Papers by Elise Wirtschafter
Cornell University Press eBooks, Oct 1, 1997
In Social Identity in Imperial Russia, Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter undertakes the difficult, val... more In Social Identity in Imperial Russia, Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter undertakes the difficult, valuable and sometimes ironic task of delineating and clarifying the imperial Russian government's own attempts to construct an integrated and stable "society" by conceptualizing a rational, ordered and delineated framework of social categories and imposing it on the ethnically and culturally diverse subjects of its far-flung empire. Professor Wirtschafter is particularly equal to this task as she has already contributed to our understanding of and appreciation for the complexities of Russian society with her earlier articles and monographs on common soldiers, soldiers' families and the "people of various ranks" (raznochintsy). It was, in fact, the very issues of social ambiguity and malleability raised by her previous research which induced her to explore the "relationships between state building, largescale social structure, and everyday life" through "a selective synthesis and interpretation of the
Slavic and East European Journal, 1998
Cahiers du monde russe, 2016
The American Historical Review, 2004
The Journal of Modern History, 2004
... bibliography. The general reader will be grateful for the potted biographies of seventy-eight... more ... bibliography. The general reader will be grateful for the potted biographies of seventy-eight writers, given in an appendix, but may wonder why NI Novikov and AN Radishchev, for example, are omitted. ... read. London Nick Worrall
The American Historical Review, 1992
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 2014
Ol'ga Glagoleva and Ingrid Shirle [Schierle], eds., Dvorianstvo, vlast' i obshchestvo v p... more Ol'ga Glagoleva and Ingrid Shirle [Schierle], eds., Dvorianstvo, vlast' i obshchestvo v provintsial 'noi Rossii XVIII veka (Nobility, Power, and Society in 18th-Century Provincial Russia). 656 pp., indices. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012. ISBN-13 978-5867939748. N. N. Petrukhintsev and Lorents [Lorenz] Erren, eds., Praviashchie elity i dvorianstvo Rossii vo vremia i posle petrovskikh reform (1682-1750) (Ruling Elites and the Nobility in Russia during and after the Reforms of Peter the Great [1682-1750]). 455 pp., indices. Moscow: Rosspen, 2013. ISBN-13 978-5824317176. Although from the perspective of readers (and reviewers) single-author books always are easier to assimilate, evaluate, and critique, in post-Soviet Russia the production of monographic essay collections has become a mainstay of historical scholarship. These volumes can be difficult to digest--filled as they are with thematically broad and empirically narrow essays that often seem too brief or too long--but in this era of Russian intellectual ferment, they serve an important purpose. Essay collections make possible rapid dissemination of the voluminous research that is going on in Russia today, and they introduce to Russian and foreign publics the labors of scholars working in cities and towns across the Russian Federation. Time-consuming as it can be to work through hundreds of pages of disparate microstudies, there is simply no better way to become acquainted with the breadth of research and the explosion of information currently becoming available. Although such collections cry out for review by scholars who specialize in the specific areas covered, rather than by someone such as this reviewer who is broadly familiar with the period and issues at hand, there simply are not enough reviewers outside Russia to do justice to the massive amount of research being produced. Turning to the books under review, it also appears that the end of communist-era disdain for the governing classes of imperial Russia has led to a revival of interest in the history of elites, who now can be viewed through a more objective, nonideological lens formed out of the historian's natural empathy for his or her chosen subject. The collections discussed below represent stunning examples of the possibilities at hand, and both belong to a growing list of monographs sponsored by the German Historical Institute (DHI) in Moscow, which has set as its mission sustained support for Russian scholarship and for collaboration between Russian and foreign scholars. Praviashchie elity i dvorianstvo Rossii vo vremia i posle petrovskikh reform (1682-1750), edited by N. N. Petrukhintsev and Lorenz Erren, consists of 18 articles by 18 authors, including one of the editors. The articles are grouped into four sections devoted to (1) the nobility and the exercise of power (four contributions), (2) individual personalities within the elite (six contributions), (3) questions of collective soslovie consciousness (four contributions, among them my favorites), and (4) the relationship between local elites and the state (four contributions). All the articles address the broad subject of how the Russian elite should be defined--how its organization, power, and patterns of development should be understood, with special attention to the impact of the Petrine reforms. (1) Unfortunately, although the individual articles provide much fuel for thought and much information on sources, there is no general concluding essay that explains what it all means or how the different themes that have been covered interrelate. The individual essays are left to stand on their own legs, which they do quite well, but it is hard to know what the general scholar-reader should take away from the deluge of encyclopedic information. The articles in the first section, dealing with the structure of the nobility and its relationship to the monarchy and/or state power, cover a variety of traditional issues that need to be addressed in any discussion of the nobility as a ruling elite. …
Russian Review, 2001
For scholars trained to approach sources and assumptions from a critical perspective that allows ... more For scholars trained to approach sources and assumptions from a critical perspective that allows for the possibility of open-ended interpretation based on careful empirical reconstruction, the popular adage history repeats itself smacks of determinism and reductionism. Yet as any practicing historian knows, methodologies and concrete questions for research do in fact repeat themselves. For this reason it is at once a spur to creativity and a source of unwarranted self-congratulation when scholars seek to present their work in terms of newness and reconceptualization. Among American scholars of Russia the impulse to differentiate and individualize appeared with particular force during the era of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement, which encouraged opposition to Cold War perspectives and broad distrust of established authorities. With ever-greater frequency, workers, women, peasants, parish priests, and eventually national minorities appeared alongside rulers, nobles, politicians, diplomats, military