A study of the Russian Empire at the peak of its military power and success (1762-1825), this important book examines how a country with none of the obvious trappings of modernization was able to significantly expand its territory. Russia's military and naval victories culminated in the triumphal entrance of Russian forces into Paris in 1814 in celebration of the defeat of Napoleon. Hartley's treatment is wide-ranging and discusses many aspects of the nature of the Russian state and society-not merely issues such as recruitment, but also institutional, legal, and fiscal structures of the state, the unique nature of Russian industrialization and social organization at the urban and village level, as well as the impact on cultural life. She covers the reign of two of Russia's most prominent rulers: Catherine II (1762-1796) and Alexander I (1801-25). How could a country lacking modernized structures-political, institutional, social, fiscal, economic, industrial, and cultural-sustain this level of military effort and support the largest standing army in Europe? What impact did the strain of this commitment of men and money, including the invasion of 1812, have on the state and society-particularly on those who were either conscripted or the dependents they left behind? Despite the success of the Russian state, by 1825 the strains would become almost unsustainable.

This illuminating volume provides a new understanding of the subjective identity and public roles of Russia's Europeanized elite between the years of 1762 and 1825. Through a series of rich case studies, the editors reconstruct the social group's worldview, complex identities, conflicting loyalties, and evolving habits. The studies explore the institutions that shaped these nobles, their attitude to state service, the changing patterns of their family life, their emotional world, religious beliefs, and sense of time. The creation of a Europeanized elite in Russia was a state-initiated project that aimed to overcome the presumed "backwardness" of the country. The evolution of this social group in its relations to political authority provides insight into the fraught identity of a country developing on the geopolitical periphery of Europe. In contrast to postcolonial studies that explore the imposition of political, social, and cultural structures on colonized societies, this multidisciplinary volume explores the patterns of behavior and emotion that emerge from the processes of self-Europeanization. The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762–1825, will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in Russian history and culture, particularly in light of current political debates about globalization and widening social inequality in Europe.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the Russian elite assimilated the ideas, emotions, and practices of the aristocracy in Western countries to various degrees, while retaining a strong sense of their distinctive identity. In On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825, Andreas Schönle and Andrei Zorin examine the principal manifestations of Europeanization for Russian elites in their daily lives, through the import of material culture, the adoption of certain social practices, travel, reading patterns, and artistic consumption. The authors consider five major sites of Europeanization: court culture, religion, education, literature, and provincial life. The Europeanization of the Russian elite paradoxically strengthened its pride in its Russianness, precisely because it participated in networks of interaction and exchange with European elites and shared in their linguistic and cultural capital. In this way, Europeanization generated forms of sociability that helped the elite consolidate its corporate identity as distinct from court society and also from the people. The Europeanization of Russia was uniquely intense, complex, and pervasive, as it aimed not only to emulate forms of behavior, but to forge an elite that was intrinsically European, while remaining Russian. The second of a two-volume project (the first is a multi-authored collection of case studies), this insightful study will appeal to scholars and students of Russian and East European history and culture, as well as those interested in transnational processes.

Winner of the Heldt Prize for Best Book in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Women's and Gender Studies 2021 There was a discontent among Russian men in the nineteenth century that sometimes did not stem from poverty, loss, or the threat of war, but instead arose from trying to negotiate the paradoxical prescriptions for masculinity which characterized the era. Picturing Russia's Men takes a vital new approach to this topic within masculinity and art historical studies by investigating the dissatisfaction that developed from the breakdown in prevailing conceptions of manhood outside of the usual Western European and American contexts. By exploring how Russian painters depicted gender norms as they were evolving over the course of the century, each chapter shows how artworks provide unique insight into not only those qualities that were supposed to predominate, but actually did in lived practice. Drawing on a wide variety of source material, including previously untranslated letters, journals, and contemporary criticism, the book explores the deep structures of masculinity to reveal the conflicting desires and aspirations of men in the period. In so doing, readers are introduced to Russian artists such as Karl Briullov, Pavel Fedotov, Alexander Ivanov, Ivan Kramskoi, and Ilia Repin, all of whom produced masterpieces of realist art in dialogue with paintings made in Western European artistic centers. The result is a more culturally discursive account of art-making in the nineteenth century, one that challenges some of the enduring myths of masculinity and provides a fresh interpretive history of what constitutes modernism in the history of art.

