Ab Imperio

SUMMARY: The article traces the evolution of subjecthood's semantics in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century using the example of the so-called Manchurian Wedge in the Amur region. By the Treaty of Aigun, signed in 1858, in the area where the Zeya River merges with the Amur near Blagoveshchensk, Russia acquired a long-established agglomeration consisting of "the sixty-four villages," which was part of the Manchu Eight Banner military-civilian organization and remained under the jurisdiction of the Qing authorities. Back in 1858, the Russian side was quite satisfied with this traditional imperial – multilevel, contextual, and mosaic – sovereignty in the region. However, the intertwining of territory, property, and subjecthood set processes in motion that led to the substitution of imperial subjecthood for de facto national citizenship, which allowed no special arrangements or exceptions. The newly arrived Russian colonists had no idea about the established informal arrangements regarding the land use in the region, and the Manchus had a vague idea about the new settler villages' boundaries. This led to frequent land conflicts that took on an international character since they had to be settled through negotiations between the local Russian and Qing authorities. Systematic mapping of the Manchurian Wedge in the 1870s–1880s and the growing trend among the Russian colonists toward the registration of land in private ownership with detailed cadastral maps of individual plots stimulated Russian settlers' subjectivity. Now they were defending their private homesteads and coveting the Manchurian land in their own interests while continuing to act as representatives of the Russian state. They found themselves in the role of citizens representing an ethnoconfessional nation and determining state policy in the region, as well as colonialists interested in expelling the local noncitizen population – simply put, they turned into settler colonialists. This transformation culminated in the Blagoveshchensk massacre of 1900, when, amid moral panic over the Boxer Rebellion in Manchuria, Russian settlers carried out a brutal ethnic cleansing of the Manchurian Wedge. They killed or expelled the inhabitants of the sixty-four villages and seized their land. Резюме: Статья прослеживает эволюцию категории подданства в России во второй половине XIX в. на примере так называемого "Маньчжурского клина" в Приамурье. По Айгунскому договору 1858 г. в районе слияния Зеи и Амура около Благовещенска на российской территории оказалась давно сформированная агломерация "шестьдесят четыре деревни", входящая в систему маньчжурской военно-гражданской организации "восьми знамен" и остававшаяся в юрисдикции цинских властей. В 1858 г. российскую сторону вполне устраивала традиционная имперская многоуровневость, контекстуальность и мозаичность суверенитета в регионе. Однако переплетение территории, собственности и подданства запустило процессы, приведшие к подмене имперского подданства фактически национальным гражданством, не допускающим никаких исключений. Новоприбывшие российские колонисты не имели представления о существовавших в регионе неформальных договоренностях, касавшихся землепользования, а маньчжуры не очень представляли себе границы владений новых поселений. Это вело к систематическим земельным конфликтам, которые приобретали дипломатический характер, коль скоро регулировались путем переговоров местных российских и цинских властей. Картографирование Маньчжурского клина на протяжении 1870–1880-х гг. и нарастающая тенденция к оформлению земли в частную собственность с детальным кадастровым оформлением придали субъектность российским подданным. Теперь они отстаивали личную территорию и зарились на маньчжурскую в собственных интересах, продолжая, однако, выступать в роли представителей российского государства. Фактически, они оказались в роли граждан, представляющих этноконфессиональную нацию и определяющих государственную политику в регионе, а также колонизаторов, заинтересованных в изгнании местного населения – неграждан ( settler colonialists ). Кульминацией этой трансформации стала Благовещенская резня 1900 г., когда, в обстановке моральной паники из-за Боксерского восстания в Маньчжурии, российские поселенцы произвели жестокую этническую чистку Маньчжурского клина. Они убили или изгнали жителей шестидесяти четырех деревень и присвоили себе их землю.

