The Cambridge History of Russia. Volume 2: Imperial Russia, 1689-1917 by Dominic LievenReview by: A. A. FedorovThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 87, No. 2 (April 2009), pp. 359-362Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40650370 .

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reviews 359 and Slavs have square shanks. However, the Swedish archaeologist Gunilla Larsson questioned some of Bill's observations. She argued that the nails from Middle Sweden have square sections like those from the East European plain. Thus, the Swedes may have used their own ships in the lands of Slavs. Despite all its elegancy, Larsson's conclusion seems to be flawed. According to Stalsberg and le Beau, the picture is in fact very mixed. Round shanks may be typical of Denmark and Southern Norway, while digs at Gnezdovo and Shestovitsa (Ukraine) have yielded both round and square shanks. The shape of boat nails thus does not allow one to make firm conclusions regarding the origin of ships used by the Vikings (p. 107).

Most (but not all) works included in the volume focus on intensive economic, political and cultural exchange in the territories concerned. Many of the authors use different kinds of historical sources (written documents, archaeological evidence, architecture, seals, stone inscriptions). The editors should be praised for including an index in their volume. At the same time, it is hard to detect any logic in the order of papers in the book. Page 9 features two different years of Noonan's death (the correct date is 2001). On the whole, the volume is a remarkable tribute to the memory of Thomas Noonan and a significant contribution to the scholarship of pre-modern Eurasia.

UCL SSEES Sergei Bogatyrev

Lieven, Dominic (ed.). The Cambridge History of Russia. Volume 2: Imperial Russia, i68g-igiy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2006. xxviii + 765 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Chronology. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £100.00: $185.00.

This history of Imperial Russia, 1689-1917 is, both by size and content, a fundamental undertaking by Cambridge University in a bid to generate an all-inclusive volume dedicated solely to the history of the Russian Empire during the reign of the Romanov dynasty. With the number of topics covered being exceptionally broad and, in some cases, innovative, one could easily mark this book as a worthy successor to similar earlier publications on Russian history, of which Hugh Seton-Watson's Russian Empire (Oxford, 1967) is perhaps the most outstanding.

As the editor rightly notes in his introduction to the volume, the size of the book leads one to consider treating it as an accurate historical guide. Although initially the list of contents may appear to be rather standard the depth and means by which the contributors present their articles is highly argu- mentative and thought-provoking. The order in which the articles themselves are organized targets the key elements of the Russian imperial mechanism, presenting in most cases accurate and well-referenced characteristics of the peculiarities of the autocratic state system by addressing periodic and thematic topics.

The first part (of which there are seven), entitled 'The Empire' focuses on Imperial Russia's geopolitical peculiarities (Dominic Lieven); tsarist manage- ment of the multinational environment (Theodore R. Weeks) and various forms of Russian imperial identity (Mark Bassin). Lieven, by combating

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360 SEER, 87, 2, APRIL 2OO9

general stereotypes, assesses Russia's emergence as an Empire from the per- spective of geopolitics, whilst placing emphasis on the level of the dependence Russian foreign policy had on rivalries between major European powers. In turn, Weeks and Bassin address questions of identity in a diverse imperial society amongst its various groups, whilst Bassin focuses on the impact of some forms of the Westernizer-Slavophile debate on imperial identity forma- tion as well as examining the latter process from the perspectives of Russian 'colonialism', nationalism and Europeanization.

The second section, 'Culture, Ideas and Identities', is a selection of works on the evolution of Russian culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Lindsey Hughes and Rosamund Bartlett) and imperial political thought (Gary M. Hamburg), followed by a revealing insight into the influence of the 1812 campaign on the various spectres of Russian society, culture and politics (Alexander M. Martin). Hughes and Bartlett present an extensive analysis of the emergence of culture within the empire, from the early days of Pe trine Westernization to the rise of an independent Russian cultural elite in the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, with Bartlett describing the main tendencies within modern Russian art and poetry. Hamburg, whose work is dedicated to the complex world of Russian political intellectualism, attempts to chronologically categorize and interpret the fate of various political ideas and trends, ranging from absolutism to anarchism, within the Russian political environment.

Section three is dedicated to 'Non-Russian Nationalities' and could be employed for studying various aspects of current intra-national relations due to the sensitive nature of the subject. This section investigates the multifaceted approach of imperial policy towards nationalities and religious minorities within the context of several ethnicities. The material places primary focus on three nationalities - the Ukrainians and Poles (Timothy Snyder), the Jews (Benjamin Nathans), and a detailed examination of the containment and man- agement of Islam and its institutions by imperial Russia's governing elites (Vladimir Bobrovnikov). Snyder assesses the status of Ukrainian and Polish minorities within the empire, providing some of lesser-known facts on the extent to which representatives of both minorities were involved in different levels of the state mechanism. Nathans gives a vivid account of the 'painfully incomplete' integration of Russian Jewry into imperial Russian society, addressing a variety of errors and complications caused by governments at different stages of the Empire's development.

Parts four and five respectively, encompassing material on 'Russian Society, Law and Economy' and 'Government', address the key issues of the Imperial Russian state mechanism and characterize its main participants. A wide range of topics is covered in these sections: the peculiarities, strength and weak- nesses of the Russian nobility (Dominic Lieven); the middle and lower classes of society (Elise Wirtschafter); an insight into nineteenth-century Nizhnii Novgorod (Catherine Evtuhov); the place of religion within Russian state and society (Gregory Freeze); the evolution of the role of women in public life and their legal standing (Barbara Engel and Michelle Marrese); law and the judiciary (Jorg Baberowski); peasants (David Moon), and the economy and banking (Boris Ananich). The 'Government' section is comprised of contribu- tions on central government and the bureaucratic system (Zhand P. Shakibi);

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REVIEWS 361 local government Janet Hartley) and state financial management (Peter Waldron).

