Imperial Russia,
from Peter the Great, through Catherine the Great,
to the collapse of the Russian Empire in World War One

• ACADEMIC CALENDAR for the whole term, here presented week-by-week =

1st week | Dimensions of Imperial Russian History (Time, Space and Historical Imagination [mentalities]), with explanations of exercises one, two and three
2nd week | Geography and Imperial Expansion (to the middle of the 19th century), with explanations of exercises four and five
3rd week | Peter I ("the Great") and the problems of "modernization"
4th week | Catherine II ("the Great") and the European Enlightenment, with explanations of exercises six, seven, eight and nine
5th week | Era of "European Revolution" (Alexander I & reform; Nicholas I & reaction; Alexander II & "Great Reforms")
6th week | Witte & Industrialization (belated efforts to make big changes demanded for survival in the imperialist age), with explanation of exercise ten
7th week | End of serfdom through the Stolypin Reforms (agrarian life and work in the last half century of the old regime), with explanation of exercise eleven
8th week | Golden Age and Silver Age of Russian Culture; Intelligentsia and Revolt
9th week | Zemstvos and State Duma (institutional settings for political mobilization of a Russian "civil society")
10th week | World War One & the Collapse of Imperial Russia (Russia in the age of European imperialism, 1850-1917), with explanation of exercise twelve

• Summary of twelve exercises in the course =

Exercise #1   = Purchase and set up your journal
Exercise #2   = Website: technique and philosophy
Exercise #3   = SAC in particular
Exercise #4   = Tour UO library sites (with links to major maps)
Exercise #5   = Compose brief draft essays #1 and #2
Exercise #6   = Submit journal for first time
Exercise #7   = Become a regional historian (extends through whole term & concludes in draft essay #6 in the 9th week)
Exercise #8   = Become an ethno-historian (extends through whole term & concludes in draft essay #7 in the 10th week)
Exercise #9   = Compose draft essays #3 and #4
Exercise #10  = Take a mid-term exam
Exercise #11  = Compose draft essays #5, #6 and #7
Exercise #12  = Take a final exam

HST 346: RUSSIA FROM PETER THE GREAT TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Alan Kimball, McK 367, 346-4813. Office hours: Tue&Thur 11:30-13:00 & by appointment
KIMBALL@UOREGON.EDU

Most course materials are in the Knight Library or the course webpage.  You will purchase a lab book, and there you will keep a record of library and webpage readings, write seven brief "draft" essays, & write your midterm & final exams.   Here is a basic calendar of the term's work:

!! ja29-------------------FIRST SUBMISSION OF JOURNAL WITH READING NOTES & FIRST TWO DRAFT ESSAYS
!! fe14:----------------- MIDTERM EXAM IN JOURNAL, WITH READING NOTES AND FIRST DRAFT ESSAYS
!! mr21:[FRI] at 8:00am  -------------- FINAL EXAM IN JOURNAL, WITH REMAINDER OF DRAFT ESSAYS

First exercise:  Purchase a blue lab book (9x7 inches; Stock # 43-571, JUST EXACTLY THIS ONE). Ask at the customer service desk in the basement of the UO Book Store. The first thing I want you to do with your lab book (let’s call it the journal) is paste a white label securely to the outer upper right-hand corner of the front cover (a mailing label will do). Boldly inscribe your name there. Please leave the inside cover & the first 5-6 pages blank for keeping your own table of contents & a list of books & other library material consulted. It is your responsibility to guide the reader to each part of the journal. Leave the final two pages of the lab book blank for instructor comments & grading. Separate from the journal, keep another notebook for lecture, course handouts, etc. The journal is where you keep a record of YOUR WORK, and the notebook is where you keep a record of MY WORK.

Second exercise: Locate this course on the following webpage:
http://www.uoregon.edu/~kimball/courses.htm | Add this page to your web-browser "favorites" page. You'll go there often this term.

These first two exercises are also listed and explained on the course website (along with ten further exercises).