Stephanie Ziehaus

Ab imperio

The Manchurian Wedge: Settler Colonialism, Subjecthood, and Land Use in the Russian Imperial Far East

满洲楔子：俄罗斯帝国远东地区的殖民主义、臣民身份与土地利用

SUMMARY: This essay is a contribution to the discussion forum "Mainstream Narratives of Soviet History and the Laughter of Surprise," framed as responses by literary scholars, historians, and political scientists to Sheila Fitzpatrick's essay "Soviet History as Black Comedy." Benjamin Nathans reviews genres that have been used to narrate Soviet history, such as irony and tragedy, and shows that black comedy alone fosters irreverence and cognitive distance from the Soviet project. It builds a bridge between emic and etic interpretations of Soviet culture. But these functions of black comedy, Nathans argues, are older than the Soviet period. The prominence of these functions during the late Soviet era exposes its specificity vis-à-vis earlier periods. Furthermore, insiders and outsiders (like Fitzpatrick) found the Soviet experience funny for different reasons. Finally, black humor persists in Putin's Russia. Nathans concludes with the question of whether what we have understood as Soviet is, in fact, Russian or universal. Резюме: Это эссе является частью форума "Мейнстримные нарративы советской истории и смех от удивления," в котором литературоведы, историки и политологи реагируют на эссе Шейлы Фитцпатрик "Советская история как черная комедия". Рассматривая основные жанры восприятия советского прошлого – иронию и трагедию, – Бенджамин Натанс отмечает, что только черная комедия поощряет непочтительность и когнитивную дистанцию от советского проекта. Она связывает эмическую и этическую интерпретацию советской культуры. Эти функции черной комедии были характерны и для предшествующих эпох. Их особая заметность в позднесоветский период лишь подчеркивает ее отличия от более ранних этапов советской истории. Кроме того, инсайдеры и аутсайдеры (такие как Фитцпатрик) находили советский опыт смешным по разным причинам. Наконец, черный юмор не исчез и в путинской России. Натанс заканчивает эссе вопросом: насколько то, что мы понимаем как советское, на самом деле является российским или даже универсальным?

Benjamin Nathans

The Longue Durée of Dark Humor

黑暗幽默的长久历史

Reviewed by: Russian International Relations in War and Revolution, 1914–22 by David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye et al. David Rainbow (bio) David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Oleg Budnitskii, Michael Hughes, and David MacLaren McDonald (Eds.), Russian International Relations in War and Revolution, 1914–22. Book 2: Revolution and Civil War (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2021). 416 pp. ISBN: 978-089357-437-6. This is an outstanding collection of essays about international relations during the Russian Revolution and Civil War. It is book 2 of volume 8 (out of ten volumes so far in print) in the series Russia's Great War and Revolution. Book 1 of volume 8 considers international relations during the first three years of World War I, whereas book 2, under review here, considers the time period from the outbreak of war through the end of the Russian Civil War, and, in a few cases, well into the 1920s. The topics covered include diplomacy, the League of Nations, aristocratic culture, refugee crises, major treaties, the creation of the Communist International, and more. As nearly every chapter shows, the collapse in Russia and its consequences are difficult to make sense of without taking stock of myriad connections across time and space, the years of global war, diplomatic negotiations, and the interests of actors and institutions within and beyond the borders of the disintegrating Russian Empire. The book includes an introduction and two chronological sections: "Revolution (1917)," and "Civil War (1918–1922)." The introduction written by the series editors (Anthony Heywood, David MacLaren McDonald, and John W. Steinberg) explains the origins and aims of the series as a whole, which began in 2006. It provides a helpful framing for the present volume, as well as an introduction to readers who might not already know the truly vast thematic and geographical scope of the Russia's Great War and Revolution project. As the editors note, the volumes are not a "comprehensive narrative history" of Russia during the period. Rather, they introduce problems and topics animating much current scholarship, including many that have previously received less attention (e.g., borderlands, religion). This approach has made the series valuable to scholars, teachers, and students alike, particularly when coupled with the supplemental resources available through the project's website. Several contributions to the book explore the "diplomatic dance" (P. 5) between Russia and its allies that followed the collapse of the tsarist empire, then still at war with the Central Powers. Russia's allies of course sought to keep the Provisional Government in the war, [End Page 273] but were reluctant to push too hard having realized the depth of Russians' war-weariness evident in the revolutionary unrest from February on. For its part, Russia still depended greatly on foreign supplies of munitions and much else besides. Soon after the February Revolution, Michael Hughes suggests, "foreign policy had become perhaps the most controversial and divisive political issue facing Russia" (P. 8). There were conflicts within the Provisional Government, and between the government and the Soviet. Allies were also afraid to push the Bolsheviks too hard once they were in power. They did not want to provoke the new revolutionary government, as one Russian diplomat reported, "to take irreparable actions, such as pulling out of the war" (P. 170). Bolsheviks were united in their opposition to the war, but once in power faced the complicated task of negotiating the peace without much leverage. Everyone danced to one extent or another. A significant complication of Bolshevik policies was that diplomats who refused to follow directives from Trotsky, the new commissar of foreign affairs after October 1917, were effectively left representing a state that no longer recognized them, or one that no longer existed, depending on one's point of view. The activities of "Russia abroad" and its ambassadors are the subjects of several chapters in the book. Within days of the Bolshevik takeover, Trotsky fired a majority of the diplomatic corps and proceeded to implement a policy of publishing previously secret documents related to foreign governments (Pp. 32–33). Most Provisional Government or tsarist diplomats remained in their posts and continued their advocacy on behalf of "the Russian state." Once the Russian Civil War broke...

