{"title":"The Return of longue durée in Political History of the Russian Empire","authors":"A. Semyonov","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340021","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nThe present intervention makes a mental experiment of thinking about recent historiographic “turns” in terms of “returns.” It takes its point of departure from the recent book by John LeDonne Forging a Unitary State: Russia’s Management of the Eurasian Space, 1650–1850. This book shows how much is needed to be done in terms of returning to the institutional, military, and legal history of the Russian imperial state. But there is also a return to the long-term historical perspective that presents the challenge of constructing a coherent historical narrative when the process of imperial expansion produced the growing diversity of the imperial realm. This challenge can be solved and the narrative can be stabilized by projecting nation-centered categories on to the past experience (such as “majority” and “minority”). But the same long-term perspective can also empower historians to align their analytical language with the grammar of the imperial archive and lexicon of the political praxis and register shifts and ruptures in the grand trajectory spanning several centuries.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340021","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The present intervention makes a mental experiment of thinking about recent historiographic “turns” in terms of “returns.” It takes its point of departure from the recent book by John LeDonne Forging a Unitary State: Russia’s Management of the Eurasian Space, 1650–1850. This book shows how much is needed to be done in terms of returning to the institutional, military, and legal history of the Russian imperial state. But there is also a return to the long-term historical perspective that presents the challenge of constructing a coherent historical narrative when the process of imperial expansion produced the growing diversity of the imperial realm. This challenge can be solved and the narrative can be stabilized by projecting nation-centered categories on to the past experience (such as “majority” and “minority”). But the same long-term perspective can also empower historians to align their analytical language with the grammar of the imperial archive and lexicon of the political praxis and register shifts and ruptures in the grand trajectory spanning several centuries.
期刊介绍:
Russian History’s mission is the publication of original articles on the history of Russia through the centuries, in the assumption that all past experiences are inter-related. Russian History seeks to discover, analyze, and understand the most interesting experiences and relationships and elucidate their causes and consequences. Contributors to the journal take their stand from different perspectives: intellectual, economic and military history, domestic, social and class relations, relations with non-Russian peoples, nutrition and health, all possible events that had an influence on Russia. Russian History is the international platform for the presentation of such findings.