Indrek Jats / Ėrki Tammiksaar (Izd.) | Indrek Jääts / Erki Tammiksaar (Ed.): Proniknovenie i primenenie diskursa natsional’nosti v Rossii i SSSR v konce XVIII – pervoj polovine XX vv. Tartu: Ėstonskii nacional’nyj muzej, 2011. ISBN: 978-9949-417-65-0

Indrek Jats / Ėrki Tammiksaar (Izd.) | Indrek Jääts / Erki Tammiksaar (Ed.): Proniknovenie i primenenie diskursa natsional’nosti v Rossii i SSSR v konce XVIII – pervoj polovine XX vv. Tartu: Ėstonskii nacional’nyj muzej, 2011. ISBN: 978-9949-417-65-0.

This volume edited by the Estonian scientists Indrek Jääts and Erki Tammiksaar results from a workshop about ethnographic studies in Russia from the 17th to the 20th century, which took place in Tartu 2009 and was part of a larger project called “The Rise of Nationalism: Ethnicity, Research and Politics in the Inner Periphery of the Russian Empire from the early 19th Century until the 1920th.” Project and workshop were supported by the Estonian Science Foundation.

A brief but succinct introduction by Indrek Jääts (pp. 5–16) about the development of ethnographic studies in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and an overview about all articles, is followed by an article by the American scholar Paul Werth about the ‘nationalisation’ of religion in the second half of the 19th century till 1917 (pp. 17–29). Werth shows how the Russian Orthodox Church was involved in the increasing Russification process during the 19th century. Especially other orthodox churches were under pressure.

The next study by Ol’ga Krasnikova is about the ethnographic cartography in the Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union (pp. 29–60). Krasnikova works on a project of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg to publish and analyse more than 300 ethnographic maps from the Russian territory which are widely unknown. At first she summarizes the development of cartography in Russia and of Russian ethnographic maps. For her one of the most important ethnographic mapmakers was P. I. Keppen (Peter von Koeppen, 1793–1864). Keppen was deeply influenced by Slavonic scientists in Vienna (p. 43). Later on, in 1910, the Russian Geographic Society (RGO) founded a special commission for the preparation of ethnographic maps. The study ends with the time of repression in the 1930s, when ethnographic studies were almost closed down.

Next Johannes Remy from the University of Helsinki discusses the question of nationality in the Polish territories and at the western boundaries from the partitions of Poland to the insurrection of 1863 (pp. 61–70). He comes to the conclusion that after the Polish insurrection of 1830–31 Poles in the civil service and education sector were often discriminated, government policy against non-Russian orthodox minorities in the western provinces was very ambivalent, they were not automatically discriminated, but not exempt from it, too.

Erki Tammiksaar (p. 71–80) analyses the relationship between science and nationality upon the example of Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876), a Baltic German by origin, who studied medicine at the University of Dorpat (Tartu) and later became an anthropologist. Baer made a profound academic career as a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and educator of the Royal family. He was without doubt a patriot of the Russian autocratic system and one of the founders of the RGO. But when it came to discriminating measures at the University of Dorpat, he used his connections to the Royal family to stop it and later returned to Dorpat. Tammiksaar states, that Baer’s life is a good example that even the scientific sphere were struck by an increasing nationalistic policy (p. 77).

Afterwards Ekaterina Basargina shows how the statutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences were changed during the 19th century (pp. 81–99). Her article responds to the former one by Tammiksaar because she analyses the public discussions about the function of the Academy, which was accused of being too detached and far away from the demands of the time – and that the Russian element at the Academy should be strengthened.

Then Aleksandr Paškov from the University of Petrozavodsk describes how during the Great Reforms of Alexander II. Karelia began to develop a new self-consciousness and how scientific research on the Karelian ethnic groups started in this period (pp. 101–123). Again the RGO played an important role because the society supported scholars to do their research in the provinces of Olonec and Vyborg. Paškov presents the most influential scholars as N. Kostomarov and the Karelian intellectuals E. Tichonov and M. Smirnov. For him Karelia at that time was in stadium A of Miroslav Hroch’s Model of the emancipation of nations.

It follows the article by his colleague Irina Takala, who analyses the development of Karelia till the 1920th and called it: “Nation Building or political project? The Finnish factor in the formation of Karelian autonomy.” (pp. 125–148). She shows how the relationship to Finland and to the Finnish language grew more and more important for Karelia at the end of the 19th century and came to a culminating point after the October Revolution and the Finnish Civil War.

At the end of the volume Aleksej Zagrebin and Kuz’ma Kulikov from the Udmurtskij Istoričeskij institut in Iževsk describe the development of Finno-Ugric studies during the early Soviet period, their blossoming in the 1920s illustrating this with portraits of leading scholars like T. Evsev’ev or Vasilij P. Nalimov – and how studies were prohibited and the material even destroyed during Stalin’s repressions in the 1930s. The most influential Finno-Ugric scholars were arrested because of their contacts with western scholars and sentenced to death.

The volume is rounded up by an index and every article is provided with a short English summary. Visibly, the articles are based on larger projects and present new results of research. It is worth mentioning, that the articles are corresponding to each other and especially the studies about Karelia give the reader a sound knowledge about the process of Karelian emancipation. It is only to hope for a lot of readers for this thoroughly edited and researched volume.

Kristina Küntzel-Witt, Hamburg