Russian borderland nationalists in the Tsarist Empire
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Russian borderland nationalists in the Tsarist Empire
Russian borderland nationalists in the Tsarist Empire
Research project
"Russians of all imperial borders, unite!"*
Russian borderland nationalists in the late Tsarist Empire (1905-1914)
Since the revolution of 1905, Russian nationalism had been gaining strength as a political force in the Tsarist Empire. At the same time, representatives of the okrainy, the border regions of the Russian Empire, gained increasing influence in nationalist circles in St Petersburg. Among other things, they made up a disproportionate share of the deputies of right-wing parties in the State Duma. Although the first local studies on these borderland nationalists are available, an analysis of their significance for the political life of the Russian capital before 1914 remains a research desideratum.
The project, led by Philipp Schedl therefore focuses on the political (self-)mobilisation of Russian nationalists from the imperial peripheries. It traces the rise of borderland nationalists in Russian local societies, analyses their strategies for translocal networking and determines their influence in the political forums in St Petersburg.
With this focus, the project intends to describe the transformation of the political structure in the Tsarist Empire in four dimensions. Firstly, the actors of local politicisation and their integral nationalist identity concepts are examined. Based on the case studies of Warsaw and Chișinău, local practices of nationalist community building will be identified and their central protagonists profiled.
Secondly, the project examines the forms of translocal political networking and the representation of interests in decision-making bodies of the imperial centre. It examines how spokespeople from the periphery created a larger borderland community, made okraina issues the subject of debates in the capital and influenced government action.
Thirdly, the project asks how the borderland activists succeeded in dominating the institutions and opinion forums in St Petersburg that saw themselves as "right-wing" in the narrower sense. After all, their ultimate hegemony was by no means a foregone conclusion in 1905: the rise of okraina activists in this heterogeneous milieu can be described as a tense process of "provincialisation".
Fourthly, the project sheds light on the nationalist imperial images and semantics that characterised the political discourse in the late Tsarist Empire as a whole. How, for example, did the borderland nationalists succeed in popularising an idea of the peripheries as okraina in the collective singular and in over-shaping and monopolising the content of terms such as "the Russian cause"?
Such a multi-layered approach makes it possible to redefine the significance of okraina debates in the context of the increasing nationalisation of the empire after 1905. The analysis of radicalisation dynamics on the imperial peripheries and their effects on capital city political forums also promises to provide suggestions for understanding centre-periphery relations in complex structures of colonial and great empires beyond the Romanov dynasty.
* "Русские люди всех окраин, соединяйтесь!" / "Russkie ljudi vsech okrain, soedinjajtes'!" in: Okrainy Rossii (1 September 1907), p. 1.
Publications at the end of project
Monographs and edited publications
Imperial Russian Rule in the Kingdom of Poland, 1864-1915, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021(upittpress.org/books/9780822947011/).
Pol'skie zemli pod vlast'ju Peterburga. Ot Venskogo kongressa do Pervoj mirovoj vojny [Poland under the rule of the tsars. From the Congress of Vienna to the First World War], Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, in the series Historia Rossica. Okrainy Rossijskoj imperii, 2020.(www.nlobooks.ru/magazines/neprikosnovennyy_zapas/134_nz_6_2020/article/23252/?sphrase_id=448685)
Rządy imperialne w Kraju Nadwiślańskim. Królestwo Polskie i cesarstwo rosyjskie (1864-1915), Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2016(www.wuw.pl/product-pol-5999-Rzady-imperialne-w-Kraju-Nadwislanskim-Krolestwo-Polskie-i-cesarstwo-rosyjskie-1864-1915.html).
Doomsday scenarios and visions of the future: Germany and Russia in the Fin de Siècle, thematic issue Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, edited with Peter Haslinger, 63:11 (2015).
Eliten im Vielvölkerreich: Imperiale Biographien in Russland und Österreich-Ungarn (1850-1918) / Elites and Empire: Imperial Biographies in Russia and Austria-Hungary (1850-1918), edited together with Tim Buchen, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015(www.degruyter.com/view/product/454997).
Imperial Biographies, Themenheft Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 40:1 (2014), www.vr-elibrary.de/toc/gege/40/1.
Imperiale Herrschaft im Weichselland: Das Königreich Polen im Russischen Imperium (1864-1915), Munich: Oldenbourg, in the series Ordnungssysteme - Studien zur Ideengeschichte der Neuzeit, 2014, www.degruyter.com/view/product/247946. Nominated by the Polish Association of Historians (Polskie Towarzystwo Historyczne) for the "Pro Historia Polonorum" award as the best foreign book on Polish history of the years 2012-17
Border crossers in multi-ethnic empires: Grenzziehungen und -überschreitungen in Russland und Österreich-Ungarn (1840-1918), edited together with Jörn Happel, Berlin: Metropol, 2011 (Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 59:5).
Essays
"What Is the "Russian Cause" and Whom Does It Serve? Russian Nationalists and Imperial Bureaucracy in the Kingdom of Poland", in: The Tsar, the Empire, and the Nation. Dilemmas of Nationalisation in Russia's Western Borderlands, 1905-1915, edited by Yoko Aoshima and Darius Staliūnas, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2021, pp. 67-109.
