Questions for discussion:

How did the Russian ruling class seek to re-establish its legitimacy in the wake of 1881? What impact did this have on Russian society? Through which frameworks did Russian citizens understand their relationship to the state, and to each other?

Set reading (to be prepared for class discussion):

Source: 'Manifesto of Alexander III Affirming Autocracy, 1881’, in James Cracraft (ed.), Major Problems in the History of Imperial Russia (Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath, 1994), p. 389. Scan available here.

Alison K. Smith, For the Common Good and Their Own Well-Being: Social Estates in Imperial Russia, (Oxford University Press, 2014), chapter 1, ‘The Meaning of Soslovie’, pp. 14-46. Ebook.

Charles Steinwedel, 'To Make a Difference: The Category of Ethnicity in Late Imperial Russian Politics, 1861-1917’, in David Hoffmann, and Yanni Kotsonis, (eds.), Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge and Practices, 1800-1950, (Houndsmills: New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 67-86. E-book.

Selected further reading:

Joseph Bradley, ‘Subjects into Citizens: Societies, Civil Society, and Autocracy in Tsarist Russia’, The American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 1094–1123

Cathy A. Frierson, Peasant Icons: Representations of Rural People in Late Nineteenth Century Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). E-book.

James von Geldern, ‘Life In-Between: Migration and Popular Culture in Late Imperial Russia’, The Russian Review, 55 (1996), 365–83.

Catriona Kelly, and David Shepherd, eds., Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution: 1881-1940, 1 edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), especially Chapter 1, ‘The Objective Eye and the Common Good’.

Yanni Kotsonis, States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic (University of Toronto Press, 2014).

Abby Schrader, Languages of the Lash: Corporal Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, Ill: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002).