sophisticated synthesis that combines extensive reading of recent scholarship with archival research, it focuses on the interplay of Russia's key social groups with one another and the state. The result is a highly original history of Russian society that illuminates the relationships between state building, large-scale social structures, and everyday life. Beginning with an overview of imperial Russia's legal and institutional structures, Wirschafter analyzes the "ruling" classes, and service elites (the land-owning nobility, the civil and military servicemen, the clergy) and then examines the middle groups (the raznochintsy, the commercial-industrial elites, the professionals, the intelligentsia) before turning to the peasants, townspeople, and factory workers. Wirtschafter argues that those very social, political, and legal relationships that have long been viewed as sources of conflict and crisis in fact helped to promote integration and foster the stability that ensured imperial Russia's survival.

Between Tsar and People

Between Tsar and People PDF

Author: Edith W. Clowes

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-02-09

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0691225265

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This interdisciplinary collection of essays on the social and cultural life of late imperial Russia describes the struggle of new elites to take up a "middle position" in society--between tsar and people. During this period autonomous social and cultural institutions, pluralistic political life, and a dynamic economy all seemed to be emerging: Russia was experiencing a sense of social possibility akin to that which Gorbachev wishes to reanimate in the Soviet Union. But then, as now, diversity had as its price the potential for political disorder and social dissolution. Analyzing the attempt of educated Russians to forge new identities, this book reveals the social, cultural, and regional fragmentation of the times. The contributors are Harley Balzer, John E. Bowlt, Joseph Bradley, William C. Brumfield, Edith W. Clowes, James M. Curtis, Ben Eklof, Gregory L. Freeze, Abbott Gleason, Samuel D. Kassow, Mary Louise Loe, Louise McReynolds, Sidney Monas, John O. Norman, Daniel T. Orlovsky, Thomas C. Owen, Alfred Rieber, Bernice G. Rosenthal, Christine Ruane, Charles E. Timberlake, William Wagner, and James L. West. Samuel D. Kassow has written a conclusion to the volume.

Social Identities in Revolutionary Russia

Social Identities in Revolutionary Russia PDF

Author: Madhavan K. Palat

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2001-06-18

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1403919682

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This volume explores the crisis of identity that faced Russia during and after the Revolution. The essays discuss how a re-evaluation of national identity challenged traditional institutions and ideas, having a direct bearing upon personal identity. Topics include the Stolypin agrarian reform, the fracturing of the Intelligentsia and Church reform. Also included in this volume is Khlebinkov's manifesto An Indo-Russian Union published here in Russian with a new English translation.

For the Common Good and Their Own Well-Being

For the Common Good and Their Own Well-Being PDF

Author: Alison K. Smith

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-10-13

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0199978182

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Every subject of the Russian Empire had an official, legal place in society marked by his or her social estate, or soslovie. These sosloviia (noble, peasant, merchant, and many others) were usually inherited, and defined the rights, opportunities, and duties of those who possessed them. They were also usually associated with membership in a specific geographically defined society in a particular town or village. Moreover, although laws increasingly insisted that every subject of the empire possess a soslovie "for the common good and their own well-being," they also allowed individuals to change their soslovie by following a particular bureaucratic procedure. The process of changing soslovie brought together three sets of actors: the individuals who wished to change their opportunities or duties, or who at times had change forced upon them; local societies, which wished to control who belonged to them; and the central, imperial state, which wished above all to ensure that every one of its subjects had a place, and therefore a status. This book looks at the many ways that soslovie could affect individual lives and have meaning, then traces the legislation and administration of soslovie from the early eighteenth through to the early twentieth century. This period saw a shift from soslovie as above all a means of extracting duties or taxes, to an understanding of soslovie as instead a means of providing services and ensuring security. The book ends with an examination of the way that a change in soslovie could affect not just an individual's biography, but the future of his or her entire family. The result is a new image of soslovie as both a general and a very specific identity, and as one that had persistent meaning, for the Imperial statue, for local authorities, or for individual subjects, even through 1917.