"Officials on the move. Zu Strukturen und Akteuren imperialer Herrschaft im ausgehenden Zarenreich", in: Migrationen im späten Habsburgerreich, edited by Carl Bethke, Tübingen: TVV-Verlag, 2020, pp. 101-131.
"Towards a new quality of statehood: Bureaucratisation and state-building in empires and nation states before 1914", together with Hannes Grandits and Pieter Judson, in The Routledge History Handbook of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, Vol. 2: Statehood, edited by Sabina Ferhadbegovic, Joachim von Puttkamer and Włodzimierz Borodziej, London: Routledge, 2020, pp. 41-114.
(https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-History-Handbook-of-Central-and-Eastern-Europe-in-the-Twentieth/Borodziej-Ferhadbegovic-Puttkamer/p/book/9781138301665)
"Činovniki v raz'ezdach. K voprosu o strukturach i dejstvijuščich licach imperskoj bjurokratii na zakate Rossijskoj imperii [Civil servants and mobility. On structures and persons of imperial bureaucracy in the late Russian Empire]", in: Istoričeskij kur'er, No.1 (2018), pp. 84-102.
"Between State-Building and Local Cooperation: Russian Rule in the Kingdom of Poland (1864-1915)", in: Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 19:2 (2018), pp. 385-416.
"Co-operation in conflict? The Tsarist Administration in the Kingdom of Poland between State Expansion and Social Activation (1863-1914)", in: Vom Vorrücken des Staates in die Fläche. Ein europäisches Phänomen des langen 19. Jahrhunderts, edited by Jörg Ganzenmüller and Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Cologne: Böhlau, 2016, pp. 35-64.
"Namiestnicy Królestwa Polskiego i generał-gubernatorzy warszawscy po powstaniu styczniowym (do 1914 roku)" [The imperial governors and the Warsaw governors-general after the January Uprising of 1863 (until 1914)], in: Wbrew królewskim aliansom. Rosja, Europa i polska walka o niepodległość w XIX wieku, edited by Łukasz Adamski and Sławomir Dębski, Warsaw 2016, pp. 355-391.
"The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Nationhood in the Russian Empire", in: Revolution, War and the Birth of State and Nation. Staatsbildung in Europa und den Amerikas 1770-1930, edited by Ewald Frie and Ute Planert, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016, pp. 193-210.
"Doomsday scenarios and visions of the future: Germany and Russia in the Fin de Siècle. Introduction", with Peter Haslinger, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 63:11 (2015), thematic issue, edited by Peter Haslinger and Malte Rolf, pp. 925- 929.
"Elites and their imperial biographies. Zur Einführung" / "Elites and Their Imperial Biographies. Introduction", with Tim Buchen, in: Eliten im Vielvölkerreich: Imperiale Biographien in Russland und Österreich-Ungarn (1850-1918) / Elites and Empire: Imperial Biographies in Russia and Austria-Hungary, 1850-1918, edited by Tim Buchen and Malte Rolf, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015, pp. 3-31.
"Imperial Biographies. Lebenswege imperialer Akteure in Groß- und Kolonialreichen (1850-1918) - zur Einleitung", in: Imperiale Biographien, edited by Malte Rolf, Themenheft Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 40:1 (2014), pp. 5-21.
"Bureaucracy and Mobility in Late Imperial Russia. Reflections on Elite Careering and Imperial Biographies in a Multiethnic Empire", in: Moskauer Vorträge zum 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, No. 16 (2013), edited by Ingrid Schierle (http://www.perspectivia.net/content/publikationen/vortraege-moskau/rolf_bureaucracy).
"Russification, depolonisation or internal state building? Konzepte imperialer Herrschaft im Königreich Polen (1863-1915)", in: Kampf um Wort und Schrift: Russifizierung in Osteuropa im 19.-20. Jahrhundert, edited by Zaur Gasimov, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012, pp. 51-88.
"Imperial Rule in Urban Space: Tsarist Officials and Urban Public Spheres in Warsaw (1870-1914)", in Russia's Imperial Power. Integrationsstrategien und ihre Reichweite in transnationaler Perspektive, edited by Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2012, pp. 123-153.
"Die Durchlässigkeit der Grenze: Einleitende Überlegungen zu Grenzgängern und ihren Lebenswelten in der späten Habsburger- und Romanow-Monarchie", in: Grenzgänger in Vielvölkerreichen: Grenzziehungen und -überschreitungen in Russland und Österreich-Ungarn (1840-1918), Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 59:5 (2011), thematic issue, edited by Malte Rolf and Jörn Happel, pp. 397-404.
"Russian rule in Warsaw: The Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral in the Conflict Space of Political Communication', in Beyond Tsarist Power. Dimensions of the Political in the Russian Empire 1800-1917, edited by Walter Sperling, Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2008, pp. 163-189.
"Der Zar an der Weichsel - Repräsentationen von Herrschaft und Imperium im fin de siècle", in: Imperiale Herrschaft in der Provinz. Representations of Political Power in the Late Tsarist Empire, edited by Jörg Baberowski, David Feest and Christoph Gumb, Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2008, pp. 145-171.