The ideas of the Protestant Reformation, followed by the European Enlightenment, had a profound and long-lasting impact on Russia’s church and society in the eighteenth century. Though the traditional Orthodox Church was often assumed to have been hostile toward outside influence, Andrey V. Ivanov’s study argues that the institution in fact embraced many Western ideas, thereby undergoing what some observers called a religious revolution. Embedded with lively portrayals of historical actors and vivid descriptions of political details, A Spiritual Revolution is the first large-scale effort to fully identify exactly how Western progressive thought influenced the Russian Church. These new ideas played a foundational role in the emergence of the country as a modernizing empire and the rise of the Church hierarchy as a forward-looking agency of institutional and societal change. Ivanov addresses this important debate in the scholarship on European history, firmly placing Orthodoxy within the much wider European and global continuum of religious change.

War and Enlightenment in Russia explores how members of the military during the reign of Catherine II reconciled Enlightenment ideas about the equality and moral worth of all humans with the Russian reality based on serfdom, a world governed by autocracy, absolute respect for authority, and subordination to seniority. While there is a sizable literature about the impact of the Enlightenment on government, economy, manners, and literature in Russia, no analytical framework that outlines its impact on the military exists. Eugene Miakinkov’s research addresses this gap and challenges the assumption that the military was an unadaptable and vertical institution. Using archival sources, military manuals, essays, memoirs, and letters, the author demonstrates how the Russian militaires philosophes operationalized the Enlightenment by turning thought into reality.

This book examines the rise and the fall of the Russian Empire through the lens of its military history. While much of the literature on this history tends to focus on epochs, The Russian Military and the Creation of Empire uses a variety of archival sources to capture this aspect of modern Russia from Peter the Great right up to the present day. John W. Steinberg analyzes the social dynamic between Russian society and its military over time. Through a focus on civil-military relations, he demonstrates that both the Tsarist and Soviet regimes were built on, and ultimately dependent upon, the support of the military. Case studies of significant battles are also used throughout the volume to reveal insights into the roles, missions, and capabilities of the Russian military since 1689. The Russian Military and the Creation of Empire is a vital study for all students of modern Russia and the history of modern warfare.

Over the course of more than three centuries of Romanov rule in Russia, foreign visitors and residents produced a vast corpus of literature conveying their experiences and impressions of the country. The product of years of painstaking research by one of the world’s foremost authorities on Anglo-Russian relations, In the Lands of the Romanovs is the realization of a major bibliographical project that records the details of over 1200 English-language accounts of the Russian Empire. Ranging chronologically from the accession of Mikhail Fedorovich in 1613 to the abdication of Nicholas II in 1917, this is the most comprehensive bibliography of first-hand accounts of Russia ever to be published. Far more than an inventory of accounts by travellers and tourists, Anthony Cross’s ambitious and wide-ranging work includes personal records of residence in or visits to Russia by writers ranging from diplomats to merchants, physicians to clergymen, gardeners to governesses, as well as by participants in the French invasion of 1812 and in the Crimean War of 1854-56. Providing full bibliographical details and concise but informative annotation for each entry, this substantial bibliography will be an invaluable tool for anyone with an interest in contacts between Russia and the West during the centuries of Romanov rule.

During the 872 days of the Siege of Leningrad (September 1941 to January 1944), the city's inhabitants were surrounded by the military forces of Nazi Germany. They suffered famine, cold, and darkness, and a million people lost their lives, making the siege one of the most destructive in history. Confinement in the besieged city was a traumatic experience. Unlike the victims of the Auschwitz concentration camp, for example, who were brought from afar and robbed of their cultural roots, the victims of the Siege of Leningrad were trapped in the city as it underwent a slow, horrific transformation. They lost everything except their physical location, which was layered with historical, cultural, and personal memory. In Besieged Leningrad, Polina Barskova examines how the city's inhabitants adjusted to their new urban reality, focusing on the emergence of new spatial perceptions that fostered the production of diverse textual and visual representations. The myriad texts that emerged during the siege were varied and exciting, engendered by sometimes sharply conflicting ideological urges and aesthetic sensibilities. In this first study of the cultural and literary representations of spatiality in besieged Leningrad, Barskova examines a wide range of authors with competing views of their difficult relationship with the city, filling a gap in Western knowledge of the culture of the siege. It will appeal to Russian studies specialists as well as those interested in war testimonies and the representation of trauma.