A CRITIQUE OF L. N. GUMILEV'S WORK ON ETHNOGEOGRAPHY AT A MEETING AT LENINGRAD UNIVERSITY

Following a critique by the ethnographer V. I. Kozlov of the biological-geographical conception of ethnic history advanced by L. N. Gumilev, a seminar was convened at the Geography Faculty of Leningrad University to discuss the merits of Gumilev's work and of the critique. The consensus of the speakers was that Gumilev's model of ethnic development, treating mankind largely as a biological species and attributing the origins and disappearance of ethnic communities to biological factors, should be treated as a working hypothesis that still required experimental proof. Several participants said they could not agree with some of Gumilev's propositions, especially the existence of a psychic innate drive that is presented as the key element in the generation of new ethnic entities. But speakers did not question his right to present his views, and Kozlov's attack on Gumilev did not appear to find wide support.     

Festschrift

By working largely unaware of the huge literature in anthropology and certain other social sciences on ethnogenesis, Western cultural/historical and ethnic geographers remain aside from the mainstream in this inquiry and in fact do not address the topic as often as one might expect. Anthropologists have dominated ethnogenetic research for decades in North America. We further marginalize our work on ethnogenesis by ignoring completely the work of the Russian Leo Gumilev, a fellow geographer who devoted his career to the study of this subject. I le remains virtually unknown in the West in spite of English translations of a number of his works. This neglect of the works of anthropologists and Gumilev leads Western geographers to deal with ethnogenesis infrequently and somewhat naively. Hie authors suggest that by becoming familiar with these valuable sources and by applying existing, well-developed cultural geographical themes and concepts, such as homeland, diffusion, landscape, preadaptation, and incremental change, Western cultural geographers can more abundantly and significantly join the debate on ethnogenesis, building upon Gumilev's foundation and offering a humanistic, particularistic, and holistic alternative perspective largely absent in anthropological and other nongeographical studies.     

The Crimean War and its lessons for today

Orlando Figes's book The Crimean War: a history, based on English, Russian, French and Turkish sources, throws a new light on the Crimean War in a number of ways. It shows that the conflict was far from being a small war, but a landmark event. It was the only example of a war between Britain and Russia—and it led to enormous casualties. It also represented a stage in medical history, since most of the casualties were caused by disease. In Britain, it marked a new advance in the power of the press, which did much to fuel anti‐Russian sentiment. The war was also fuelled, on both sides, by religious and nationalist sentiment—but its most important cause related to the fate of the Ottoman Empire, then in decline, and fears that its collapse could result in a dangerous power vacuum. The war still has a significance for the present day because the collapse of communism has failed to resolve the antagonism between Russia and the West. Here, the book throws an important light on the development of British and western attitudes towards Russia, many of which were shaped in the nineteenth century. The book deserves attention, both here and in Russia.     

A review of archaeological research on sami prehistory

Abstract

The English botanist and gardener John Tradescant the Elder's diary from a voyage to northern Russia in 1618 has lately attracted attention as a potential source on early Russian sea mammal hunting on the Svalbard archipelago. This article examines the usefulness of Tradescant's diary in this respect, but comes to a negative conclusion.     

Larger,Higher, Farther North … Geographical Metanarratives of the Nation in Russia

A noted specialist on nationalism and identity issues in Russia and Central Asia reviews three of the main geographical metanarratives circulating in contemporary Russia. These are teleological master ideas that seek to explain Russia's essence and place in the world as a function of its territorial size and location. All of them argue that a specific element gives Russia its uniqueness among nations: Russia's territory is larger than other countries in the world and forms a specific continent (Eurasianism); Russia is going higher in the universe (Cosmism); and Russia is going farther north (Arctism). The author proceeds to discuss each metanarrative in turn before outlining their similarities in the concluding section of the paper. These similarities include the shared backgrounds of their leading proponents, their basis in public resentment over perceived slights and injustices of the past, and a conviction that Russia's size and location promise a brighter future. More broadly, she argues that each metanarrative combines conspiracy theories, occult experiences of modernity, and a willingness to transcend political realities.     

Russia's European policy under Medvedev: how sustainable is a new compromise?

