Elise Wirtschafter

Ol'ga Glagoleva and Ingrid Shirle [Schierle], eds., Dvorianstvo, vlast' i obshchestvo v provintsial 'noi Rossii XVIII veka (Nobility, Power, and Society in 18th-Century Provincial Russia). 656 pp., indices. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012. ISBN-13 978-5867939748. N. N. Petrukhintsev and Lorents [Lorenz] Erren, eds., Praviashchie elity i dvorianstvo Rossii vo vremia i posle petrovskikh reform (1682-1750) (Ruling Elites and the Nobility in Russia during and after the Reforms of Peter the Great [1682-1750]). 455 pp., indices. Moscow: Rosspen, 2013. ISBN-13 978-5824317176. Although from the perspective of readers (and reviewers) single-author books always are easier to assimilate, evaluate, and critique, in post-Soviet Russia the production of monographic essay collections has become a mainstay of historical scholarship. These volumes can be difficult to digest--filled as they are with thematically broad and empirically narrow essays that often seem too brief or too long--but in this era of Russian intellectual ferment, they serve an important purpose. Essay collections make possible rapid dissemination of the voluminous research that is going on in Russia today, and they introduce to Russian and foreign publics the labors of scholars working in cities and towns across the Russian Federation. Time-consuming as it can be to work through hundreds of pages of disparate microstudies, there is simply no better way to become acquainted with the breadth of research and the explosion of information currently becoming available. Although such collections cry out for review by scholars who specialize in the specific areas covered, rather than by someone such as this reviewer who is broadly familiar with the period and issues at hand, there simply are not enough reviewers outside Russia to do justice to the massive amount of research being produced. Turning to the books under review, it also appears that the end of communist-era disdain for the governing classes of imperial Russia has led to a revival of interest in the history of elites, who now can be viewed through a more objective, nonideological lens formed out of the historian's natural empathy for his or her chosen subject. The collections discussed below represent stunning examples of the possibilities at hand, and both belong to a growing list of monographs sponsored by the German Historical Institute (DHI) in Moscow, which has set as its mission sustained support for Russian scholarship and for collaboration between Russian and foreign scholars. Praviashchie elity i dvorianstvo Rossii vo vremia i posle petrovskikh reform (1682-1750), edited by N. N. Petrukhintsev and Lorenz Erren, consists of 18 articles by 18 authors, including one of the editors. The articles are grouped into four sections devoted to (1) the nobility and the exercise of power (four contributions), (2) individual personalities within the elite (six contributions), (3) questions of collective soslovie consciousness (four contributions, among them my favorites), and (4) the relationship between local elites and the state (four contributions). All the articles address the broad subject of how the Russian elite should be defined--how its organization, power, and patterns of development should be understood, with special attention to the impact of the Petrine reforms. (1) Unfortunately, although the individual articles provide much fuel for thought and much information on sources, there is no general concluding essay that explains what it all means or how the different themes that have been covered interrelate. The individual essays are left to stand on their own legs, which they do quite well, but it is hard to know what the general scholar-reader should take away from the deluge of encyclopedic information. The articles in the first section, dealing with the structure of the nobility and its relationship to the monarchy and/or state power, cover a variety of traditional issues that need to be addressed in any discussion of the nobility as a ruling elite. …

When a young peasant in early nineteenth-century Russia was conscripted into the army from the taxpaying population, he underwent a fundamental change in juridical status: born into serfdom, he became a “free” man (vol'nyi chelovek) with a civic identity. He also entered a world of bureaucratic regulation that governed his daily routine and formalized his social relationships. While the master had unlimited control over his peasants, who were in fact his personal property, governmental regulation to some extent mediated relations between military commanders and their subordinates. In military society the state sought to legislate those paternalistic values that customarily defined relations between landlord and serf, relations conceived in the image of a father supervising his child. Theoretically this relationship combined paternal concern for the welfare of the soldiers with strict discipline and punishment. Like the biblical God, commanders were supposed to be both merciful a...