David Rainbow

Russian International Relations in War and Revolution, 1914–22 by David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye et al. (review)

《战争与革命中的俄罗斯国际关系，1914-22》，作者：大卫·席梅尔彭宁克·范德奥耶等（书评）

This review essay discusses Andrii Portnov's book Dnipro: An Entangled History of a European City (Academic Studies Press, 2022) that won the 2022 Ab Imperio Award for the best study in new imperial history and the history of diversity in Northern Eurasia up to the late twentieth century. The essay places the book in broader historiographic context.

Михаил Гаухман

Переплетенная история города в стране с переплетенной историей

交织历史之国中的城市交织历史

Oksana Dudko shares her experience of teaching Ukrainian history in Canadian universities during Russia's aggression. She notes the fundamental difference between students in Ukraine and students in Canada, many of whom take a class in Ukrainian history having little prior knowledge about the country. So, whereas in Ukraine, critically thinking university lecturers concentrate on deconstructing the simplified national historical narrative that has been interiorized by students in secondary school, in Canadian classrooms professors have to offer a coherent historical narrative that includes advanced methodological considerations. Another challenge is the dearth of reading materials. The available collections of primary sources translated into English are Russo-centric both in terms of document selection and the translation of key terms and concepts. Dudko stresses the importance of contemporary artistic sources, including visual ones, for expanding students' understanding of Ukraine. She also emphasizes the advantage of Ukraine's stateless status throughout much of its history and its fluctuating territorial boundaries for teaching modern postnational and post-state history, unconstrained by the traditional narrative of the nation-state.

Oksana Dudko

Teaching Ukrainian History in Canada

在加拿大教授乌克兰历史

SUMMARY: Commemorating Alla Zeide (1941–2024), a literary scholar and student of Russian culture, this archival publication presents a fragment from her diary of January 1990. This document is her self-portrait but it is also a snapshot of a generation and a social type. Zeide writes about the trauma of her Soviet Jewishness, which she experienced most acutely during what she called her "personal Jewish pogrom" in school at the peak of the late Stalinist antisemitic campaign. She also contemplates the highly censored family memory of the first generation of Soviets, including her parents born in the 1910s, so that she learned only bits and pieces about her immediate ancestors. Резюме: Эта архивная публикация призвана почтить память Аллы Зейде (1941–2024), литературоведа и исследователя российской культуры. Публикуемые фрагменты ее дневника за январь 1990 г. можно рассматривать как автопортрет автора, но также и моментальный снимок целого поколения и социального типа. Зейде пишет о травме своего советского еврейства, наиболее остро пережитой ею во время того, что она назвала своим "личным еврейским погромом" в школе на пике позднесталинской антисемитской кампании. Она также размышляет о жесткой цензуре семейной памяти первого советского поколения, включая ее родителей, родившихся в 1910-х годах, из-за чего ей была известна лишь отрывочная информация о своих предках.

