This book examines Russian policies in the western borderlands during the main period of expansion of the imperial system. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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.

A highly topical analysis of European Nationalism from the French Revolution through to the aftermath of the First World War, when the nationalist issues and problems that dominate the political landscape of our own time were already fully established. Covering an enormous range of peoples -- from the Icelanders to the Gypsies, from Brittany to Wallachia -- the book presents a wealth of historical geopolitical information unavailable elsewhere. Essential as a reference work, it also provides a unique opportunity to survey systematically a crucial but fragmented subject in its full European context. For historians, political scientists, departments of European studies, and general readers.

This new edition retains the features of the first edition that made it a popular choice in universities and colleges throughout the US, Canada and around the world. Moss's accessible history includes full treatment of everyday life, the role of women, rural life, law, religion, literature and art. In addition, it provides many other features that have proven successful, including: a well-organized and clearly written text, references to varying historical perspectives, numerous illustrations and maps, fully updated bibliographies accompanying each chapter as well as a general bibliography, a glossary, and chronological and genealogical lists.

This eagerly-awaited sequel shares the characteristics of its distinguished predecessor -- wide geographical and chronological span; expert mingling of political, social and economic history; and Dr Kirby's ability to keep the separate national threads of his account from tangling as he weaves them into the broad regional picture that is his main concern. Here he tackles the contrasting experiences of Europe's northern periphery -- affluence and democracy in the north, stagnation and authoritarianism in the south -- from the French Revolution to the collapse of the USSR and beyond. This is a masterly study of a region that is far from peripheral politically to the post-Soviet world.

Long before there were Jewish communities in the land of the tsars, Jews inhabited a region which they called medinat rusiya, the land of Russia. Prior to its annexation by Russia, the land of Russia was not a center of rabbinic culture. But in 1772, with its annexation by Tsarist Russia, this remote region was severed from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; its 65,000 Jews were thus cut off from the heartland of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Forced into independence, these Jews set about forging a community with its own religious leadership and institutions. The three great intellectual currents in East European Jewry--Hasidism, Rabbinic Mitnagdism, and Haskalah--all converged on Eastern Belorussia, where they clashed and competed. In the course of a generation, the community of Shklov—the most prominent of the towns in the area—witnessed an explosion of intellectual and cultural activity. Focusing on the social and intellectual odysseys of merchants, maskilim, and rabbis, and their varied attempts to combine Judaism and European culture, David Fishman here chronicles the remarkable story of these first modern Jews of Russia.

Revised and expanded, the second edition of this fascinating study surveys the first two centuries of Romanov rule from the foundation of the dynasty by Michael Romanov in 1613 to the accession of Alexander I in 1801. The central theme of the book is the growth of absolutism in Russia throughout these years, and it traces in detail how the Russian variety of what was a contemporary European phenomenon came fully into being.

In a period of dramatic social change, when Orthodoxy and nationalism were the twin pillars of the Russian state, how did the tsarist bureaucracy govern an expansive realm inhabited by the peoples of many nations and ethnicities professing various faiths? Did the nature of tsarist rule change over time, and did it vary from region to region? Paul W. Werth considers these large questions in his survey of imperial Russian rule in the vast Volga-Kama region. First conquered in the sixteenth century, the Volga-Kama lands were by the nineteenth century both part of the Russian heartland and resolutely "other"—the home of a mix of Slavic, Finnic, and Turkic peoples where the urge to assimilate was always counterbalanced by determined efforts to preserve cultural and religious differences. The Volga-Kama thus poses the dilemmas of empire in especially complex and telling ways. Drawing on a wide range of printed and archival sources, Werth untangles and reconstructs this complicated history, focusing on the ways in which the tsarist state and Orthodox missions used conversion in their ongoing (and regularly frustrated) efforts to transform the region's Muslim and animist populations into imperial, Orthodox citizens. He shows that the regime became less concerned with religion and more concerned with secular attributes as the marker of cultural differences, an emphasis that would change dramatically in the early years of Soviet rule.

In a provocative study on comparative empire, noted historians identify periods of transition across history that reveal how and why empires emerge. Loren J. Samons on Athens and Arthur Eckstein on Rome examine classical Western empires. Nicholas Canny discusses the British experience, Paul Bushkovitch analyzes the case of imperial Russia, and Pamela Kyle Crossley studies Qing China's beginnings. Frank Ninkovich tackles the actions of the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, which many view as imperial behavior. What were the critical characteristics that distinguished the imperial period of the state from its pre-imperial period? When did the state develop those characteristics sufficiently to be called an empire? The authors indicate the domestic political, social, economic, or military institutions that made empire formation possible and address how intentional the transition to empire was. They investigate the actions that drove imperial consolidation and consider the international environment in which the empire formed. Kimberly Kagan provides a concluding essay that probes the historical cases for insights into policymaking and the nature of imperial power.