ABOUT GRADES: Essays & exams are due at the time the class meets on the days specified. Late assignments are penalized one grade. Assignments AWOL 24 hours after due date are given a failing grade. Failure to complete any one of the essays or exams will result in a failing grade for the course. Unpenalized postponement of an assignment is possible only when documented illness or happenstance forces delay, or when arranged in writing beforehand. If you attend class regularly, keep a good lecture notebook, devote eight or nine hours of your study-week to your reading & writing, & keep a good record in your journal, you may be sure that you are meeting course expectations.

ACADEMIC CALENDAR

1st Week
DIMENSIONS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

This calendar defines main topics and provides certain major reading suggestions, week by week. Every week for ten weeks, we meet three hours in lecture and you devote nine hours outside of class to various readings [ID] and writing about your readings in your journal [ID].

This calendar guides you to the chapters in some of the most useful general textbooks and anthologies in THE RESERVE BOOK ROOM or on the open shelves of UO libraries. Readings cover the larger topics suggested in the headline for each week of class. Select from among them as you wish to complete some part of your 9 hours of weekly reading. You will also find yet further reading suggestions when you follow weekly links to certain parts of The Student's Annotated Chronology and Systematic Bibliography [SAC]. The GLOSSARY explains bibliographical abbreviations.

Here are suggestions as you select secondary readings on this week's topic =
\\
Riasanovsky(20)
Mironov,1:1-54
Florinsky,2:(26,32,35-36)
Auty, ch1:1-48
Raeff,Imperial:39-67
Dukes,Making:7-12, 36-43, 63-70, 117-26, 143-46, 148-51, 156-57, 159-63, 178-80

Exercise 4) 

The library tours are a good time to begin serious thinking about exercises seven and eight.

Tour UO collections, round one. Read the introductory paragraphs in this big library page.

No library location is more important to us than the following two =

Reserve Book Room (copy our course Reserve list)
Reference Division (locate GSE and MERSH)

And there is a third crucial location. Time and space are the two fundamental organizational principles of history. In exercise three your initial goal was to get a general sense of chronology (TIME). Here your initial goal is to develop broad familiarity with geography (SPACE), and with certain other visual/spatial dimensions of our history. So the third library location is the following =

MAP LIBRARY

Here in the MAP LIBRARY, survey the range devoted to Russia, G2111.S1 C…, and G2111.S1 G…. Locate and leaf through the pertinent chronological sections of the atlases by Channon and Gilbert. Browse the Cultural Atlas of Russia…. At first, concentrate on the geo-physical features of the territory sometimes called "European Russia" which lies within the space north of Constantinople (Istanbul), south of the White Sea, west of the Ural Mts., & east of the Carpathian Mts. Pay particular attention to the way major rivers drain the low, flat land.

On this course website, open Geographic TABLE. Locate all river systems listed there in column two. If you print out this table, you could use it in the MAP LIBRARY to search out the river systems in any of the good atlases there. Where do the great rivers originate? Where do they terminate?

Tour UO collections, round two. Now you should work your way through the remaining sections of the library page =

Knight Library open stacks
University of Oregon Museum of Art
All UO students ought at least once to visit the Jacqua Law School Library
And you should know about the Information Technology Center

Exercise 5)

Over the next nine weeks, you will compose seven brief draft essays [ID] =

Draft essay #1 should be completed by the beginning of the third week. I will read it at the time of first submission of the journal [ID]

The general topic should be imperialist expansion of the Russian Empire. I am always ready to make suggestions about specific topics within the range of the large theme. Here are some thoughts =

Draft essay #2 should also be completed before the first submission of the journal to me [ID]

The general topic should be the era of Peter the Great. Attention might best be devoted to some detailed feature of his several energetic efforts at transformation of Russian domestic life.