Alla Zeide

From the Diary, January 1990

来自日记，1990年1月

Николай Глибищук

“Молчать теперь невозможно…” Борьба за правду о Кронштадтском восстании 1921 Под ред Д. Иванова, М. Цовмы (review)

“现在沉默已不可能……” 关于1921年克朗施塔特起义真相的斗争 由D. 伊万诺夫和M. 佐夫姆编辑（评论）

Reviewed by: Eighteenth-Century Ukraine: New Perspectives on Social, Cultural, and Intellectual History ed. by Frank Sysyn et al. Lucien Frary (bio) Frank Sysyn, Volodymyr Sklokin, Zenon E. Kohut, and Larysa Bilous (Eds.), Eighteenth-Century Ukraine: New Perspectives on Social, Cultural, and Intellectual History (Montreal, Edmonton: McGill-Queen's University Press and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2023). 648 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-0-2280-1699-1. This timely volume features recent trends in the historiography of eighteenth-century Ukraine. The distinguished editors bring together twenty specialists (mostly in English translation) in a state-of-the-subject compendium on military and political history, society and identity, religion and culture, demographics and disease. The collection stirs debate about the periodization (deemed "always provisional") of this pivotal moment in Eurasian history and provides new perspectives for the comparative study of empire generally. Sharply argued and often innovative, these studies suggest that the time is right for a comprehensive synthesis of early modern Ukrainian history.1 In the introduction, the editors review the topics and sources engaging researchers of eighteenth-century Ukraine, especially since the end of the Soviet Union. Highlighting recent advances in scholarship, they divide the book into four parts: "Cossack Autonomies and Their Demise," "Society, Economy, and Demographics," "Church, Culture, and Education," and "Political and Historical Thought," each containing several concise, well-documented chapters. Geographic knowledge of the Eurasian steppe expanded with the clash of empires and resulted [End Page 187] in the production of maps. Kyrylo Halushko begins the volume with an expert summary of the cartographic work done by travelers who helped situate "the country of the Cossacks" as a politonym on maps of Europe. Maps served as tools of administrative integration, propaganda and legitimacy, and the next chapter, by Volodymyr Kravchenko, explores the "peculiar East-Slavic terminological labyrinth" (P. 58) that constitutes the symbolic geography of the Russian empire. Kravchenko demonstrates the fluidity and instability that characterize both Ukrainian self-identity and the place of Ukraine on the mental maps of educated Russians. As the Russian state advanced, the elite sought symbols to adorn its edifice. Oleksii Tolochko reports on the discovery of Kyiv as a center of archaeological pilgrimage (dubbed both the "Russian Jerusalem" and the "Slavic Pompeii") and historical consciousness among the people of "Rus'," "Great Russia," "New Russia," "Little Russia," and "Ukraine." Empire-building required Empress Catherine II to innovate when dealing with the Sloboda and those in charge of it. Volodymyr Sklokin charts the activity of Evdokim Shcherbinin, the leader of an "enlightened" commission that portrayed the abolition of Ukraine's autonomy as a civilizing act. Shcherbinin employed rhetoric that appealed to the "people" and sought their approval for protection from corrupt Cossack starshyna and clergy. The fluid movement of armies and populations during the era facilitated the spread of disease. The outbreak of bubonic plague in 1770–1771 in Kyiv provides the setting for Oksana Mykhed's chapter on border security and medical reforms: the problems unleashed by the plague actually helped catalyze the centralization and integration of new territories and people. Although the history of bureaucracy may seem colorless, Oleksandr Pankieiev draws on archival material to show how the stationing of hundreds of local officials in steppe Ukraine led to the creation of a permanent, loyal class of individuals willing to support and strengthen the Russian Empire on the ground. Vadym Adadurov concludes the first section with a contribution on Napoleon's Russian campaign, which reveals the remarkable loyalty toward tsarist Russia (and animosity toward pro-French Poland) of the nobility and commoners of the Little Russian gubernia. Romanticized portraits of chivalrous heroes on horseback notwithstanding, the freewheeling lifestyle of the Cossacks became legendary at this time. Hetmanate politics provides the focus of Viktor Horobets's archival-rich chapter on the efforts of St. Petersburg to regulate the democratic traditions of the Cossack military and the complex [End Page 188] interplay between ordinary soldiers, townspeople, and starshyna during the free elections of military fellows (tovarystvo). Next, Oleksii Sokyrko investigates the controversial Hetmancy of Kyrylo Rozumovs'kyi, whose sweeping military reforms promoted fighting efficiency while localizing identity and incorporating officers into a Malorossian Table of Ranks. A companion piece...

