The Cambridge History of Russia. Vol. 2, Imperial Russia, 1689-1917 by Dominic LievenReview by: Susan MorrisseySlavic Review, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 229-231Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27652808 .
Accessed: 12/06/2014 19:01
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Slavic Review.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 195.78.108.199 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 19:01:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Book Reviews 229
events and some phenomena are neither explained nor satisfactorily placed in any larger framework. The volume includes at least four irreconcilable views on the nature of the
Russian state. Ostrowski tells us that the basis of the state structure was Mongol (a view not
widely accepted) and that the system rested on the consensus of the elite with a weak ruler
("the grand prince of Muscovy ruled with sharply circumscribed powers," 215). Hellie, in his various chapters, prefers to think of the state as "hypertrophie" (364), with an au
tocratic ruler who followed the sixth-century Byzantine deacon Agapetus in thinking he
was God's vicegerent on earth. Poe, who sees basic continuity across the two centuries,
believes that the ruling elite was greedy and power-hungry and the tsar was one of them,
perhaps putting him in the middle between Hellie and Ostrowski. Bogatyrev and Pavlov
see a complex balance of powerful tsar, powerful councilors, and continual back and forth
among them. The uninitiated reader is left to navigate among these viewpoints with no
real guide, for the editor's brief remarks on historiography in the introduction focus on
meta-issues like Marxism and not on the disagreements among the authors in the volume.
To make things worse, the reader has no indication that, for example, Ostrowski and
Hellie present rather extreme formulations of views that also exist in less idiosyncratic forms. The same is true of the chapters
on law and society. Hellie's views of the towns
are hard to fit with Shaw's, and Kollmann offers a quite different conception of law and
society than Hellie. How is the uninitiated reader to reconcile Hellie's statement that
85 percent of the population were serfs with Kollmann's that large areas of Russia did not
know serfdom?
To add to the confusion, there is considerable overlap among the chapters. Shaw and
Hellie cover much the same ground, even though their views sharply conflict. In some
cases the reverse is the problem: Khodarkovsky's account of non-Russians in the seven
teenth century omits the Ukrainian Hetmanate, arguably the most important of Russia's
acquisitions since Siberia in the 1580s. Davies tells the story of the Ukrainian Cossacks and
their acceptance of Tsar Alexei's overlordship, but in the context of military history. Thus
the story of the Hetmanate and Russia after 1667 is absent from the volume, yet it is surely as
important as that of Siberia.
The editor introduces her volume as "authoritative and reliable." The latter, some au
thorial quirkiness aside, is mostly true, but an authoritative volume needs to be consistent,
or if that cannot be achieved, it must explain the place of the various voices. As it is, the
result is more a collection of (mostly excellent) articles than a book of reference.
Paul Bushkovitch
Yale University
The Cambridge History of Russia. Vol. 2, Imperial Russia, 1689-1917. Ed. Dominic Lieven.
Cambridge, Eng.: University of Cambridge Press, 2006. xxviii, 765 pp. Notes. Bibliog
raphy. Chronology. Index. Plates. Tables. Maps. $185.00, hard bound.
This book is the second of three that together aspire?as the jacket states?to present "a
definitive new history of Russia from early Rus' to the [Soviet Union's] successor states."
The volumes are edited by well-known specialists who have commissioned contributions
from scholars primarily from the Anglophone world but also from continental Europe. Al
though the promises of a book jacket should not be taken too literally, projects of this sort
inevitably raise questions. What is the purpose and target readership of these volumes? Are
they intended to be a reference work, consulted for their individual articles, or an actual
history, contributing to contemporary scholarship? These aims are not mutually exclusive,
but they do mark two poles of a continuum, each requiring a rather different kind of read
ing. Indeed, the title of the series evokes the second pole, in noteworthy contrast to its
predecessor, the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (1982; rev. ed., 1994).
In sum, how well does this series juggle encyclopedic coverage with historical narrative?
