Dominic Lieven

Islam in the Russian Empire

Taking Islam and the Russian empire for natural antagonists, such a vision relied on the Orientalist approach representing Islam as a homogeneous and timeless entity opposing all non-Muslim cultures. Having recognised Islam at the end of the eighteenth century, the authorities constructed a complicated imperial network of Islamic institutions including Muslim clergy, parishes and four regional muftiates. The administration of Muslims differed in central Russia and the borderlands. In a number of frontier regions such as the North Caucasus and Central Asia, Islam had not been institutionalised even at the end of the old regime. New Muslim elites emerged in response to these new Islamic institutions, which were accepted by most Russian Muslims. Despite this long history of interaction, however, the crisis of the tsarist regime beginning in the last third of the nineteenth century generated new fears and trepidations concerning Islam among tsarist functionaries.

Pro-Germans and Russian Foreign Policy 1890–1914

Throughout the history of Imperial Russia, relations between the Russian state and the other European powers greatly influenced political development within the Empire. In the last decades of old Russias existence, however, internal political and economic factors also played a considerable part in defining the course taken by Russian foreign policy. The aim of this article is to shed some light on the causes of Russian involvement in the Great War by looking at the relationship between external and internal policy as seen largely through the eyes of a number of leading statesmen of Nicholas ns reign, particularly those who can, with a varying degree of accuracy, be described as having favoured a pro-German line in Russian foreign policy. From the time of the great coalition to overthrow Napoleon to the retirement of Bismarck in 1 890, friendship between the Courts of Petersburg and Berlin was one of the most stable elements in European diplomacy. Alone among the great powers, Prussia was not a member of the Crimean coalition, and Alexander 11 maintained a benevolent neutrality during the Prussian wars against Austria and France which led to the creation of the German Empire. Though it is true that the Congress of Berlin aroused much Russian indignation against Bismarck and that in the 1880s important voices in Russia began to call for closer links with France, it was in fact the Germans who ended many decades of RussoPrussian alliance in 1890 by refusing to renew the Reinsurance Treaty, a move which caused dismay in the Russian Foreign Ministry. 1

Russia and the Napoleonic wars

Russia played a key part in the military campaigns and the ultimate defeat of Napoleon. At the same time the Napoleonic Wars affected almost every aspect of Russian life – economically, politically, socially and ideologically. This volume brings together the most important and new research on Russia and the Napoleonic period by Russian and non-Russian historians. Their work demonstrates why this period is so significant both for internal Russian developments and for an understanding of Russias relationship with Europe. The Wars not only shaped early nineteenth-century Europe but also have a contemporary relevance for understanding Russian perceptions and international relations today.

Russia as empire and periphery

Empire is one of the most common types of polity in history. In the long term the most interesting and important empires were those linked to the spread of some great high culture or universal religion. Tsarist Russia was a worthy member of this imperial club. The three most crucial acquisitions in the imperial era were the Baltic provinces, Ukraine and Poland. The first was vital because it opened up direct trade routes to Europe, which contributed greatly to the growth of the eighteenth-century economy. By the end of the nineteenth century New Russia and the southern steppe territories were the core of Russian agriculture and of its coal and metallurgical industries: without them Russia would cease to be a great power. Expansion into Ukraine and the empty steppe was Russias equivalent to the New Worlds conquered and colonised by the British and Spanish empires.

The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914

Introduction - The Nineteenth Century: Challenge and Response - Wealth - Sources of Wealth: Agriculture - Sources of Wealth: Forestry - Sources of Wealth: Urban Property - Sources of Wealth: Industry - Life, Manners, Morals - Education and Culture - The Noble as Warrior - Aristocracy in Politics - Conclusion - Index

Russia's Rulers under the Old Regime

From the Tartars to the 20th century - the state and its rulers profile of an elite educating rulers the roads to power the many faces of the beast P.N. Durnovo - the policeman as sage and prophet A.N. Kulomzin - a Russian Victorian aristocrats in politics - the brothers Alexander and Aleksei Obolensky autocracy, bureaucracy, catastrophe. Appendices: a note on sources men appointed to the State Council 1894-1914 Russian State institutions.