This collection of essays addresses the challenge of modern nationalism to the tsarist Russian Empire. First appearing on the empire’s western periphery this challenge, was most prevalent in twelve provinces extending from Ukrainian lands in the south to the Baltic provinces in the north, as well as to the Kingdom of Poland. At issue is whether the late Russian Empire entered World War I as a multiethnic state with many of its age-old mechanisms run by a multiethnic elite, or as a Russian state predominantly managed by ethnic Russians. The tsarist vision of prioritizing loyalty among all subjects over privileging ethnic Russians and discriminating against non-Russians faced a fundamental problem: as soon as the opportunity presented itself, non-Russians would increase their demands and become increasingly separatist. The authors found that although the imperial government did not really identify with popular Russian nationalism, it sometimes ended up implementing policies promoted by Russian nationalist proponents. Matters addressed include native language education, interconfessional rivalry, the “Jewish question,” the origins of mass tourism in the western provinces, as well as the emergence of Russian nationalist attitudes in the aftermath of the first Russian revolution.

The central challenge to imperial powers entering the modern era was the schooling of their peoples. How could they insure the literacy that modernity required without providing a foundation for nationalism among the colonised? In Russia's eastern empire in the late nineteenth century, Orthodox Christianity vied with Islam for people's souls; Russian language competed with Tatar and local vernaculars in market squares, peasant cottages, and schoolrooms; Arabic and Cyrillic alphabets clashed in school textbooks; and western secularism undermined traditional religious authority among both Muslim and Orthodox faithful. Russian nationalism peaked in the early twentieth century and public support for policies of the russification of non-Russian minorities increased. The inevitable clash with local languages shook the stability of the empire. Classroom and Empire tells the story of the politics of alphabets, languages, and schooling in the eastern empire of Russia from 1860 to 1917. Wayne Dowler presents an intriguing cast of characters, including Nikolai Il'minskii, whose method of schooling non-Russian children lay at the heart of nationalist controversy; Ismail Bey Gaspirali, whose new method schools attempted to reconcile Islam with modern secular philosophy and science; Konstantin Pobedonostsev, procurator of the Holy Synod and minence grise of the reigns of Alexander III and his son Nicholas II; and Sophia Chicherina, feisty defender of the Il'minskii school. Dowler shows us that the problem of schooling non-Russians was unresolved by the fall of the Romanovs in 1917, smouldered through much of the Soviet period, and has re-emerged today as a major source of divisiveness in the Russian Federation. Wayne Dowler is professor of history at University of Toronto at Scarborough.

Robert Geraci presents an exceptionally original account of both the politics and the lived experience of diversity in a society whose ethnic complexity has long been downplayed. For centuries, Russians have defined their country as both a multinational empire and a homogeneous nation-state in the making, and have alternately embraced and repudiated the East or Asia as fundamental to Russia's identity. The author argues that the city of Kazan, in the middle Volga region, was the chief nineteenth-century site for mediating this troubled and paradoxical relationship with the East, much as St. Petersburg had served as Russia's window on Europe a century earlier. He shows how Russians sought through science, religion, pedagogy, and politics to understand and promote the Russification of ethnic minorities in the East, as well as to define themselves. Vivid in narrative detail, meticulously argued, and peopled by a colorful cast including missionaries, bishops, peasants, mullahs, professors, teachers, students, linguists, orientalists, archeologists, and state officials, Window on the East uses previously untapped archival and published materials to describe the creation (sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional) of intermediate and new forms of Russianness.

Volume 9 in the series of Reference Books in International Education. This bibliography is intended to provide a reference aid to mature Russian-Soviet scholars, to those beginning a life-long study of this field, and to students in Russian-Soviet Studies and allied fields. This title provides a resource to scholars, students, and professionals seeking to understand the role played by education in various societies or regions of the world.

“A major contribution to the history of nationality, religious identity, and governance in late imperial Russia.” —William G. Rosenberg, coauthor of Processing the Past From the time of the Crimean War through the fall of the Tsar, the question of what to do about the Russian empire’s large Muslim population was a highly contested issue among educated Russians both inside and outside the government. As formulated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Muslim Question comprised a complex set of ideas and concerns that centered on the problems of reimagining and governing the tremendously diverse Russian empire in the face of the challenges presented by the modernizing world. Basing her analysis on extensive research in archival and primary sources, Elena I. Campbell reconstructs the issues, debates, and personalities that shaped the development of Russian policies toward the empire’s Muslims and the impact of the Muslim Question on the modernizing path that Russia would follow. “Readable, original, and endlessly interesting, Campbell’s book deserves the very highest praise.” —Journal of Islamic Studies “Campbell’s book shows how profound official Islamophobia paradoxically led to the preservation of earlier confessional structures, grudging non-interference with the spiritual and social life of most Muslim communities, a restraining hand on the actions (if not the rhetoric) of Orthodox missionaries, and a certain uneasy toleration.” —Slavonic and East European Review “A major contribution to the understanding of Russia’s ‘Muslim Question’—past and present . . . Recommended.” —Choice

According to Benedict Anderson, the rapid expansion of print media during the late-1700s popularised national history and standardised national languages, thus helping create nation-states and national identities at the expense of the old empires. Publishing in Tsarist Russia challenges this theory and, by examining the history of Russian publishing through a transnational lens, reveals how the popular press played an important and complex Imperial role, while providing a “soft infrastructure” which the subjects could access to change Imperial order. As this volume convincingly argues, this is because the Russian language at this time was a lingua franca; it crossed borders and boundaries, reaching speakers of varying nationalities. Russian publications, then, were able to effectively operate within the structure of Imperialism but as a public space, they went beyond the control of the Tsar and ethnic Russians. This exciting international team of scholars provide a much-needed, fresh take on the history of Russian publishing and contribute significantly to our understanding of print media, language and empire from the 18th to 20th centuries. Publishing in Tsarist Russia is therefore a vital resource for scholars of Russian history, comparative nationalism, and publishing studies.