Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union
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Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union
19.99 €
15.99 €
The Empire of Nations, published in English in 2005, has already earned the status of a classic study of the history of Soviet national policy. Francine Hirsch traces the interaction of power and expertise in the process of state-building, showing the contribution of ethnographers, anthropologists, geographers, linguists, and other specialists to the formation of Soviet ideas about nation and race, as well as to the development of the very principles of the USSR as a multinational state. It was the experts who had pre-revolutionary training and relied on Western European ideas that in the 1920s and 1930s determined the specific forms of state policy toward certain peoples. Based on extensive archival research, the author shows how, through the planning and conduct of censuses, mapping, and the creation of museum expositions, the Bolsheviks' general ideas crystallized into political decisions. The European idea of cultural evolutionism, the Marxist theory of stadial development, and Lenin's idea of the revolutionary party's ability to accelerate historical development became the basis for the state policy of integrating different peoples and cultures within the Soviet project.
Francine Hirsch is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (USA).
Francine Hirsch is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (USA).
See also:
- All books by the publisher
- All books by the author
- All books in the series Rossica History