Imperial Russia

Imperial Russia PDF

Author: Jane Burbank

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1998-09-22

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780253212412

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"On the basis of the work presented here, one can say that the future of American scholarship on imperial Russia is in good hands." —American Historial Review " . . . innovative and substantive research . . . " —The Russian Review "Anyone wishing to understand the 'state of the field' in Imperial Russian history would do well to start with this collection." —Theodore W. Weeks, H-Net Reviews "The essays are impressive in terms of research conceptualization, and analysis." —Slavic Review Presenting the results of new research and fresh approaches, the historians whose work is highlighted here seek to extend new thinking about the way imperial Russian history is studied and taught. Populating their essays are a varied lot of ordinary Russians of the 18th and 19th centuries, from a luxury-loving merchant and his extended family to reform-minded clerics and soldiers on the frontier. In contrast to much of traditional historical writing on Imperial Russia, which focused heavily on the causes of its demise, the contributors to this volume investigate the people and institutions that kept Imperial Russia functioning over a long period of time.

Structures of Society

Structures of Society PDF

Author: Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter

Publisher: Russian Studies Series

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 9780875801902

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A category of persons best defined by what they were not, the raznochintsy--"people of various ranks" or "people of diverse origins"--inhabited the shifting social territory between nobles and serfs in preindustrial Russia. Neither merchants nor clergy nor military servicemen, they may have been by occupation administrative clerks, teachers, artists, retired soldiers, or street vendors. In official society, they were outsiders. In this first major study of the raznochintsy, Wirtschafter draws on a rich array of archival, legal, administrative, and public sources to show how this important but elusive category functioned in Russian society from the time of Peter the Great to the late nineteenth century. Challenging the traditional image of a rigidly hierarchical social structure, her conclusions indicate that there was much more mobility within imperial Russian society than historians have previously thought. Developing a representational interpretation, Wirtschafter examines the raznochintsy as a legal, social, and cultural category. Focusing on the usages, meanings, and dynamic evolution of the category, she analyzes the origins of the raznochintsy as well as larger theoretical issues of social categorization and delimitation. Her depiction of a society where social boundaries were porous and social definitions fundamentally indeterminate provides a new perspective on some of the most stubbornly problematic themes in imperial Russian history.

Social Identity and Russian Cultural Politics

Social Identity and Russian Cultural Politics PDF

Author: Allison Yenkin Katsev

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13:

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"This dissertation investigates the evolution of categories of social identity in the first half of the nineteenth century by exploring the changing ways that three consecutive rivals for the Russian history chair at Moscow University -- M.T. Kachenovskii (1775-1842), M.P. Pogodin (1800-1875) and S.M. Solovʹev (1820-1879) -- defined themselves and each other."--Page iv.

Jews and the Imperial State

Jews and the Imperial State PDF

Author: Eugene M. Avrutin

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780801448621

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"This absorbing book is a fine contribution to the growing literature on official identification and the administrative life of the state, including its characteristic product, the paper document."--Jane Caplan, University of Oxford

Russia's Identity in International Relations

Russia's Identity in International Relations PDF

Author: Ray Taras

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 0415520584

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Bringing together leading scholars from Russia and outside experts on Russia, this book looks at the difference between the image Russia has of itself and the way it is viewed in the West. It discusses the historical, cultural and political foundations that these images are built upon, and goes on to analyse how contested these images are, and their impact on Russian identity. The book questions whether differing images explain fractiousness in Western-Russian relations in the new century, or whether distinct 'imaginary solitudes' offer a better platform from which to negotiate differences. Providing an innovative comparative study of contemporary images of the country and their impact, the book is a significant contribution to studies of globalisation and international relations.

Imperial Odessa: Peoples, Spaces, Identities

Imperial Odessa: Peoples, Spaces, Identities PDF

Author: Evrydiki Sifneos

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-09-25

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9004351620

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A new "peripatetic" approach that discovers the space of the city and at the same time reveals its dynamic as a fin-de siècle east Mediterranean port-metropolis, through the activities of its ethnic groups that contributed to the socio-economic transformations that germinated within the political changes.