HIS 1286H: Categories of Imperial Russian Social History

Course Description:

In this course students will examine the different schemes of categorizing the population of Imperial Russia: by ethnicity, by religion, by social class or estate, and eventually by profession or nation. It will begin with an event from the end of the Imperial period, the first national census of 1897, then look back to see how the categories included in that event developed over the preceding centuries. It will examine how social estates developed, and how alternate forms of social stratification did or did not develop to challenge those estates. It will look at the role religion played in categorizing Russian society, and the ways that the Russian state viewed religion synonymously with nationalism. And it will investigate the ways that ethnic and national differences became more recognized as important sources of social division, too, related to, and yet separate from these other forms.

Marking Scheme:

1. 3 3-4 page book reviews (15% each)
2. 1 15-20 page review essay or research proposal due April 10 (40 %)
3. class participation 15 %)

Each week, students will read first an article on a particular theme, and second, one of three possible monograph readings. The discussion will include reports on the monographs, as well as general discussion of the theme of the week based on all the readings.

Three times over the course of the term students will turn in a 3-4 page book review of that week's reading in lieu of the brief summary (one of these must be handed in more than a week before the drop deadline).

The final project is either a review essay or a research proposal. The former should examine a school of thought, or a topic, at some length. You’re welcome to include monographs you’ve read as part of the class, but the review essay must go beyond them (and certainly beyond any writing you’ve already done for the class). The latter should suggest a new research project, and include both a discussion of the relevant historiography and a discussion of possible sources to use to investigate the project.

Schedule:

January 10: Introduction

January 17: Gender

• Article: Michelle Lamarche Marrese, “ ‘The Poetics of Everyday Behavior’ Revisited: Lotman, Gender, and the Evolution of Russian Noble Identity,” Kritika 11, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 701-39
• Books:
  • Richard Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia
  • Michelle Lamarche Marrese, A Woman’s Kingdom: Noblewomen and the Control of Property in Russia, 1700-1861
  • Christine Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia

January 24: Family

• Article: Barbara Alpern Engel, “In the Name of the Tsar: Competing Legalities and Marital Conflict in Late Imperial Russia,” JMH 77, no. 1 (March 2005): 70-96
• Books:
  • John Randolph, The House in the Garden: The Bakunin Family and the Romance of Russian Idealism
  • Priscilla Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History
  • Mary Cavender, Nests of the Gentry: Family, Estate, and Local Loyalties in Provincial Russia

January 31: Estate: General Thoughts (this week read all three articles only)

• Threee articles:
  • Gregory L. Freeze, “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” American Historical Review 91, no. 1 (February 1986): 11-36
  • Alfred J. Rieber, “The Sedimentary Society,” in Edith Clowes et al., eds., Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity
  • Michael Confino, “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm: Reflections on Some Open Questions,” Cahiers du Monde russe 49, no. 4 (October-December 2008): 681-700

February 7: Estates: Peasants

• Article: Julia Herzberg, “Vanya’s Cabin: Narratives of Serfdom in the Peasant Biographies of Tsarist Russia,” JGO 58, no. 1 (January 2010): 24-51
• Books:
  • Corinne Gaudin, Ruling Peasants: Village and State in Late Imperial Russia
  • Jane Burbank, Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905-1917
  • Yanni Kotsonis, Making Peasants Backward: Agricultural Cooperatives and the Agrarian Question in Russia, 1861-1914

February 14: Estates: Merchants and Middle Classes

• Article: M. K. Palat, “Casting Workers as an Estate in Late Imperial Russia,” Kritika 8, no. 2 (2007): 307-48
• Books:
  • David Ransel, A Russian Merchant’s Tale
  • Alfred J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia
  • Edith Clowes, et al., eds., Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia

(Reading Week)

February 28: Religion: Orthodoxy

• Article: Christine Worobec, “Lived Orthodoxy in Imperial Russia,” Kritika 7, no. 2 (2006): 329-50
• Books:
  • Scott Kenworthy, The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism, and Society after 1825
  • Chris J. Chulos, Converging Worlds: Religion and Community in Peasant Russia, 1861-1917
  • Laurie Manchester, Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia

March 6: Religion: Diversity

• Paul Werth, “Empire, Religious Freedom, and the Legal Regulation of ‘Mixed’ Marriages in Russia,” JMH 80, no. 2 (2008): 296-31
• Books:
  • Robert P. Geraci, Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia
  • Barbara Skinner, The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia
  • Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia’s Empire in the South Caucasus

March 13: Birth language (nationality)

• Article: Alison K. Smith, “National Cuisine and Nationalist Politics: V. F. Odoevskii and ‘Doctor Puf,’ 1844-45,” Kritika 10, no. 2 (2009): 239-60
• Books:
  • Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia
  • Jeff Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923
  • Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863-1914

March 20: Literacy: society and culture

• Article: James von Geldern, “Life In-Between: Migration and Popular Culture in Late Imperial Russia,” RR 55, no. 3 (1996): 365-83
• Books:
  • Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literautre, 1861-1917
  • Mark Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination: Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910-1925
  • Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia

March 27: Position/Profession

• Article: William Pomeranz, “‘Profession or Estate?’ The Case of the Russian Pre-Revolutionary Advokatura,” SEER 77, no. 2 (1999): 240-68
• Books:
  • Barbara T. Norton, An Improper Profession: Women, Gender, and Journalism in Late Imperial Russia
  • Christine Ruane, The Empire's New Clothes
  • Nancy Mandelker Frieden, Russian Physicians in an Era of Reform and Revolution, 1856-1905

April 3: Aftermath: Revolution

• Article: Joshua Sanborn, “Unsettling the Empire: Violent Migrations and Social Disaster in Russia during World War I,” JMH 77, no. 2 (2005): 290-324
• Books:
  • Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I
  • Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921
  • Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens in World War I

April 10: Final Papers Due