This article argues that Dmitry Medvedev's term in office, despite the continuity in Russia's foreign policy objectives, brought about a certain change in Russia's relations with the European Union and the countries of the Common Neighbourhood. The western perceptions of Russia as a resurgent power able to use energy as leverage vis‐à‐vis the EU were challenged by the global economic crisis, the emergence of a buyer's market in Europe's gas trade, Russia's inability to start internal reforms, and the growing gap in the development of Russia on the one hand and China on the other. As a result, the balance of self‐confidence shifted in the still essentially stagnant EU–Russian relationship. As before, Moscow is ready to use all available opportunities to tighten its grip on the post‐Soviet space, but it is less keen to go into an open conflict when important interests of EU member states may be affected. The realization is slowly emerging also inside Russia that it is less able either to intimidate or attract European actors, even though it can still appeal to their so‐called ‘pragmatic interests’, both transparent and non‐transparent. At the same time, whereas the new modus operandi may be suboptimal from the point of view of those in the country who would want Russia's policy to be aimed at the restoration of global power status, it is the one that the Kremlin can live with—also after the expected return of Vladimir Putin as Russia's president. Under the current scheme, the West—and the EU in particular—does little to challenge Russia's internal order and leaves it enough space to conduct its chosen course in the former Soviet Union.     

Developments in Russian Gas Production Since 1998: Russia's Evolving Gas Supply Strategy

An American geographer and prominent authority on the oil and natural gas industries and resources of Russia and other former republics of the Soviet Union reports on overall trends in Russia's natural gas production in the years following the country's ruble devaluation and financial crisis. The account—based on systematic in-country observations, discussions/interviews with industry executives, and a review of industry sources—focuses on factors affecting domestic supply and demand as well as export capacity (will Russia have enough gas to meet rising domestic demand while fulfilling its export obligations?), regional patterns of production (and performance of Gazprom regional production enterprises), obstacles to the use of associated gas derived from crude oil extraction, and major pipeline construction projects in West Siberia and the Russian Far East. The paper concludes by outlining CERA's forecast for Russian gas production to 2020, also disaggregated by region. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, Q40, Q48. 7 figures, 8 tables, 51 references.     

Paradoxes of Gender: Writing History in Post-Communist Russia 1987–1998

The paper analyses the main trends in Russian historiography concerning women's history and gender studies between 1987 and 1998. These developments are evaluated in the context of social, political and cultural changes in Russia in the period of transition from socialist to market economy. The paper argues that, despite the liberalisation of political and intellectual life in Russia following Gorbachev's reforms, the research on gender in the past years and present-day Russia is impeded, on the one hand, by the economic strains on Russia's academic community, which faces a Darwinian struggle for survival, and, on the other, by the persistence of dominant paradigms of history writing inherent in the Soviet ideology. However, the positive developments in the field of gender studies, which should be seen in the context of general regeneration of historical discipline from the ideological constraints, must not be neglected. The paper also draws attention to the field of gender studies and religion, focusing on the outcomes of recent research on Old Believer communities in nineteenth-century Russia.     

Grey and the Russian Threat to India, 1892–1915

ABSTRACT

As Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Liberal Government from August 1892 to June 1895, Sir Edward Grey was exposed to the damage that an anti-British, Franco-Russian Alliance could do to the interests of the British Empire. The experience of those years left an enduring impression upon him. Between June 1895 and December 1905 Grey espoused the cause of agreement with the Russian Empire wherever possible. As Foreign Secretary, he advanced this cause through the Anglo-Russian Conventions of August 1907, whose objectives were to achieve what he described as ‘repose’ on the North West Frontier of India, and the reduction of Russian pressure on Persia in particular. So far as the outbreak of war in 1914 is concerned, Grey's known propensity to maintain good terms with Russia gave the latter a degree of leverage which they exploited to the full in insisting on British support in standing up to Germany and Austria-Hungary following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Grey's position within the Liberal Government, and his clear determination to resign unless Russian demands were met, swung the British government from a neutralist stance to one of full participation in the Great War.     

Love and Hate of Foreign Lands: The Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia

Love and hate follow the same patterns among émigrés as among people in general. Among the several models of the love émigrés feel for a foreign land is pragmatic love, based not so much on real attachment as on interests. For an Orwellian Big Brother this love does not necessarily imply direct material benefits but could be an attempt to justify something that has already occurred—emigration, for example. Pragmatic love for a foreign land and people and a corresponding hatred for one's land of origin raises fewer problems than love for its own sake, which often leads to disappointment and a violent emotional response. Everything is reversed in one's mind: the distant motherland becomes desirable, almost an ideal, whereas the foreign land, the place of residence, is hated and despised. Such was often the case for Russian émigrés to the West from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century. Two nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals—Vladimir Pecherin (1807–55) and Alexander Herzen (1812–70)—though different in many ways, came to a similar conclusion: that the West was not the embodiment of goodness but the dead end of history, and that Russia, which they never visited once they had left it, was the shining star of humanity.     