Lucien Frary

Eighteenth-Century Ukraine: New Perspectives on Social, Cultural, and Intellectual History ed. by Frank Sysyn et al. (review)

十八世纪的乌克兰：社会、文化与思想史新视角，弗兰克·西辛等编（书评）

Reviewed by: Cosmopolitan Spaces in Odesa: A Case Study of an Urban Context ed. by Mirja Lecke and Efraim Sicher Vladyslava Moskalets (bio) Mirja Lecke and Efraim Sicher (Eds.), Cosmopolitan Spaces in Odesa: A Case Study of an Urban Context (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2023). 220 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 979-8-88719-256-7. Odesa (Odessa in Russian, odes in Yiddish) is one of the most mythicized cities whose seemingly contradictory traits attract literary scholars and historians of Eastern Europe. The myth of Odesa includes the idea of it as a multicultural space, the capital of Jewish nationalism, which was also known as a site of interethnic violence. The edited volume under review is dedicated to the image of Odesa as a cosmopolitan center and to the myth built on this image. The book consists of eleven chapters written by historians, literary scholars, and sociologists, who explore the question of the interrelationship between the cosmopolitan atmosphere in the city, political movements, and the latter-day instrumentalization of the memory of Odesa. The book contributes to the existing historiography of the city, taking into account the research of scholars such as Steven Zipperstein, Patricia Herlihy, Evrydyki Syfneos, Ilya Gerasimov, and Shachar Pinsker.1 Although in [End Page 215] the anthology genre it is difficult to make any big statements, some of the authors' observations open up new ways of contemplating the phenomenon of Odesa. The book was published in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which lent contemporary relevance to the question of a multicultural and transnational image of the city. As the editors mention in the introduction, the memory of a multicultural and cosmopolitan city still influences modern Odesa's self-imagery and politics. Although the title of the volume suggests research on urban structures and social relations, most chapters cover topics in literary studies or intellectual history. A discussion of urban social space can be found mainly in the volume's introduction. There, the editors cite Evrydiki Syfneos's research on imperial Odesa, which revealed the city's "residential porosity" and the absence of ethnic neighborhoods as chief factors stimulating interethnic contacts.2 Following Henri Lefebvre, the editors understand urban space as socially constructed (P. 8).3 In their application to the actual geography of the city or social practices, these general principles are not elaborated much throughout the book. Thus, surprisingly, the introduction does not refer to Shachar Pinsker's study of Odesa cafés and their role in the development of Jewish modern culture.4 The Odesan urban space is mentioned in Anat Rubinstein's chapter, "Cosmopolitan Soundscape of Odesa," that looks into musical venues, such as choral synagogues, as meeting places for Jews and non-Jews (P. 150). Otherwise, contributors to the volume are more concerned with the imaginary literary spaces and intersectional cosmopolitanism of Odesa's intellectuals. Since most chapters deal with the economic and even more often intellectual elites, offering nuanced analysis of their social composition, one wonders whether the notorious Odesan cosmopolitanism was entirely an elite phenomenon. Robert Weinberg in his chapter dedicated to anti-Jewish pogroms in Odesa in 1905 mentions Russian day laborers and factory workers as "the least cosmopolitan of residents of Odesa," but he does not elaborate on this thesis (P. 122). Chronologically, the book pays more [End Page 216] attention to the imperial period as the most productive for intercultural contacts, especially given Odesa's special economic role. By contrast, the early Soviet period of partially independent Ukraine, the subsequent Soviet decades, and the formation of the Soviet myth of Odesa remain barely studied. Efraim Sicher contributes a chapter on Isaak Babel's Odessa Stories of the 1920s; and Aber Polesie and Amelia M. Glaser present chapters discussing language practices and the myth of the city's cosmopolitanism in modern Odesa. Cited in the book's title, "cosmopolitanism" seems to be differently understood by the contributors to the volume. The editors, Mirja Lecke and Efraim Sicher, explain in the introduction that in its original Kantian understanding, cosmopolitanism is not suitable for the imperial context, but they have decided to keep the term since it was used by Odesan intellectuals (P. 6). Guido Hausmann in...

