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

• ACADEMIC CALENDAR =

1st week   Dimensions of Imperial Russian History, with explanations of exercises one, two and three
2nd week  Geography and Imperial Expansion, with 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 exercises six, seven, eight and nine
5th week   Era of "European Revolution" (Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II & "Great Reforms")
6th week   Witte & Industrialization, with exercise ten
7th week   End of serfdom through the Stolypin Reforms, with exercise eleven
8th week   Russian Civilization in its Golden and Silver ages | Intelligentsia and Revolt
9th week   Zemstvos and State Duma
10th week World Imperialism, World War One & the Collapse of Imperial Russia, with exercise twelve

• Summary of twelve course exercises =

Exercise #1   = Purchase and set up your journal (1st Week)
Exercise #2   = Website technique (1st Week)
Exercise #3   = Website philosophy (1st Week)
Exercise #4   = Self-guided UO library tours (2nd Week)
Exercise #5   = Compose brief draft essays #1 and #2 (2nd and 3rd Weeks)
Exercise #6   = Submit journal for first time (4th Week)
Exercise #7   = Become a regional historian (4th through 10th Weeks, ending in draft essay #6)
Exercise #8   = Become an ethno-historian (4th through 10th Weeks, ending in draft essay #7)
Exercise #9   = Compose draft essays #3 and #4  (5th and 6th Weeks)
Exercise #10  = Take a mid-term exam (6th Week)
Exercise #11  = Compose draft essays #5, #6 and #7 (7th through 10th Weeks)
Exercise #12  = Take a final exam (Finals Week)

HST 346: RUSSIA FROM PETER THE GREAT TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Alan Kimball, McK 367, 346-4813. Office hours: Tue&Thu 10:00-12:00 & 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:

!! ja27 [TUE]-----------------1st SUBMISSION of JOURNAL (including first two draft essays)
!! fe12 [THU]:--------------- MIDTERM EXAM IN JOURNAL (including first four draft essays)
!! mr19 [THU] at 8:00am: FINAL EXAM IN JOURNAL (including all draft essays)

First exercise = Purchase and set up your journal. Ask at the customer service desk in the basement of the UO Book Store for a blue lab book (the larger one, 11x9 inches; Stock # 43-581, JUST EXACTLY THIS ONE). 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. Inscribe other personal contact info on the inner face of the cover, and leave the first 4-5 numbered pages blank for keeping your own table of contents through the term, indicating sources consulted. It is your responsibility here to provide a guide to each part of your journal. Leave page 120 blank for instructor comments & grading.

Second exercise: Locate the following course 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 that 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 good lecture notes, devote 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]. Here in this first week I have indicated approximate time for each exercise.

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]. A GLOSSARY [TXT] explains bibliographical abbreviations.

It is not wise to attempt all reading suggestions found in this academic calendar or in SAC. Think of weekly reading lists and SAC suggestions as menus. You may consult with me about how to make your choices, given your particular interests.

When your 9 hours of individual work with your journal are complete each week, congratulate yourself. You are doing an excellent job of training yourself to be a fledgling Russian historian.

Class attendance is essential for the successful completion of this course. The course does not "happen" on the internet or even in the library; it happens when you bring the internet and library materials into contact with lectures in order to expand and refine that most important historical arena of all = Your own mind.

Exercise One
Purchase and set up your journal
[30 minutes]

Ask at the customer service desk in the basement of the UO Book Store for a blue lab book (the larger one, 11x9 inches; Stock # 43-581, JUST EXACTLY THIS ONE). 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. Inscribe other personal contact info on the inner face of the cover, and leave the first 4-5 numbered pages blank for keeping your own table of contents through the term, indicating sources consulted. It is your responsibility here to provide a guide to each part of your journal. Leave page 120 blank for instructor comments & grading.

Read this extended description of how best to employ the journal.