Draft essays #3 and #4

Draft essay #5, #6 & #7

3rd Week
PETER I "THE GREAT"
\\
Riasanovsky(21-22)
Florinsky,1:(14-18)
Kliuchevskii,4
Blum(15) 
Raeff,Imperial(1:3-10)
Dukes,Making:59-102
Auty, ch4:121-196 (Raeff chapter deals with Peter I,
but also with Catherine II, Alexander I & Nicholas I)

    I.  Mentalities =
Newspaper, Fedor Saltykov, Feofan Prokopovich, Ivan Pososhkov (notice Academy of Sciences)
*--Take some notice of Peter's notorious behavioral reforms. Peter liked to smoke a pipe. Smoking tobacco (a plant earlier unknown to Europe, east or west) was a recent novelty. It was widely thought to be unacceptable behavior. Consider these articles in the 1649 Russian Law Code = ch25, article 11 and articles 15-17

   II. Institutions =
Follow 10-hop LOOP on the phrase "Petrine transformation"| NB! Early diplomatic innovation

  III. Social structure =
*--Table of Ranks
*--What was a "serf"?
*--Read two further SAC entries on serfs =
  1680 (about global context of bound labor in early modern Europe) &
  1707 (about the influence of northeastern European serfdom on Russian serfdom)

   IV. Economy =
Take 11 hops on keyword "mercantilism" from 1582su: to 1776
(a 3-hop LOOP on Petrine economic development recapitulates main points)

  [V. Geography =
Review 7-hop LOOP Frontier and imperial expansion,
from the Treaty of Nerchinsk through the Seven-Years War]

In 37 years between the two "greats" (Peter I and Catherine II), nobles sought to limit the autocratic authority of the Emperor by means of a "Supreme Privy Council" and by imposing "Conditions" on the Empress Anna. Their success was limited
*--Six sat on the imperial-tsarist throne between Peter I and Catherine II

*1725:1727; Catherine I  (Peter's second wife)
*1727:1730; Peter II        (Peter's grandson)
*1730:1740; Anna            (Peter's step-niece)
*1740:1741; Ivan VI        (Peter's half brother's great-grandson, a 2-mo. old baby)
*1741:1762; Elizabeth     (Peter's daughter)
*1762: Peter III               (Peter's grandson)  

*--In these years, only the reign of Empress Elizabeth showed any features of the Petrine tradition. Moscow University was founded, and the costly Seven Years War at least secured safer western borders
*--Emperor Peter III seemed ready to buckle under pressure from nobles when he abolished obligatory state service
\\
Dukes,Making:102-32

I. Catherine II was the most representative ruler in this European age of  Enlightenment
*--The Free Economic Society was an "enlightened" organization, a harbinger of "civil society"
*--Two Russian philosophes, Nikolai Novikov and Aleksandr Radishchev, went too far
*--Native traditions survived this supposed era of Enlightenment, e.g., Grigorii Skovoroda
*--Catherine's Nakaz [Instructions (to the Legislative Commission)] were a monument to Enlightenment thought

II. Catherine extended state control over the Orthodox Church
*--At first she encouraged the growth of a secular print culture
*--She promoted the growth of modern educational institutions
*--But as her reign approached its end, she imposed censorship
*--The Legislative Commission took up vast issues of institutional and social reform
*--Catherine created the first effective system of provincial administration

III. When Emperor Peter III (Catherine's husband and predecessor on the throne) "emancipated" the Russian gentry from state service, Russian peasants presumed they too would soon be freed from serfdom, but they were very wrong
*--Similarly the Russian gentry were also mistaken if they thought they had been made aristocrats who now represented something like a rebirth of medieval power, privilege and exemption. The Russian gentry had ceased to be and would never again be a "well-born" center of independent political power
*--GO 1762jy03 and make 7 hypertext hops on the word "serf" to the end of Catherine's reign
*--Catherine invited agricultural colonists to come and live in Russia
*--But popular discontent among all peoples, up and down the social and economic hierarchy, resulted in the great "Pugachev uprising"
*--In connection with the provincial reforms (above), Catherine issued charters to the nobility and townspeople, extending Peter III's reform
*--Try this 4-hop LOOP for readings on everyday life under Catherine II

Transition from Enlightenment to Revolution:
1789:1815; The French Revolution, Monarchy collapsed, King Louis XVI was tried and executed