Focusing selectively on some of the ideas and data offered by the above authors, one's attention could be drawn to Lieven's parallels between the absence of a land-owning gentry and the tensions amongst the nobility and the throne and the policy of the gradual replacement of the power of the Orthodox church by an 'image' of such carried out by the state, as assessed by Freeze. This is followed by Baberowski's focus on the role of the 1864 judicial reform in undermining the positions of autocracy through the newly introduced jurors' institution; there is also a section made up of revealing material on the scale, frequency and reasons behind the Empire's foreign loans as well as the institution of 'court bankers' given by Ananich.

Finally, two concluding sections concentrate on 'Foreign Policy and the Armed Forces' and 'Reform, War and Revolution', with part six emphasizing the evolution, structure and operations of the imperial army and navy (Paul Bushkovitch, William C. Fuller, Jr. and Nikolai Afonin), and the major schools of thought, trends and directions of Russian foreign policy from 1725 to 19 17 (Hugh Ragsdale and David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye). Part seven, in turn, has a primary focus on the place of revolutionary ideology within Russian society, together with state and social responses to it, with contribu- tors examining topics including the preconditions of the Alexandrine Reforms and their role in the process of formation of civil society in Russia (Larisa Zakharova); the emergence of the Russian proletariat and its role in revolu- tionary activities (Reginald E. Zelnik); the police and revolutionaries Jonathan W. Daly) and a range of connections between the empire's military failures and the collapse of the autocracy in 19 17 (Eric Lohr). The range of issues addressed in these sections often extends far beyond the area defined in the titles, providing the reader with valuable detail. In particular, Ragsdale's emphasis on the varying levels of attention given by the imperial government to foreign and domestic policies, Fuller's comments on the role of a con- scripted army in explaining Russian military successes in the eighteenth century, together with a definition and analysis of the Eastern Question given by van der Oye. Additional detailed insights include Afonin on the Russian interpretation of the Empire's colonial involvement in Asia and its place in the dilemmas encountered as part of a naval strategy, and Daly's insight into the tactics of the special branches of the imperial police. Finally, there is Lohr's assessment of the role played by the Petrograd garrison in pre-revolutionary unrest.

By way of conclusion, this volume can be commended for both its original arrangement of material and its success in drawing the reader's attention to the details surrounding each event, details which are normally missed in the majority of works on Russian history due to the complexity of the factors concerning each topic. Being Russian myself, it was also a pleasure to see such a wide variety of views and approaches to some of the most controversial episodes in the history of imperial Russia, and although some opinions may be open to debate, the majority of the above contributions may be characterized as factually accurate and well-referenced. The very insignificant number of shortcomings within this book mostly relate to a couple of translat- ing inaccuracies (for example, nacionalnost, p. 128), stylistic emotionality (p. 429)

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362 SEER, 87, 2, APRIL 200g and the insufficient referencing of a small number of facts and statements (see, for instance, 'dominant faith of the empire', p. 125 or absence of military planning during the 1860s Asian campaigns, p. 564).

This book has been published at a time when interest in the Russian state and its society is highly likely to grow owing to the recent series of events relating to Russia's more independent stand in the international arena. The volume will, no doubt, meet the demands of the next generation of scholars for up-to-date views and interpretations of imperial Russia. I recommend this book without reservation, to both academics and students of Russian history.

Department of History A. A. Fedorov University of Derby

Morrissey, Susan K. Suicide and the Body Politic in Imperial Russia. Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories, 9. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2006. xv + 384 pp. Illustrations. Figures. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. £55.00: $99.00.

Suicide is the prerogative of no one single social stratum, much less of one national type, and it remains relatively rare though, for all that, deeply unsettling and upsetting for those directly affected by each incidence of this 'strange determination to die' (p. 204). It is, perhaps, small wonder that its very strangeness has increasingly attracted the attention of social and cultural historians as they analyse the complexities surrounding modernity and its dynamics. Thus there has developed an extensive European literature on suicide which Susan Morrissey frequently cites in her densely-textured monograph, itself an important contribution to the field, offering original and highly suggestive insights into the cultural and social significance of suicide in late Imperial Russia's autocratic regime.

The book does not, however, seek to present a comprehensive review of all suicide in Russia. Rather, its focus is on shifting medical, legal, political and social attitudes towards suicide and towards those who survived attempted suicide, particularly in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twen- tieth century, and on what these evolving views and policies can tell us about the rapidly changing state of the body politic of the era. It explores the causes for the central position suicide occupied in Russian society by the early twen- tieth century and 'tells a specific story of suicide that centres upon its complex nexus with sovereignty' (p. 8). The book is organized in three roughly chron- ological parts: from the seventeenth century to the end of Nicholas Fs reign; the reigns of Alexander II and Alexander III; and, finally, the reign of Nicho- las II. It is a structured approach which succeeds in combining a distinct narrative line with sometimes provocative but always cogent interpretation of what the study of modern Russia through the prism of suicide can reveal.

Morrissey makes judicious use of a prodigious number of sources, both archival and printed (there is an eighteen-page bibliography of these): evidently no stone has been left unturned. In addition to adducing material from state archives in Moscow and St Petersburg, including the beleaguered Historical Archive, the author has tapped into the rich resources of the

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