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ORIENTALISM, NATIONALISM, AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2005

VERA TOLZ
VERA TOLZ
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Abstract

Questioning Edward Said's controversial perception of European Oriental studies as a facilitator of imperialism, this article analyses the views and policies promoted in late imperial Russia by academics specializing in Oriental studies, as they debated how best to integrate ethnic minorities in the country's eastern borderlands. The article argues that, themselves influenced by the pervasive impact of nationalism on European scholarship, between the 1870s and the 1917 Revolution these academics proposed policies which are best understood as aimed at nation-building (i.e. fostering a sense of community and unity among the population of a state) rather than at imperial domination of the minorities by the Russians. Identifying the origins of the academics' support for cultural and linguistic pluralism as fully compatible with pan-Russian nationalism, the article demonstrates that the Bolshevik nationalities policies of the 1920s were strongly influenced by the views of academic Orientalists and the pre-revolutionary Russian intellectual tradition to which the latter belonged.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 2005 , pp. 127 - 150
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Dr Yoram Gorlizki, Professors Peter Gatrell and Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, and the anonymous reviewer of the Historical Journal for their comments and suggestions. Discussions at the Historians' Seminar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and at the Seminar on East European Cultures and Societies, the University of Trondheim, Norway, helped me to clarify my ideas and arguments. I am especially grateful to Mr Dmitrii Bratkin for his invaluable assistance in collecting Russian language sources and to the Director and employees of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg for offering excellent access to archival material. A British Academy Senior Research Fellowship and an AHRB grant (AR 17345) have given me the time and financial assistance to pursue research for this article.