Vladyslava Moskalets

Cosmopolitan Spaces in Odesa: A Case Study of an Urban Context ed. by Mirja Lecke and Efraim Sicher (review)

敖德萨的全球性空间：城市背景下的个案研究，由米尔贾·莱克和埃弗拉姆·西彻编辑（书评）

SUMMARY: The article discusses the two latest novels by the modern Russian classic writer Vladimir Sorokin: Legacy (2023) and especially Doctor Garin (2021). Based on his interpretation of Sorokin’s aesthetical and philosophical program developed elsewhere, Ilya Gerasimov reads Doctor Garin as a literary work that did not go as planned. Dismayed by the unexpected result, Sorokin wrote Legacy as a follow-up meant to explicate Doctor Garin ’s message and explain it to himself and his readers. Therefore, Legacy develops to the extreme only one aspect of the 2021 novel. According to Gerasimov, Doctor Garin was planned as a postmodernist satire on the Russian intelligentsia, modernist literature, and the very society of modernity that produced them. Doctor Garin and his miraculous method of hypermodernism is an obvious reference to Aleksey Tolstoy’s The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (1926–1927) about an impostor and adventurist seeking world domination. Sorokin mocks the modernist belief in “certain schemes to improve the human condition” (to quote this belief’s famous academic critic, James C. Scott) and Russian modernist literature, from Vladimir Mayakovsky to Vasily Aksenov, as well as modern governments’ failed political leadership. For over half of the book, Sorokin sustains his original rational design, channeling all his trademark spontaneous prose into “subtexts” – more or less extensive citations of imagined books or diaries introduced in the main text every 20–30 pages of the book. However, at some point, these subtexts disappear, and the protagonist fully immerses himself in Sorokin’s irrational narrative driven by the logic of language rather than ideological considerations. This change of narrative mode transforms everything – from the protagonist’s personality to the novel’s central message. Gerasimov argues that Sorokin chose time as a central argument of his antimodernist criticism, vindicating postmodernism as a condition of multiple isolated chronotopes, with each subculture or identity group living in a unique temporality of its own – contrary to modernism’s belief in progress and the normative universality of time. However, the spontaneous narrative of the novel’s second half produces a different effect. It models social reality as multidimensional and yet fundamentally interconnected. In any of the very distinctive chronotopes, social reality acquires its stable characteristics only situationally in the eyes of an active subject rather than by some preset, anonymous and objective factors, such as temporality or identity. This message is communicated by the narrative independently of its author, who attempted to produce a different conclusion in the follow-up novel Legacy . Inadvertently, instead of affirming a postmodernist worldview – relativist but static – and mocking the old modernism and some hypothetical “metamodernism” anticipated since the late 2010s, Sorokin outlined a program for a truly new, “post-postmodernist” modernism. It combines postmodernism’s multifaceted, multidimensional view of reality with modernism’s ability to produce a coherent narrative anchored in an unequivocal moral position. It embraces multiple temporalities, but also the idea of the future as a condition radically different from the past and present. Gerasimov uses the difference in conceptualizing temporality as the main criterion differentiating the modernist and postmodernist epistemes, in any of their aesthetic versions, as well as the hypothetical new modernism as spontaneously outlined in Sorokin’s Doctor Garin .

短名
Journal Impact	0.25
国际分区	HISTORY(Q1)
期刊索引	中科院 2 区

ISSN	2164-9731, 2166-4072
h-index	13
国内分区	历史学(2区)历史学历史学(3区)

涉及主题	政治学历史法学哲学计算机科学地理社会学考古政治艺术经济
出版信息	出版商: Ab Imperio，出版周期: ，期刊类型: journal，开源期刊: 否
基本数据	创刊年份: 2013，原创研究文献占比: 100.00%，自引率:25.00%， Gold OA占比: 0.00%

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