The time frame for this middle volume is appropriate, if conventional: the reign of
Peter the Great to the February Revolution of 1917. The editor, Dominic Lieven, who
has written extensively on the political history of imperial Russia, has given primacy to
This content downloaded from 195.78.108.199 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 19:01:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
230 Slavic Review
topics he feels historians have neglected in recent decades, notably the history of empire,
government, the economy, the military, and foreign policy; roughly half of its 31 articles
are on these "unfashionable" but "traditional core topics" (3). Lieven's decision to focus
this volume is fully legitimate, though his avowed neglect of more "fashionable" topics seems out of place, not just because some good scholarship is dismissed, but also because
empire and political history are in fact extremely fashionable fields these days. Yet this
decision also reflects what Lieven posits as the central tasks of this volume: to provide
a
comprehensive overview of Russian history suitable for general reference and for students
at the MA level. Comprehensiveness, he stresses, is more important than either diversity
or
coherence. In other words, Lieven seeks to "cover" the imperial period, thereby aspiring more to
encyclopedia than history.
Comprehensiveness is an elusive goal that a reviewer can easily challenge from her
own subjective perspective. (David's Moon chapter on peasants and agriculture from 1689
to 1917, while well informed and informative, for example, can
hardly be considered
comprehensive.) More important, this goal can mask underlying problems. This volume
does in fact cover a large number of topics, in greater or lesser depth, just as it inevitably
skips over others. It is divided into seven sections under the following headings (with the
number of chapters indicated in parentheses): empire (3); culture, ideas, identities (4); non-Russian nationalities (3); Russian society, law, and economy (9); government (3);
foreign policy and the armed forces (5); reform, war, and revolution (4). The problem is its lack of a
conceptual or narrative frame. A comparison with volumes 1 and 3 in this
series is instructive. Both have detailed introductions that set out major issues of historical
development and interpretation. They further combine a chronological with a thematic
structure, with sections and chapters examining particular periods, but also key issues
and themes over time. Unfortunately, volume 2 does neither. Although Lieven does write
the first chapter, promisingly entitled "Russia as Empire and Periphery," he seeks less to
introduce the Russian empire (or this book) than to condense his own monograph on
the topic. (Interested readers are recommended to go directly to his monograph: Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals, 2001.) The lack of a
chronological or conceptual dimen
sion means that the volume neglects specific historical periods and issues of periodization more broadly. The only monarch to get a
chapter is Alexander II. While Larissa Zakharova
provides a
knowledgeable analysis of the reform era, this reader wondered whether Peter
the Great merited a chapter. (Would not the debates about the historical significance of
his reign be appropriate in a volume presupposing its significance?) The point is not to
second-guess the editor but to note two consequences of his choices. First, the structure
will be confusing to students who do not necessarily possess a strong understanding of
historical periods or
developments over time. Second, the individual chapters often con
sider too vast a period and are sometimes prone to "covering" the material while neglect
ing issues of historical controversy or interpretation. Only two themes were divided into
chronological sections: those on (high) culture (Lindsey Hughes and Rosamund Bartlett)
and foreign policy (Hugh Ragsdale and David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye). Despite the shortcomings of the volume as a whole, many of the articles are strong
and fluent accounts written by specialists in their fields. In addition to those already men
tioned, the following is a subjective (and incomplete) cross-section of articles that provide
good interpretative introductions to their topics and could be assigned to advanced stu
dents: Mark Bassin, "Geographies of Imperial Identity"; Benjamin Nathans, 'Jews"; Elise
Kimerling Wirtschafter, "The Groups Between"; Gregory Freeze, "Russian Orthodoxy"; Barbara Engel, "Women, the Family and Public Life"; Janet M. Hartley, "Provincial and Local Government"; William C. Fuller Jr., "The Imperial Army"; and Reginald E. Zelnik, "Russian Workers and Revolution." Several other articles stand out for their imaginative
and original topics, including Catherine Evtuhov's portrait of Nizhnii Novgorod in the
nineteenth century and Michelle Lamarche Marrese on gender and the legal order. Fi
nally, Eric Lohr's cogent analysis of World War I and the February revolution forms a fitting conclusion.