Historians suspicious of absolutist political models have in recent decades drawn attention to the effectiveness of legal institutions in Muscovite and imperial Russia. This attention has produced a compelling corrective to widespread images of Russian government as arbitrary, corrupt, and generally dysfunctional. More often than not, liberal historians in late imperial Russia and Euro-American scholars in the era of the Cold War stood ready to paint Russian government with the broad brush of despotism, a readiness that led them to overlook the social dynamism and nuanced political relationships characteristic of Muscovite, imperial, and even Soviet Russia. (1) Nancy Kollmann and Jane Burbank count among the most influential voices that have been calling for a reappraisal of Russian government and legal culture. (2) In the articles presented here, as well as in previously published work, both historians document the beneficial effects of legal institutions and judicial practices over several centuries of Russian history. Both see in the Russian system of justice a source of social integration and political legitimacy. Bolstered by years of archival research, the conclusions of Kollmann and Burbank derive from deep knowledge of legal prescriptions and, more important, judicial practices. Through their descriptions of how tsarist subjects from a range of social statuses successfully employed judicial institutions to address everyday needs, it becomes clear that law played a central role not only in government policy but also in the functioning of society. The strengths of the approach taken by Nancy Kollmann and Jane Burbank are easy to identify; however, the whole is the sum of the parts, and I remain uneasy with the broad implications of the discussion. Across Western and Central Europe--in Britain, France, Austria, and even Germany--limited monarchy, and eventually parliamentary government and the rule of law, arose from the cumulative effects of institutional competition and juristic posturing among recognized corporate bodies. In need of resources but short of effective power, early modern monarchs who asserted a divine right to absolute sovereignty had little choice but to mobilize their nations through cooperation with, or opposition to, these bodies. In a study of the cameralist Policeystaat published some 20 years ago, Marc Raeff drew attention to the absence in Russia of corporate bodies--guilds, diets, parlements, provincial estates, Estates General, and the English Parliament--and to the consequences of that absence. (3) In Russia, the monarch did not need to compete for social and political authority with historically sanctioned and legally constituted bodies that exercised either local territorial or translocal authority. Lordship in Russia carried no administrative or judicial powers beyond the boundaries of the individual noble's private estate, and the "self-government" of peasants and townspeople did not extend to any territorial or national body outside the immediate community. Nor did local customs and practices become codified as customary law on the model of the provincial coutumes in France. (4) Except for the Church, which the reforms of Peter I (1689-1725) effectively separated from the sphere of secular government, Russia's corporate bodies and civic institutions came to life by order of the cameralist Policeystaat. Monarchs decreed the creation of these bodies, which tsarist subjects then were called upon to fill. Historians seeking to situate Russia within the broad spectrum of European history cannot attach enough importance to the absence of corporate bodies. No matter how historians ultimately define Muscovy's Assembly of the Land (zemskii sobor) or Boyar Duma, there is no evidence that these bodies exercised legislative, administrative, or judicial authority indepen dent of the monarch--a state of affairs that stood in stark contrast to the role of corporate bodies further west. …

Drop a pebble in the water: just a splash, and it is gone; But there's half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on and on, Spreading from the center, flowing on out to the sea And there is no way of telling where the end is going to be. Drop a pebble in the water: in a minute you forget, But there's little waves a-flowing, and there's ripples circling yet, And those little waves a-flowing to a great big wave have grown; You've disturbed a mighty river just by dropping in a stone. (1) Marc Raeff was like a pebble in the water. In life and in learning, the ripples flowed from his wisdom and erudition, "circling on and on and on." Marc was born in Moscow on 28 July 1923. The only child of Victoria, a biochemist, and Isaac, an engineer, Marc spent his early childhood in Czechoslovakia, where from 1926 his father worked for the Soviet government inspecting imported machinery parts. Isaac, a Menshevik, was recalled to Moscow in 1927 or 1928, but instead of returning he took his family to Berlin. Marc began school there at age seven. The Raeffs moved to Paris in 1933, after the Nazis took power, and in 1941 they emigrated to the United States. In New York, Marc briefly attended City College before being drafted into the military. During World War II, he served as an interpreter in camps for prisoners of war. After the war, Marc attended Harvard University, where he and other "founding fathers" of Russian studies in the United States studied with Michael Karpovich. Marc received his Ph.D. in 1950 and taught at Clark University from 1949 until 1960. There he met Lillian Gottesman, a graduate student in psychology. They married in 1951 and had two daughters, Anne (b. 1959) and Catherine (b. 1964). Marc moved to Columbia University in 1961 and taught there until his retirement in 1988. After retiring, he continued to live in Tenafly, New Jersey, and to enjoy with his wife, Lillian, the cultural offerings of New York and Europe. Just recently, the Raeffs moved to Teaneck, where Marc died on 20 September 2008. (2) As Bakhmeteff Professor of Russian Studies at Columbia University, Marc Raeff trained several generations of historians. The range of his knowledge was legendary and can readily be seen in the titles of his nine books, not to mention the numerous articles, essays, and reviews that he wrote in English, French, German, and Russian. (3) (Marc also read Italian and some Polish.) His love of reading and writing amazed everyone who knew him. It was invariably the case that his friends, colleagues, and students owed him a letter. The swiftness with which he read and commented upon draft manuscripts instilled both fear and admiration. Those manuscripts came back so quickly that one's first thought had to be, "Oh, no! He could not get through it. It's a mess." Always, however, the manuscript brought with it a detailed, perceptive, and honest letter, one that recognized the author's hard work and encouraged him or her to face the next revisions. When I discussed my work with Marc or read his written reaction, I often had the feeling that he understood what I wanted to say better than I did. He could see ideas and implications that had not yet been fully articulated. I do not want to belittle the deep sadness that surrounds Marc Raeff's passing. But still, I imagine Marc up there in heaven (even though he did not believe in heaven), looking at us and saying, "What is all the fuss?" Marc's objectivity, his ability to discern reality in a rational and detached manner, was one of his outstanding intellectual and emotional qualities. Objectivity did not, however, mean coldness or lack of concern. Marc was a devoted son, husband, and father. He helped Russian relatives to emigrate and to live more comfortably in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. He supported colleagues and students in their professional endeavors over and over again. Marc was never too busy to read a manuscript or write a letter of recommendation. …