Missed Opportunities: Winston Churchill,the Air Ministry,and Africa, 1919–1921

Relying on a thorough examination of relevant archival documents housed in several European archives, this paper analyses Austrian Chancellor Metternich's Near Eastern policy from 1829 to 1833 with special attention paid to Austria's relations with Russia. Its primary goal is to refute some already deep-rooted claims relating to Metternich's attitudes towards Russia and the Ottoman Empire from 1829 to 1833 and to offer a different assessment of his role in the diplomatic concert to the one generally held by proving firstly that Metternich did not fear Russia's policy towards the Ottoman Empire during this period, secondly that his policy was consistent and the meeting in Münchengrätz in 1833 was not such an important turning point in the Austrian—Russian relations but simply the climax of the already existing good relationship between the two conservative Powers, and, finally, that no Austro-Russian quid pro quo was agreed upon in this North Bohemian town, which means that Metternich did not have to give up Austrian interests in the Near East for the Russian support in the West because both countries' interests in the two areas were identical. Finally, the paper attempts to point out the fact that though Metternich's policy definitely was conservative, it cannot be sufficiently explained by such a superficial single-word labelling because much of his rationality based upon an in-depth analysis of the affairs lay beyond it, at least of those issues concerning the Eastern Question in the early 1830s.     

Russian geopolitical culture and public opinion: the masks of Proteus revisited

In this paper, we build on the work of Graham Smith, who was developing a critical geopolitics of Russia in his posthumous paper of 1999, published in this journal. Like Smith, we link the evolving geopolitical orientations of Russia to the search for a post-Soviet identity amongst its citizens and its political leadership. While Smith saw a core concept in Russian geopolitics having Protean masks, it is the leadership of the Russian state, specifically President Putin, who has successfully adopted a Protean strategy to appeal to the disparate elements of the Russian geopolitical spectrum. Based on a nationwide survey in spring 2002, we identify six clusters in Russian public opinion by socio-demographic characteristics and we connect each cluster to the main geopolitical orientations competing in contemporary Russia, including democratic statism and the increasingly marginalized Eurasianism that formed the core subject of Smith's paper.     

Imperial versus National Discourse: The Case of Russia

Abstract. It is inaccurate and misleading to apply the term ‘nationalism’ to Russia prior to the present day. Both Tsarist and Soviet leaders sought to maintain an empire and not a nation‐state, and their national consciousness was imperial rather than national. The lack of Russian nationalism was crucial for Russian history since it explains the failure of both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. Modern societies cannot be successfully constructed upon the basis of imperial thinking. The absence of Russian nationalism also has significance for nationalism theory. Russia possessed the social, political and cultural characteristics that have been adduced as ‘causes’ of nationalism by a wide variety of scholars, yet Russia failed to develop a nationalist movement. This suggests that what is crucial to modem nationalism is the appearance of a particularist, secular ideology, since the most notable aspect in which Russia differed from Europe was Russia's universalistic, religious and imperialist discourse of national identity.     

The future of NATO enlargement after the Ukraine crisis

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that his country's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 was partly in response to NATO enlargement. NATO leaders counter that eastern enlargement is not a cause of the Ukraine crisis, and they argue that enlargement does not threaten Russia, but rather it creates stability for all of Europe. This article examines the history of NATO–Russian tensions over enlargement, considers how NATO's enlargement policy factored into the Ukraine crisis, and reviews options for the future of enlargement. Drawing on diplomatic history and geopolitical theory, the article explains Russia's persistent hostility towards NATO's policy of eastward expansion and highlights NATO's failure to convert Russia to its liberal world‐view. The alliance's norm‐driven enlargement policy has hindered the creation of an enduring NATO–Russia cooperative relationship and helped fuel the outbreak of conflict in Georgia and Ukraine. In light of this, NATO should alter its current enlargement policy by infusing it with geopolitical rationales. This means downgrading the transformative and democratization elements of enlargement and, instead, focusing on how candidate countries add to NATO capabilities and impact overall alliance security. A geopolitically‐driven enlargement policy would prioritize countries in the Balkan and Scandinavian regions for membership and openly exclude Georgia and Ukraine from membership. Ultimately, this policy would have the effect of strengthening NATO while giving it more flexibility in dealing with Russia.     