Exercise Two 
Website technique
[2 hours]

In the first days of the term, you will read through descriptions of all 12 exercises here, including linkages to auxiliary explanatory pages. Get a feel for the larger shape of course requirements. The syllabus is itself one of the dimensions of our course. It seems a lot when considered all together, but remember the old proverb = "inch by inch, life's a cinch; mile by mile, life's a trial". Inch your way through these suggestions and instructions. Things will begin to clarify, and you will inch forward in the right directions

Most of the technical peculiarities you will meet in this course are connected with what I call
the Student's Annotated Chronology and Systematic Bibliography [SAC © Alan Kimball]. 

Read this extended description of SAC and how to use it?.

You may print any part of the electronic material I provide this class. You may enter in the journal your own notes on all this electronic material, but do not place photocopied material in the journal.

Exercise Three
Website philosophy
[6 1/2 hours]

We've introduced ourselves to the syllabus dimension of this course. Now we are ready to explore three vaster dimensions of Imperial Russian history (the vaster dimensions of ALL history) =

(1) Time
(2) Place ("Eurasia")
(3) The mentalities of those who produce & consume histories

(1) TIME

Take  hypertext hops to the six great moments in the history of Imperial Russia =
Peter I | Catherine II | "European Revolution" PHASES 1 & 2 | "Great Reforms" | First Russian Revolution | World War I

Four big SAC pages cover our period. Check them out. At first concentrate on the entries in the table of contents at the top of each SAC page. Think about the general chronology of the main periods or peak events in the epoch we are studying. Just above it is suggested that Peter I, Catherine II, "European Revolution", "Great Reforms", the first Russian revolution and World War I are the main events. As you check the table of contents of the following pages, ask yourself what other events should be mentioned if the six-item list were doubled. =

SAC 1682 to 1796
SAC 1796 to 1854
SAC 1855 to 1903
SAC 1904 to 1917

(2) SPACE

Spend 1 hour with the course "Geography" page, especially in order to get a sense of how to read the geographical table near the top of the page

Spend 2 hours with your journal reading in the Reserve Book Room (or photocopy readings and take them home). Read from the following books on reserve, sometimes skimming, sometimes consulting briefly, sometimes giving meticulous attention =

Riasanovsky(1)
Raeff,Imperial(1)
RRC2,2#38 (Pipes on the National Problem, i.e., on "human geography" or demographics of Russian history)

The top section of the page GLOSSARY explains the form of the three readings suggested above (e.g., what "(1)" or "2#38" mean).

(3) MENTALITIES

Finally, there is the dimension of history that I call "the mentalities of those who produce and consume stories about the past" (e.g., you and me)
Read "Ways of Seeing History" with links to three "sub-essays" =

Dozen Categories of Human Grouping
Taxonomy of Historical Experience
Interests (what makes history happen)

 

SUMMARY OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FIRST-WEEK "HOPS"

This electronic syllabus has so far presented internet "hops" to the following auxiliary pages and subpages.
These are the most essential to the understanding of the course structure =

A. THE RESERVE BOOK ROOM
B. SAC
C. JOURNAL
 a. Reading
 b. Draft essays
 c. Exams
D. GEOGRAPHY
E. WAYS OF SEEING HISTORY
 a. Dozen Categories of Human Grouping
 b. Taxonomy of Historical Experience
 c. Interests

2nd Week
GEOGRAPHY & IMPERIAL EXPANSION

Outline map of Eurasia

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 Four 
Self-guided UO library tours

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 (there you'll find GSE and MERSH. Notice the MERSH index)

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 Five
Draft essays

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, but you should select a very specific episode or period. You should take your lead from the web-syllabus lecture page "Main moments in Russian frontier & imperial expansion, 1550s-1850s"

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 relate to 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. Try this LOOP [ID] on the phrase "Petrine Transformation" (10 big hops)

Draft essays #3 and #4

Draft essays #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 notable 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 a 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)] was 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