Freshly Printed - allow 7 days lead
Couldn't load pickup availability
Social Identity in Imperial Russia
Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter (Author)
9780875807287
Paperback / softback, published 22 June 2015
271 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.454 kg
An invaluable source of detailed information and compelling interpretations about social identities in imperial Russia. Wirtschafter has written a book that every historian of imperial Russia will need to read.... She offers a challenging countermodel to traditional interpretations of Russian social history. An important, stimulating, and useful contribution to our understanding of Russian society.
A broad, panoramic view of Russian imperial society from the era of Peter the Great to the revolution of 1917, Wirtschafter's study sets forth a challenging interpretation of one of the world's most powerful and enduring monarchies. A sophisticated synthesis that combines extensive reading of recent scholarship with archival research, it focuses on the interplay of Russia's key social groups with one another and the state. The result is a highly original history of Russian society that illuminates the relationships between state building, large-scale social structures, and everyday life. Beginning with an overview of imperial Russia's legal and institutional structures, Wirschafter analyzes the "ruling" classes, and service elites (the land-owning nobility, the civil and military servicemen, the clergy) and then examines the middle groups (the raznochintsy, the commercial-industrial elites, the professionals, the intelligentsia) before turning to the peasants, townspeople, and factory workers. Wirtschafter argues that those very social, political, and legal relationships that have long been viewed as sources of conflict and crisis in fact helped to promote integration and foster the stability that ensured imperial Russia's survival.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Theater and Society
2. The Social Meaning of Plays
3. The Patriarchal Household
4. Civic Society
5. The Common Good
6. Moral Monarchy
Conclusion-The Individual in Society and Polity
Appendix-Biographies of Authors
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index