Download or read book Empire of Nations written by Francine Hirsch and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state. In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers—who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context—produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force," and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR." In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories . Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.
Download or read book The Affirmative Action Empire written by Terry Dean Martin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text provides a survey of the Soviet management of the nationalities question. It traces the conflicts and tensions created by the geographic definition of national territories, the establishment of several official national languages and the world's first mass "affirmative action" programmes.
Download or read book The Tsar The Empire and The Nation written by Darius Staliūnas and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-30 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays addresses the challenge of modern nationalism to the tsarist Russian Empire. First appearing on the empire’s western periphery this challenge, was most prevalent in twelve provinces extending from Ukrainian lands in the south to the Baltic provinces in the north, as well as to the Kingdom of Poland. At issue is whether the late Russian Empire entered World War I as a multiethnic state with many of its age-old mechanisms run by a multiethnic elite, or as a Russian state predominantly managed by ethnic Russians. The tsarist vision of prioritizing loyalty among all subjects over privileging ethnic Russians and discriminating against non-Russians faced a fundamental problem: as soon as the opportunity presented itself, non-Russians would increase their demands and become increasingly separatist. The authors found that although the imperial government did not really identify with popular Russian nationalism, it sometimes ended up implementing policies promoted by Russian nationalist proponents. Matters addressed include native language education, interconfessional rivalry, the “Jewish question,” the origins of mass tourism in the western provinces, as well as the emergence of Russian nationalist attitudes in the aftermath of the first Russian revolution.
Download or read book The Last Empire written by Robert Conquest and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical background, the present position, and the future prospects of both the non-Russian and Russian peoples are considered in their many aspects, as are the maneuvers of the Communist regime to suppress, appease, or make use of them. The future of the Soviet Union, and thus of the world, depends greatly on whether, and how, the Communist leadership, whose own ideology has lost most of its appeal, can adjust to a new surge of national feeling. The authors examine the question from many points of view, in a broad conspectus of political, cultural, economic, demographic, and other approaches.
Download or read book The Russian Empire written by Andreas Kappeler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "national question" and how to impose control over its diverse ethnic identities has long posed a problem for the Russian state. This major survey of Russia as a multi-ethnic empire spans the imperial years from the sixteenth century to 1917, with major consideration of the Soviet phase. It asks how Russians incorporated new territories, how they were resisted, what the character of a multi-ethnic empire was and how, finally, these issues related to nationalism.
Download or read book Russian Citizenship written by Eric Lohr and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first book to trace the Russian state’s citizenship policy throughout its history, Lohr argues that to understand the citizenship dilemmas Russia faces today, we must return to the less xenophobic and isolationist pre-Stalin period—before the drive toward autarky after 1914 eventually sealed the state off from Europe.
Download or read book A State of Nations written by Ronald Grigor Suny and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collected volume, edited by Ron Suny and Terry Martin, shows how the Soviet state managed to create a multiethnic empire in its early years, from the end of the Russian Revolution to the end of World War II. Bringing together the newest research on a wide geographic range, from Russia to Central Asia, this volume is essential reading for students and scholars of Soviet history and politics.
Download or read book Rome An Empire of Many Nations written by Jonathan J. Price and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-21 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A panoramic and colourful view of the many ethnic identities, languages and cultures composing the Roman Empire.
Download or read book The Bolsheviks and the Russian Empire written by Liliana Riga and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new interpretation of the Russian Revolution, finding that nearly two-thirds of the Bolsheviks were ethnic minorities.
Download or read book Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires written by Aviel Roshwald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires is a wide-ranging comparative study of the origins of today's ethnic politics in East Central Europe, the former Russian empire and the Middle East. Centred on the First World War Era, Ethnic Nationalism highlights the roles of historical contingency and the ordeal of total war in shaping the states and institutions that supplanted the great multinational empires after 1918. It explores how the fixing of new political boundaries and the complex interplay of nationalist elites and popular forces set in motion bitter ethnic conflicts and political disputes, many of which are still with us today. Topics discussed include: * the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire * the ethnic dimension of the Russian Revolution and Soviet state building * Nationality issues in the late Ottoman empire * the origins of Arab nationalism * ethnic politics in zones of military occupation * the construction of Czechoslovak and Yugoslav identities Ethnic Nationalism is an invaluable survey of the origins of twentieth-century ethnic politics. It is essential reading for those interested in the politics of ethnicity and nationalism in modern European and Middle Eastern history.
Download or read book Nationalizing Empires written by Stefan Berger and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in Nationalizing Empires challenge the dichotomy between empire and nation state that for decades has dominated historiography. The authors center their attention on nation-building in the imperial core and maintain that the nineteenth century, rather than the age of nation-states, was the age of empires and nationalism. They identify a number of instances where nation building projects in the imperial metropolis aimed at the preservation and extension of empires rather than at their dissolution or the transformation of entire empires into nation states. Such observations have until recently largely escaped theoretical reflection.
