220027 Russia and the Steppes. From precarious coexistence to Empire (S+K) (SoSe 2007)

Russia's steppe frontier stretched from the tributaries of the Danube to the Urals and from the Russian forests to the Black and Caspian seas. The steppe has played a crucial role in Russian history from the very beginning of Eastern Slavic statehood: To the Grand Princes of Kiev and Muscovy, it was the ?wild field,? a region inhabited by nomadic Turko-Mongolic peoples who repeatedly threatened the fragile Slavic settlements to the north. With Muscovy's modernisation and westernisation, the tsar gained military supremacy vis a vis their nomadic neighbours. The steppe became a land of boundless economic promise and a target of Imperial civilising mission. By the mid-nineteenth century the steppe, once so alien and threatening, had emerged as an essential, if complicated, symbol of Russia itself.
The course traces the complex processes of Russian expansion and colonisation in the south - east, discusses the repercussions of this expansion on the constitution of Russian statehood and Russian self imagination through the centuries.

Pre-requisites: there are nor formal pre-requisites except for a working knowledge of English and a readiness to read and discuss materials in English regularly. The course will consist of lecture, discussion, short writing assignments and a short in-class test.

Bibliography

Sunderland, Willard: Taming the Wild Field. Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; Khodarkovsky, Michael: Russia's steppe frontier: the making of a colonial empire, 1500 ? 1800. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2002.