As I mentioned in my last post, I study Imperial Russian History. It's a topic that I totally accidentally happened into studying, largely prompted by a conversation I had with one of my advisors colleagues during my 2005 study abroad/Russian immersion in St. Petersburg. We met in what Americans might call a 'campy' restaurant, themed heavily in images and avatars of bears and just off the ever-busy Nevskii Prospect. A wood-carved bear greeted me at the entrance, a stuffed bear stared me down while I ate my soup, and I could spy the outlines of bears in the forest, captured in illustration across the room, when my advisors friend explained to me the breakdown of my field. He asked what period I wished to study and what exactly I wanted to research. Having, more or less, blundered into graduate school during my final semester of undergraduate study, I had never considered these questions and could only offer a vague answer.
That was okay, he said, and then informed me that the study of Russian history separated into roughly three periods; Early/Medieval, Imperial, and Soviet/Post-Soviet. Too many scholars in the Soviet Period, he said, would make it difficult to acquire a job. Early/Medieval was interesting but required learning Church Slavonic, a prospect that seemed impossible considering I was just beginning to study the actual Russian language itself. Imperial, he said, might be the best fit. I took his advice to heart, and began to focus my attention on the middle period when I returned home.
Imperial history, for me, really is a satisfying study. There is a large availability of documents, thanks in part to a larger and more educated bureaucracy that existed for the years I study, roughly 1700-1917. The empire contained numerous ethnic minorities and diverse ecological zones that, in turn, impacted the character of life for the inhabitants within. The Russian state underwent several changes during this period, moving beyond the status of regional power to that of a respected player in world politics. Yet, despite the increasing role Russia played in Western European history it came under constant scrutiny, both internal and external, for the central themes of its identity. Here was a state whose culture straddled the border between 'East' and 'West', buttressed throughout its existence by a powerful, anti-liberal, centralized government that nonetheless spawned several movements with the goal of reconciling the cultural differences between Western ideas/values and the ever evolving idea of Russian identity. The legacy of this evolution reverberates in Russia today.
Laura Engelstein's latest work, Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia's Illiberal Path, provides an explanatory theme of this process in a collection of seven essays, plus introduction, using a mix of approaches related to the Cultural/Intellectual fields of history. Reading it reminded me of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna by Carl Schorske in that you have no reason to read the essays in order, other than the fact the Ms. Engelstein has divided the collection into three sub-themes. As an instructor, I find collections such as these helpful when trying to provide students with a reading assignment that is, in itself, a contained unit. Chapters in a progressive narrative approach reward the reader for sustained diligence, but it has been my experience that unless the text is of an especially engrossing nature it can be difficult to maintain interest. Engelstein's work provides one the opportunity to pull out a key essay that allows the reader to engage with the topic in a format that has a clear beginning, middle and end. The other big plus in my book is the use of footnotes; endnotes in a printed text almost guarantee that the references contained within will almost certainly never be inspected and students should become accustomed to checking the footnotes on interesting points contained within the essay. Besides, footnotes are where authors can be snarky or witty even if the text itself is more formal.