Download or read book The Romanov Empire and Nationalism written by Alekse? I. Miller and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian historiography has focused on the power of the central state. The national historiographies of the peoples that were once part of the empire, on the other hand, concentrate on their own nation, and the empire for them is only a burdensome context in which a particular nation was "waking up," and fighting for independence. Miller addresses the fabric of interaction between the imperial authority and local communities in the Romanov empire. How did the authorities structure the space of the empire? What were the economic relations between the borderlands and the centre? How was the use of different languages regulated? How did the central authorities and local officials implement policies regarding different population groups? How did the experience, acquired in particular borderlands, influence the policies elsewhere--among others--through officials who often changed their place of service during their careers? How did the local elites and communities react to the policies of the imperial authorities? How did they uphold their special interests if the empire encroached on them, but also--how did they collaborate with the empire and how did they use imperial resources for local interests?
Download or read book Lost Kingdom written by Serhii Plokhy and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a preeminent scholar of Eastern Europe and the prizewinning author of Chernobyl, the essential history of Russian imperialism. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine -- only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian nation. In Lost Kingdom, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues that we can only understand the confluence of Russian imperialism and nationalism today by delving into the nation's history. Spanning over 500 years, from the end of the Mongol rule to the present day, Plokhy shows how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin exploited existing forms of identity, warfare, and territorial expansion to achieve imperial supremacy. An authoritative and masterful account of Russian nationalism, Lost Kingdom chronicles the story behind Russia's belligerent empire-building quest.
Download or read book Romanland written by Anthony Kaldellis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading historian argues that in the empire we know as Byzantium, the Greek-speaking population was actually Roman, and scholars have deliberately mislabeled their ethnicity for the past two centuries for political reasons. Was there ever such a thing as Byzantium? Certainly no emperor ever called himself “Byzantine.” And while the identities of minorities in the eastern empire are clear—contemporaries speak of Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, and Muslims—that of the ruling majority remains obscured behind a name made up by later generations. Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that Byzantium’s ethnic majority, no less than the ruler of Constantinople, would have identified as Roman. It was an identity so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans would eventually adopt it. But Western scholarship has a long tradition of denying the Romanness of Byzantium. In Romanland, Anthony Kaldellis investigates why and argues that it is time for the Romanness of these so-called Byzantines to be taken seriously. In the Middle Ages, he explains, people of the eastern empire were labeled “Greeks,” and by the nineteenth century they were shorn of their distorted Greekness and became “Byzantine.” Only when we understand that the Greek-speaking population of Byzantium was actually Roman will we fully appreciate the nature of Roman ethnic identity. We will also better understand the processes of assimilation that led to the absorption of foreign and minority groups into the dominant ethnic group, the Romans who presided over the vast multiethnic empire of the east.
Download or read book Empire written by D. C. B. Lieven and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the Tsarist and Soviet empires of Russia, Lieven reveals the nature and meaning of all empires throughout history. He examines factors that mold the shape of the empires, including geography and culture, and compares the Russian empires with other imperial states, from ancient China and Rome to the present-day United States. Illustrations.
Download or read book The Last Empire written by Serhii Plokhy and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe offers “a stirring account of an extraordinary moment” in Russian history (Wall Street Journal) On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades -- with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world. As prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. Bush, in fact, was firmly committed to supporting Gorbachev as he attempted to hold together the USSR in the face of growing independence movements in its republics. Drawing on recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, Plokhy presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months, providing invaluable insight into the origins of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the outset of the most dangerous crisis in East-West relations since the end of the Cold War. Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Choice Outstanding Academic Title BBC History Magazine Best History Book of the Year
Download or read book From Empire to Nation State written by Yan Sun and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many scholars perceive ethnic politics in China as an untouchable topic due to lack of data and contentious, even prohibitive, politics. This book fills a gap in the literature, offering a historical-political perspective on China's contemporary ethnic conflict. Yan Sun accumulates research via field trips, local reports, and policy debates to reveal rare knowledge and findings. Her long-time causal chain of explanation reveals the roots of China's contemporary ethnic strife in the centralizing and ethnicizing strategies of its incomplete transition to a nation state—strategies that depart sharply from its historical patterns of diverse and indirect rule. This departure created the institutional dynamics for politicized identities and ethnic mobilization, particularly in the outer regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. In the 21st century, such factors as the demise of socialist tenets and institutions that upheld interethnic solidarity, and the rise of identity politics and developmentalism, have intensified these built-in tensions.
