History

Empress Catherine II, building on the military and diplomatic successes of Emperor Peter I and Empress Elizabeth, in less than two decades of rule brought Russia to the forefront among European powers. Her creation of a League of Armed Neutrality, uniting several mercantile states of Northern Europe, was intended to guarantee the security of maritime shipping on the high seas from arrest and seizure. The fledgling thirteen United States desperately needed more than their single ally, France (from 1778), to pursue their war for independence. Unwilling to engage in traditional European diplomatic behavior, they developed a concept of “militia diplomacy,” under which merchants would be sent to foreign ports to initiate friendly trading relations. Not fully realizing Catherine’s intention to maintain absolute neutrality in order to mediate peace between Great Britain and its breakaway colonies, the Americans sent to St. Petersburg, uninvited and unannounced, a would-be ambassador. The empress refused to collude in any way. David M. Griffiths (1938–2014) started out to study Revolutionary Era American History. But while still in graduate school he shifted focus to the Russian Empire of the same period, over his career publishing numerous articles on the Russia of Catherine the Great and translating two books from Russian to English. His articles, appearing in journals and as book chapters, have deepened our understanding of the Russian economy, politics, and society during that era, winning him an international reputation. A collection of them appeared as a single volume in Russian translation in Moscow in 2013. All the while, for some decades, he continued quietly to labor on the book that became this volume. It has been edited down from a much larger manuscript, but the argument and the language remain his own.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Russian Empire's 5.2 million Jews were in crisis. Having quintupled in number since 1800, they were substantially impoverished and crammed into Russia's 25 westernmost provinces. Some pinned their hopes on emigration, others on being granted permission to live in the Russian interior. Some labored with hand tools in dingy workshops, but most were forced to eke out a living as petty merchants and paupers. Hardly any were able to find work in Russia's large, mechanized factories.

In this context, the young Yakov Leshchinsky, influenced in equal measure by Marx and the Zionist thinker Ahad Ha-am, embarked on a lifelong task of analyzing the fate of the Jewish people. In The Jewish Worker in Russia (1906), a combination political pamphlet, theoretical excursus, and empirical analysis, he established a foundation for the ideology of the Zionist Socialist Workers' Party, presaged modern sociological concepts explaining the limited proletarianization and industrialization of the Jewish working class, and gave substance to the theory by analyzing a large body of unique statistical data, mainly from official sources and a quasi-census of Russian Jews funded by the Jewish Colonization Association. It was a landmark work that underscored the limitations of pure Marxism, Zionism, and liberalism; led eventually to the view that Jews would be best off seeking democracy, socialism, and personal and cultural autonomy in many geographical centers; and foretold the course of Leshchinsky's own life and career as a founding father of Jewish social science, director of YIVO's Economics and Statistics Department, and resident of Ukraine, Switzerland, Russia, Poland, Germany, and the United States who spent his last years in Israel.

Of all of the books by American witnesses of the Russian Revolution, John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World was and still is the best known. Even though Reed arrived in Russia in September 1917 and left in the spring of 1918, his enthusiastic account focuses on the ten key days of the revolution itself, bringing to life the sights, sounds, and key people who were so instrumental in this critical event. Reed, officially a journalist, shed his objectivity and supported the Bolshevik cause, and this book was the key forum in which he made his case. In the end, the book has survived, and even thrived, as a primary source on the revolution, even though Reed died in 1920.

Dmitry Prigov (1940–2007), the most prominent figure in Moscow Conceptualism, is not well known in the West because of a lack of English translations of his work and scholarship in English. This collection of articles by some of the most devoted experts on his work aims to change that by providing detailed discussions in English of Prigov’s broad-based oeuvre in the visual arts, poetry, and performance. The Prague workshop in 2014 upon which this collection is based situates his work in a global comparative perspective. Prigov traveled constantly in the 1990s and 2000s, and this movement between cultures is reflected in many of his works, which stage the visual and verbal image in an international environment. Prigov understood his artistic creativity as a lifelong project which surmounts the text in the service of strategic behavior. Each dimension of his creative work is distinguished through its performative character: writing, drawing, painting, poetry readings, which conceptualize a “new anthropology.”

Seeing Muscovy Anew: Politics—Institutions—Culture: Essays in Honor of Nancy Shields Kollmann brings together nineteen thought-provoking essays from an international group of specialists in medieval and early modern Russian and Ukrainian studies to honor the inspiring scholarship of Nancy Shields Kollmann. The contributions are grouped into thematic categories that reflect Kollmann’s wide-ranging interests: 1) the politics of rule, 2) conflicted belief, 3) testimony of the visual, 4) institutions outside the box, and 5) empire and outer spaces. This collection will be an invaluable resource for scholars concerned with the dynamics of Muscovite politics and culture broadly construed.  

Contributors include: Sergei Bogatyrev, Charles J. Halperin, Valerie A. Kivelson, Russell E. Martin, David Goldfrank, Donald Ostrowski, Michael S. Flier, Daniel Rowlad, Gary Marker, Isolde Thyrêt, Janet Martin, Paul Bushkovitch, Eve Levin, Alexander Kamenskii, Brian J. Boeck, Erika Monahan, Georg B. Michels, Serhii Plokhy, Martina Winkler

Louise Bryant and her husband John Reed were among a relatively small group of Americans who participated in one of the most important events of the twentieth century, the Russian Revolution of 1917. As first-hand observers, they attended meetings of the revolutionaries, were present at the Winter Palace as it was under attack, and witnessed the surrender of the palace guards. Over the next weeks, they saw a new regime emerge and met many of its most important figures, including Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, and Kollontai. Bryant returned home in 1918 and immediately began working on the book that would become Six Red Months in Russia. Unfortunately for Bryant, her sex and her relationship with Reed overshadowed her talent as a writer and the depth of her observations of this historic event. But Bryant deserves better; she had her own voice and was a skilled observer and journalist in her own right. While Reed’s book is certainly a significant work, it contains little personal commentary. Bryant’s account, by comparison, is also a documentation of the revolution, but it goes farther than Reed’s in many ways, adding interpretation to observation. Bryant communicates what life was like during the days of the revolution—the people, the food, the excitement, the fear. She is also keenly aware of her American audience and speaks directly to them, urging them to pay attention to this world-changing moment in history and not to be fooled by the misinformation about Bolshevism and the new regime. Six Red Months in Russia conveys Bryant’s understanding of the revolution, and reminds us of the utter enthusiasm that many Russians, and Americans, felt for socialism and its yet-untainted, utopian ideals. This new edition of Bryant’s book is annotated and set in its appropriate historical context to create a more accessible text for modern readers on the anniversary of this truly world-changing event.