Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas
Im Auftrag des Instituts für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien Regensburg
herausgegeben von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz
Ausgabe: 62 (2014), 1, S. 113-115
Verfasst von: Gregory L. Freeze
Manfred Hildermeier: Geschichte Russlands. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Oktoberrevolution. München: Beck, 2013. 1504 S., 11 Ktn., 36 Tab., 1 Graph. = Historische Bibliothek der Gerda Henkel Stiftung. ISBN: 978-3-406-64551-8.
“Geschichte Russlands” and Russia’s Internal History
With the support of a “Opus Magnum Stipendium” from the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, this massive tome provides a highly detailed, state-of-the-art history of Russia from its origins in Kiev Rus to the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. The goal here is to synthesize, in a highly readable narrative, the political, social-economic, and cultural history of the Russian heartland, with some attention to exogenous forces, whether from the East or (mainly) the West. Drawing upon the older classics as well as recent scholarship, this history will become the standard authority for Russian specialists and the fullest recent account available for Europeanists. It is a worthy prequel to the author’s magisterial history of the subsequent period, “Die Sowjetunion, 1917–1991” (2001).
Organizationally, the volume follows the traditional periodization (albeit with slight modifications), dividing prerevolutionary Russian history into six main periods: Kiev Rus (860–1240), Mongol dominion and early Muscovy (1240–1533), Muscovite Rus (1533– 1689), the “long” eighteenth century (1689–1796), the prereform era (1796–1856), and a final section stretching from the Great Reforms to the February Revolution (1856–1917). To its credit, this history gives substantial attention to pre-Petrine Rus (which occupies more than a quarter of the text); the imperial period is roughly divided between the 1689–1856 and 1856–1917 sections. It is, to say the least, not only informative but inspiring to rediscover those “lost centuries” that most present-minded histories minimize and marginalize. Within each period, the narrative offers a symmetrical organization (with separate sections on political, social-economic, and cultural history), thereby making it easy to locate information and to make diachronic comparisons. The volume concludes with a more theoretical chapter, presenting speculative reflections on the backwardness and modernization paradigm, followed by endnotes, list of works cited, glossary of terms, and separate indexes of geographical terms, proper names, and subjects.
This monumental history makes a major contribution to the field – at two important levels. First, the narrative itself is both precise and comprehensive, hence especially useful for non-specialists, but even researchers will find a reliable guide to current thinking and recent scholarship as well as critical facts and figures (the latter conveniently compiled in 36 tables). Second, at various junctures the author stops to offer critical assessments of major historiographical issues – such as the magnitude of the Mongol influence, the impact and novelty of the Petrine reforms, the dynamics of serf emancipation, or developmental patterns in the post-reform economy. Third. “Geschichte Russlands” goes beyond the usual narratives to include some dimensions – in particular, material culture and religious history – that receive little or no attention in traditional histories of Russia, even the most recent. The sources and findings of such recent works as Carsten Goehrke’s valuable three-volume “Russischer Alltag. Eine Geschichte in neun Zeitbildern vom Frühmittelalter bis zur Gegenwart” (Zürich, 2003–2005) inform the accounts not only of pre-Petrine but also Imperial Russia. Finally, and most important, this history situates Russia in a larger European context, shedding much light on its comparative and interactive development with the West. Although Russia remains the primary focus, the narrative demonstrates that country’s deep Western roots (stretching back even to the era of Kiev Rus) and shows how, after the Mongol interlude, the Western connections and orientation resurfaced in Muscovy and Imperial Russia. This contextualization underlies the concluding reflections on Russia’s “special path” to modernity and, especially, the proverbial “backwardness” that colored the perceptions of contemporaries and the representations of historians (most famously in the Gerschenkron paradigm about the advantages of “backwardness”).
This tome’s enormous length notwithstanding, in some respects the reader might wish for more. In terms of content, it would have been desirable to allot more space (precious as it is) to such matters as gender and family history. Although scholarship on these fields is relatively weak in Russian historiography (at least if compared to the standards of European historiography), some research has been done and probably merits as much attention as the detailed account of fratricidal conflicts among Kievan princes or political in-fighting at the end of the ancien régime. A second subject (treated at greater length in another contribution to this triple-review) is the question of borderlands and minorities; apart from the informative chapter on the Jewish question, “Geschichte Russlands” accords relatively little space to the minorities – who, indeed, came to constitute a majority of the population by 1914. To be sure, in sheer literary terms their inclusion is problematic; the individual histories of peoples in such disparate regions as the Baltics and Caucasus do not easily integrate into a readable narrative about Russia proper – even if they invariably figured in the multi-volume Soviet histories, such as B.D. Grekov (et al.), (eds.): Ocherki istorii SSSR (9 vols. Moscow 1953–1968). Nonetheless, the periphery certainly played an important, sometimes critical, role in shaping the policies and politics of the “center”. As the burgeoning recent literature on the “periphery” has demonstrated, the questions of stability and assimilation – whether administrative, ethnic, or confessional – had a profound impact on St. Petersburg and sometimes precipitated and configured (or disfigured) reforms superimposed on the center as well. Although the dynamics of modernization were unquestionably critical to the ultimate demise of the empire, the periphery proved a fatal Achilles’ heel, draining resources and exposing the increasingly transparent weaknesses of an obsolescent empire. Finally, the scholarly apparatus – the bibliography of cited works and endnotes – is understandably but regrettably conflated. Although such economies were inescapable in a book of such length, the bibliography would ideally include a “Guide to Further Research” that directs students and non-specialists to primary source collections, basic reference works, and key internet sites. At this point, the scholarly apparatus is inclusive and up-to-date, but it will quickly be superseded; a “guide to further research” could help readers locate the most recent, authoritative works that appeared since this book went to press in 2012.
But those are minor quibbles: this magisterial volume not only provides a sweeping, synthetic account of Russian history to the revolutions of 1917 but also situates it within a larger comparative framework. And herein lies its principal analytical contribution: “Geschichte Russlands” places the country within a larger European context, reminds specialists of the deep pre-Mongolian (not to say pre-Petrine) roots in Europe, and – most important – reflects on the complex patterns of influence and isolation over many centuries. This work also places a thousand years of Russian history within the larger context of “modernization”. By analyzing the backwardness paradigm that dominated contemporaries in Europe and Russia (a backwardness, that inspired, as the author notes, a cascade of the reforms, Petrine and subsequent ones), the sophisticated, nuanced approach here situates Russia within the larger comparative and interactive history of Europe, medieval and modern. While affirming that every historical development has its own “Sonderweg” (p. 33), this insightful volume argues that one can only understand Russia’s development, indeed the initiatives and perceptions of state actors, by locating Russia within its European context. That process, and perception, neither commenced with Peter nor ended with Catherine and, as is amply demonstrated here, played a critical role in the sequence of events that would eventually lead to the very demise of the ancien régime.
Zitierweise: Gregory L. Freeze über: Manfred Hildermeier: Geschichte Russlands. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Oktoberrevolution. München: Beck, 2013. 1504 S., 11 Ktn., 36 Tab., 1 Graph. = Historische Bibliothek der Gerda Henkel Stiftung. ISBN: 978-3-406-64551-8, http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/JGO/Rez/Freeze_MR_Hildermeier_Geschichte_Russlands.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)
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