The Imperial Russian Project: Autocratic Politics, Economic Development, and Social Fragmentation

by Alfred Rieber, Yanni Kotsonis (Foreword by)

Overview

A pioneer in the field of Russian and Soviet studies in the West, Alfred J. Rieber’s five decade career has focused on increasing our understanding of the Russian Empire from Peter the Great to the coming of the First World War.

The Imperial Russian Project is a collection of Rieber’s lifetime of work, focusing on three interconnected themes of this time period: the role of reform in the process of state building, the interaction of state and social movements, and alternative visions of economic development. This volume contains Rieber’s previously published, classic essays, edited and updated, as well as newly written works that together provide a well-integrated framework for reflection on this topic. Rieber argues that Russia’s style of autocratic governance not only reflected the personalities of the rulers but also the challenges of overcoming economic backwardness in a society lacking common citizenship and a cohesive ruling class. The Imperial Russian Project reveals how during the nineteenth century the tsar was obliged to operate within a changing and more complex world, reducing his options and restricting his freedom of action.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487511210
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	01/18/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	528
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Alfred J. Rieber is a premier historian of Russia and the Soviet Union. He is University Professor Emeritus at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania.

Yanni Kotsonis is an associate professor in the Departments of History and of Russian and Slavic Studies and founding Director of the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: THE FOUNDATIONS

1. The Petrine Vision and Its Fate

PART TWO: CULTURAL TRANSFER, INTEREST GROUPS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

2. The Aufklärung in Russia
3. The Biogenetic Model
4. The Moscow Entrepreneurial Group
5. The Engineers
6. The Economists
7. Origin of the Reutern System
8. The Reutern System in Operation
9. Patronage and Professionalism

PART THREE: SOCIAL STRUCTURES IN A DIVIDED POLITY

10. The Social Identification of the Nobility
11. The Sedimentary Society
12. Social and Political Fragmentation

What People are Saying About This

Mikhail Dolbilov

"Alfred Rieber's collected volume is a work of profound scholarship, impressive acumen, and sweeping erudition. All the essays included in it address major and highly debatable issues of the history of imperial Russia."

Editorial Reviews

"Alfred Rieber belong to the first generation of postwar Russian experts in the United States, yet sixty years later he is still going strong, producing research of great originality and powerful insight. This collection of articles – too rich for a review to do justice – prsents a searching and distinctive interpretation of the evolution of Imperial Russia from the eighteenth to the twentieth century."

—Geoffrey Hosking, University College London, Journal of Modern History, September 2019
"The articles of The Imperial Russian Project contribute to a remarkable global interpretation of Russian history that brings together economic change, the evolution of a cultivated and competent officialdom, and the relations between state and society."—Richard Wortman, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History

"The articles of The Imperial Russian Project contribute to a remarkable global interpretation of Russian history that brings together economic change, the evolution of a cultivated and competent officialdom, and the relations between state and society. Rieber places these developments in the context of the abiding limits to progress: uncompromising autocratic authority, the backwardness of the economy, poorly articulated social boundaries and identities, as well as the vastness of the empire."

—Richard Wortman, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History

"Alfred Rieber’s collected volume is a work of profound scholarship, impressive acumen, and sweeping erudition. All the essays included in it address major and highly debatable issues of the history of imperial Russia."

—Mikhail Dolbilov, associate professor of History, University of Maryland

From the Publisher

"Alfred Rieber belong to the first generation of postwar Russian experts in the United States, yet sixty years later he is still going strong, producing research of great originality and powerful insight. This collection of articles — too rich for a review to do justice — prsents a searching and distinctive interpretation of the evolution of Imperial Russia from the eighteenth to the twentieth century."

Journal of Modern History, September 2019 - Geoffrey Hosking

"The articles of The Imperial Russian Project contribute to a remarkable global interpretation of Russian history that brings together economic change, the evolution of a cultivated and competent officialdom, and the relations between state and society."

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History - Richard Wortman