“We are Reindeer People,We Come from Reindeer.” Reindeer Herding in Representations of the Sami in Russia

Abstract

Reindeer herding, a tourism emblem of the European North, is also part of a long-lasting tradition of objectification of Sami culture in Russia. Sustained in the popular imagination by Russian ethnography, the dominant order's agent for legitimization of Soviet ethnic policies, in the 1990s the tradition of exoticization and “othering” was strengthened by Western anthropological and political engagement with the indigenous debate in Russia, transposing on the Sami the imagery and ideals of the global indigenous movement. Business aspirations to utilize the persistent imagery of exotic otherness gave birth to ethnographic tourism in the Kola Peninsula, Northwest Russia, which markets indigenous culture as an attraction. In this paper, I analyze how these diverse discourses equally reify and exploit the concept of Sami reindeer herding and the effects that such representational economy has on the community.     

The Russian navy as Chartmaker in the eighteenth century

Abstract

The modern period of chart making in Russia began in the reign of Peter the Great. Peter created the country's navy, which became the main focus for cartography in the eighteenth century. In this paper the multi‐faceted duties of naval officers in the charting and mapping of seas, rivers, forest resources and other features important for ship building and the development of navigation, and essential to Russia's geo‐political interests, are considered. The history of the early stages of specialized naval education and the training of surveyors at the Moscow Mathematical‐Navigational School (from 1701) and the St Petersburg Naval Academy (from 1715) are outlined, and the first surveys in the Baltic and Caspian seas are described. Finally, special attention is paid to the hydrographical surveys and charting of the Aegean Sea during the Russian‐Turkish war of 1768–1774, the sources and methods involved, and the little‐known Atlas of the Archipelago (1788) which was created from the surveys.     

D/Escribiendo lo sagrado: texto y contexto de las dos primeras crónicas marianas de América

Abstract

Mercedarian friar Luis de Cisneros wrote a chronicle on Our Lady of Remedios, first patroness of Mexico City that was published in 1621. Significantly, that same year Augustinian friar Alonso Ramos Gavilán's history on Our Lady of Copacabana, patroness of Peru and Bolivia, was printed in Lima. This paper compares these two founding accounts, not only in their literary structures, but also their patronage, and reception. It also ponders how both cults aimed to integrate both Spaniards and Indigenous peoples under one symbolic figure—the mother of God—as a key element for the consolidation of colonial society, not by coincidence, one of the key goals of the local Church councils that took place in the 1580s.     

Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis

This article explores explanations of Russia's unyielding alignment with the Syrian regime of Bashar al‐Assad since the Syrian crisis erupted in the spring of 2011. Russia has provided a diplomatic shield for Damascus in the UN Security Council and has continued to supply it with modern arms. Putin's resistance to any scenario of western‐led intervention in Syria, on the model of the Libya campaign, in itself does not explain Russian policy. For this we need to analyse underlying Russian motives. The article argues that identity or solidarity between the Soviet Union/Russia and Syria has exerted little real influence, besides leaving some strategic nostalgia among Russian security policy‐makers. Russian material interests in Syria are also overstated, although Russia still hopes to entrench itself in the regional politics of the Middle East. Of more significance is the potential impact of the Syria crisis on the domestic political order of the Russian state. First, the nexus between regional spillover from Syria, Islamist networks and insurgency in the North Caucasus is a cause of concern—although the risk of ‘blowback’ to Russia is exaggerated. Second, Moscow rejects calls for the departure of Assad as another case of the western community imposing standards of political legitimacy on a ‘sovereign state’ to enforce regime change, with future implications for Russia or other authoritarian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia may try to enshrine its influence in the Middle East through a peace process for Syria, but if Syria descends further into chaos western states may be able to achieve no more in practice than emergency coordination with Russia.     

Review of Periodical Literature and Occasional Publications

Abstract

'Millenarians in the Pennines 1800–1830: Building and Believing Jerusalem'. The legend of the prophet John Wroe and his nineteenth-century millenarian followers remains a cherished part of Pennine folklore. In Ashton-under-Lyne and other mill-towns, Wroe attracted a following committed to his religious direction, living according to the Old Testament Law, and calling themselves 'Israelites'. In the 1820s, the Ashton community constructed an elaborate Sanctuary and four gatehouses, and called their town 'Jerusalem'. Wroe left Ashton in 1831 after sexual allegations; yet his movement persisted for decades. This article presents a new history of Wroe's Israelite sect before 1830, revealing its continuity — in ideas and people — with earlier religious traditions in the region. The phenomenon of a sect believing Ashton could be the New Jerusalem was not the work of one charismatic leader, nor the outcome of economic and religious conditions in one decade; nor were such beliefs a short-lived replacement for old securities. From a newly discovered archive and a range of sources in international and local collections, the buildings, the rites and the regime emergent in 1820s Ashton are shown to be merely the most prominent episode in a larger and more notable regional religious history. Acknowledging the agency available within this movement challenges existing conceptions of millenarianism in the period.