This new interpretation of the final years of Imperial Russia provides a clear and concise introduction to a critical period in the history of modern Russia. Professor Hutchinson outlines the key problems facing the Tsarist regime, and the attitudes of its Liberal critics and revolutionary enemies. In particular, he considers how the monarchy was able to withstand the uprisings of 1904-06, but failed in 1917. This important new study provides an analysis of social, as well as political developments, and concludes with a brief historiographical essay which draws together alternative interpretations of the final years of the Tsars.

The revolutionary movements in late tsarist Russia inspired a reaction by groups on the right. Although these groups were ostensibly defending the status quo, they were in fact, as this book argues, very radical in many ways. This book discusses these radical rightist groups, showing how they developed considerable popular appeal across the whole Russian Empire, securing support from a wide cross-section of society. The book considers the nature and organisation of the groups, their ideologies and polices on particular issues and how they changed over time. The book concludes by examining how and why the groups lost momentum and support in the years immediately before the First World War, and briefly explores how far present day rightist groups in Russia are connected to this earlier movement.

If one were to pick a single explanation for the fall of the tsarist and Soviet empires, it might well be Russia's inability to achieve a satisfactory relationship with non-Russian nationalities. Perhaps no other region demonstrates imperial Russia's "national dilemma" better than the Western provinces and Kingdom of Poland, an extensive area inhabited by a diverse group of nationalities, including Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Russians, and Lithuanians. Taking an in-depth look at this region during an era of intensifying national feeling. Weeks shows that the Russian government, even at the height of its empire, never came to terms with the question of nationality. Drawing upon little-known Russian and Polish archives, Weeks challenges widely held assumptions about the "national policy" of late imperial Russia and provides fresh insights into ethnicity in Russia and the former Soviet Union. He demonstrates that, rather than pursuing a plan of "russification," the tsarist government reacted to situations and failed to initiate policy. Extensively researched and path-breaking in its findings, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia will interest historians, social scientists, and general readers concerned with national identity in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia traces the history of occult thought and practice from its origins in private salons to its popularity in turn-of-the-century mass culture. In lucid prose, Julia Mannherz examines the ferocious public debates of the 1870s on higher dimensional mathematics and the workings of seance phenomena, discusses the world of cheap instruction manuals and popular occult journals, and looks at haunted houses, which brought together the rural settings and the urban masses that obsessed over them. In addition, Mannherz looks at reactions of Russian Orthodox theologians to the occult. In spite of its prominence, the role of the occult in turn-of-the-century Russian culture has been largely ignored, if not actively written out of histories of the modern state. For specialists and students of Russian history, culture, and science, as well as those generally interested in the occult, Mannherz's fascinating study remedies this gap and returns the occult to its rightful place in the popular imagination of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian society.

A surprising number of Jews lived, literally and figuratively, 'beyond the Pale' of Jewish Settlement in tsarist Russia during the half-century before the Revolution of 1917. This text reinterprets the history of the Russian-Jewish encounter, using long-closed Russian archives and other sources.

This volume offers a detailed examination of the stability of the late imperial regime in Russia. Accessible yet insightful, contributions cover the historiography of complex topics such as peasants, workers, revolutionaries, foreign relations, and Nicholas II. In addition, there are original studies of some of the leading intellectuals of the time.

"On the basis of the work presented here, one can say that the future of American scholarship on imperial Russia is in good hands." —American Historial Review " . . . innovative and substantive research . . . " —The Russian Review "Anyone wishing to understand the 'state of the field' in Imperial Russian history would do well to start with this collection." —Theodore W. Weeks, H-Net Reviews "The essays are impressive in terms of research conceptualization, and analysis." —Slavic Review Presenting the results of new research and fresh approaches, the historians whose work is highlighted here seek to extend new thinking about the way imperial Russian history is studied and taught. Populating their essays are a varied lot of ordinary Russians of the 18th and 19th centuries, from a luxury-loving merchant and his extended family to reform-minded clerics and soldiers on the frontier. In contrast to much of traditional historical writing on Imperial Russia, which focused heavily on the causes of its demise, the contributors to this volume investigate the people and institutions that kept Imperial Russia functioning over a long period of time.