This volume contains many good articles, though their level and approach vary sig
nificantly, with some authors focusing primarily on the basic factual coverage of a topic. Lacking as it does a strong editorial presence or temporal framework, it is not successful
This content downloaded from 195.78.108.199 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 19:01:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Book Reviews 231
as a history of imperial Russia. Despite its prohibitive price, one hopes it will find its place
within libraries as a reference book for both scholars and advanced students.
Susan Morrissey
University College London
The Cambridge History of Russia. Vol. 3, The Twentieth Century. Ed. Ronald Grigor Suny.
Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xviv, 842 pp. Notes. Bibliogra
phy. Chronology. Index. Illustrations. Plates. Maps. $185.00, hard bound.
It is a daunting challenge to try to encompass the entire history of Russia in the twentieth
century in a single tome, however weighty. Yet that is just what Ronald Grigor Suny and his
twenty-four coauthors have ably accomplished in the concluding volume of The Cambridge
History of Russia.
This set of scholarly sborniki, spun off from the classic Cambridge series of historical
compendia, is now making its appearance in three impressive volumes, edited respectively
by Maureen Perrie of the University of Birmingham for the span of time from Kievan Rus'
to 1689; by Dominic Lieven of the London School of Slavonic Studies to cover the years from Peter to the fall of the monarchy; and by Ronald Grigor Suny, now returned to the
University of Michigan from the University of Chicago, for the twentieth century. The
format is an editor's introduction followed by individually authored articles, some chrono
logical, some topical, supplemented by a long and useful bibliography.
In his long (sixty-three-page) introduction, "Reading Russia and the Soviet Union
in the Twentieth Century: How the 'West' Wrote Its History of the USSR," Suny offers a
broad exposition of British and American historiography on the Soviet Union, done, ap
propriately, in the historical dimension. A veritable tour de force, deftly executed around
a thesis of successive revisionisms, Suny's essay is invaluable as a guide to the authorities
and controversies in the field.
Anglophone Soviet studies, as Suny perceives the area, was as much affected by the
international challenge of the Soviet Union as was the general political atmosphere in
the west, and similarly, academic conceptions reflected successive phases of the Soviet
experience. Running through the field was a persistent conservative-liberal division, ex
pressed in such interpretive polarities as
political versus social history, ideology
versus
circumstances, and totalitarianism versus modernization. Nor did the ultimate breakdown
of the communist regime dampen controversy between "modernizationists" and "neo
traditionalists" about the historical nature of the Soviet era.
To execute his assignment of surveying the twentieth century Suny rounded up an
impressive stable of contributors, both British and American, junior as well as senior. It is
good to see some younger scholars involved in an enterprise of this nature, even if they
may not be entirely familiar with the earlier literature.
The two dozen individual contributions in this work are divided equally between
chronological studies, corresponding to the usual periodization, and topical explorations of the social, economic, cultural, and international aspects of the Russian experience be
tween 1900 and 2000. These chapters are largely straightforward narratives, more or less
on a textbook level, though mature in tone, with generally clear exposition of events and
issues. All contributions are well documented, with references to authorities both Anglo
phone and Russian on all major points and frequent citation of newly accessible Soviet
documents.
Specialists, to be sure, will not find much new here, either in concept or in detail, but
the Cambridge histories are, of course, intended primarily as reference books, and this
volume fulfills that role well. The focus of the compendium is historiography, and more
particularly, as the editor notes in the subtitle of his introduction, western (read: Anglo
American) interpretations of Russian and Soviet history in the era just past. Unfortunately, there is (with the exception of Oleg Khlevniuk, coauthor of the chapter
on the leaders
around Iosif Stalin) no representative of the target country among the collaborators, a
This content downloaded from 195.78.108.199 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 19:01:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