Engelstein explores the paradoxical relationship Russia's proudly anti-liberal autocracy held with, then, radical liberal movements created by the societal shockwave of the Napoleonic Wars. As noted in her introduction, liberalism conceived a new model of the nation, one based on an increasing importance accorded to the individual and where the ideas of sovereignty were redefined delegating some power to the new concept of 'society'. This model, if one could call it that, held no universal form and took shape in a variety of distinct configurations across Europe. One of the central tenets of a liberal nation was the cohesion achieved among similar peoples in an "illusion of unity", a concept that held little currency for rulers of multi-ethnic empires. However, the autocracy soon learned that it ignored the "illusion" at its own peril, as the power of the nation-state threatened to pull apart empires whose populations were diverse and not at all common. Autocrats of Russia required a unifying myth of their own and thus selectively took from Western trends; they codified laws, introduced trial by jury and increased opportunities for the promotion of cultural and economic development. Yet the central government never gave up censorship and still relied upon the supreme, if arbitrary, rule of the Tsar.[i]
In this vein of developing institutions and attitudes, exemplified best in the classic Slavophile vs. Westernizer debates, Engelstein investigates, as she puts it, the tensions between the liberal paradigm and the conservative anti-liberal alternative.[ii] The organization of the collections essays falls into three groups that explore these tensions. The first three essays represent aspects in law and legality that lent themselves to the westernizing urge of moderates. The next two, in turn, explore parallel efforts in the religious sphere to resist these westernizing movements by examining two contemporary intellectuals, Aleksei Khomsakov and Ivan Kireevski, and their attempt to find reason within an Orthodox framework. The last two chapters look at how Slavophiles contributed to the formulation of the ideal Russian nation, defined for them by the core characteristic of Orthodox belief.[iii]
I particularly enjoyed reading the first and third essays, dealing with Russia's weak commitment to the rule of law in both Imperial/Soviet frameworks and the desire of moderates in the judiciary, through the promotion of religious toleration, to reform the role religion played in society, respectively. Without going into too much theory, the first essay considers how the experience of Russia, an empire that combined liberal, anti-liberal and absolutist governing models, reconciles with Foucault's conception of how the liberalist 'rule of law' changed, for Western Europe at least, the apparatus of domination from compulsion to discipline as exercised by the newly empowered bourgeoisie. Engelstein interprets the contribution of liberalism as one that replaced the, "alliance between discipline and the administrative state with a configuration that frames the operation of discipline within the confines of the law."[iv] However, in the Russian experience, the Tsarist and later Soviet rulers took this conception in a new direction. Instead of invoking a "disciplinary society limited and controlled by the authority of the law", Russian rulers created a governing framework that eschewed the validity of 'legality' and sought control of various disciplines for their own use.[v] It is a fascinating read, one that really demonstrates how the distinct historical-geographical experience of Russia shaped governing models and expectations visible today.
The third essay investigates the role modernist efforts in the judiciary played in the debate on the role of religion in society and the correlative issue of religious tolerance. Eastern Orthodoxy, spread to the present day lands of Russia in the 9th century, served not only as a unifying force in the broader society and culture but also as a central pillar of the Tsarist regime. To be sure, the Orthodox Church's relationship with the Russian rulers was complex and only distantly mirrored that experienced by Western European nations and Roman Catholicism. The reformers highlighted in this essay sought not to remove religion from society but instead to change it into a more modern conception, in line with the models then emanating out of Western Europe. Efforts to reform religion in the judiciary, according to Engelstein, constituted an attempt by Russian intellectuals to create a space for 'civil society' to flourish, albeit one that did nothing to discount the absolutist nature of the larger government apparatus. Three key discussions are used for evidence in this tracing of opinions; the first showcases the discussions of the 1895 editorial commission charged with revising the criminal code, the second looks at the liberal jurisprudence work of Professor Mikhail Reisner, and the third considers the impact of the pre-1905 October Manifesto imperial decree of 17 April 1905 on religious tolerance. Taken together, the three vignettes demonstrate the alternating currents of thoughts, up to the near end of imperial rule, regarding one of the central tenants of Russian identity; religious belief.[vi]
I really enjoyed reading Slavophile Empire, as well as one of Engelstein's previous works, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom, that looks at the religious sect of the Skoptsy and their relation with the Russian government. Both provide readers with a means to understand some of the historical differences Russian people encountered in their imperial past and the connections those differences created in contemporary society today. If nothing else, Slavophile Empire demonstrates that the liberal values so often taken for granted in the making of our Western society not only penetrated Russian society but also forced appreciable change in their wake. This point alone should inform our opinion of the mobility of ideals, and the ultimate mutation those ideas undergo through the process of circulation.
Ultimately, I enjoy the work because it demonstrates the incredible depth available in the study of Imperial Russian history.
No comments:
Post a Comment