leaders, church hierarchs, and intellectuals as crucial subjects in the writing of new histories. The new social history, the new cultural history, womens history, demography, economics, and ethnic studiesa range of methodologies were enlisted in the effort to understand the experiences of ordinary people and by extension the social foundations of the Russian revolutions. Whether or not historians directly examined the worlds first socialist revolution, the outcome of 1917 informed thinking about the entire imperial period. In more recent times, the appeal of topics sometimes frowned upon in the 1960s and 1970sfor example, religion, empire, and elite cultureas well as the need to come to terms with the historiographic implications of the Soviet collapse, have underscored claims to reinterpretation, which also can be justified by greater access to archival sources. The paradigmatic role of the Revolution has receded, replaced by concepts such as civil society, citizenship, gender, and national identity. In Russia, where quite different dynamics come into play, historians are reaching out to their European and American colleagues, attempting to assimilate decades of foreign research previously accessible to only a few trusted scholars, and in the process also returning to the prerevolutionary tradition of history-writing. In contrast to American and West European historiographic trends, which can be readily identified and pegged to specific works, the Russian situation is highly fluid. Freed from Soviet ideological strictures, Russian scholars are actively exploring new languages of historical analysis. Presently an amalgam of foreign, Soviet, Imperial Russian, and intelligentsia idioms, their conceptual apparatus cannot yet be defined in the concrete terms of identifiable methodologies. It is only a matter of time, however, before history-writing in Russia will blend imperceptibly into the larger international arena, currently dominated by Americans and West Europeans, while also providing its own unique perspectives.
Slavic Review, 1985
When a young peasant in early nineteenth-century Russia was conscripted into the army from the ta... more When a young peasant in early nineteenth-century Russia was conscripted into the army from the taxpaying population, he underwent a fundamental change in juridical status: born into serfdom, he became a “free” man (vol'nyi chelovek) with a civic identity. He also entered a world of bureaucratic regulation that governed his daily routine and formalized his social relationships. While the master had unlimited control over his peasants, who were in fact his personal property, governmental regulation to some extent mediated relations between military commanders and their subordinates. In military society the state sought to legislate those paternalistic values that customarily defined relations between landlord and serf, relations conceived in the image of a father supervising his child. Theoretically this relationship combined paternal concern for the welfare of the soldiers with strict discipline and punishment. Like the biblical God, commanders were supposed to be both merciful a...
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 2006
Historians suspicious of absolutist political models have in recent decades drawn attention to th... more Historians suspicious of absolutist political models have in recent decades drawn attention to the effectiveness of legal institutions in Muscovite and imperial Russia. This attention has produced a compelling corrective to widespread images of Russian government as arbitrary, corrupt, and generally dysfunctional. More often than not, liberal historians in late imperial Russia and Euro-American scholars in the era of the Cold War stood ready to paint Russian government with the broad brush of despotism, a readiness that led them to overlook the social dynamism and nuanced political relationships characteristic of Muscovite, imperial, and even Soviet Russia. (1) Nancy Kollmann and Jane Burbank count among the most influential voices that have been calling for a reappraisal of Russian government and legal culture. (2) In the articles presented here, as well as in previously published work, both historians document the beneficial effects of legal institutions and judicial practices over several centuries of Russian history. Both see in the Russian system of justice a source of social integration and political legitimacy. Bolstered by years of archival research, the conclusions of Kollmann and Burbank derive from deep knowledge of legal prescriptions and, more important, judicial practices. Through their descriptions of how tsarist subjects from a range of social statuses successfully employed judicial institutions to address everyday needs, it becomes clear that law played a central role not only in government policy but also in the functioning of society. The strengths of the approach taken by Nancy Kollmann and Jane Burbank are easy to identify; however, the whole is the sum of the parts, and I remain uneasy with the broad implications of the discussion. Across Western and Central Europe--in Britain, France, Austria, and even Germany--limited monarchy, and eventually parliamentary government and the rule of law, arose from the cumulative effects of institutional competition and juristic posturing among recognized corporate bodies. In need of resources but short of effective power, early modern monarchs who asserted a divine right to absolute sovereignty had little choice but to mobilize their nations through cooperation with, or opposition to, these bodies. In a study of the cameralist Policeystaat published some 20 years ago, Marc Raeff drew attention to the absence in Russia of corporate bodies--guilds, diets, parlements, provincial estates, Estates General, and the English Parliament--and to the consequences of that absence. (3) In Russia, the monarch did not need to compete for social and political authority with historically sanctioned and legally constituted bodies that exercised either local territorial or translocal authority. Lordship in Russia carried no administrative or judicial powers beyond the boundaries of the individual noble's private estate, and the "self-government" of peasants and townspeople did not extend to any territorial or national body outside the immediate community. Nor did local customs and practices become codified as customary law on the model of the provincial coutumes in France. (4) Except for the Church, which the reforms of Peter I (1689-1725) effectively separated from the sphere of secular government, Russia's corporate bodies and civic institutions came to life by order of the cameralist Policeystaat. Monarchs decreed the creation of these bodies, which tsarist subjects then were called upon to fill. Historians seeking to situate Russia within the broad spectrum of European history cannot attach enough importance to the absence of corporate bodies. No matter how historians ultimately define Muscovy's Assembly of the Land (zemskii sobor) or Boyar Duma, there is no evidence that these bodies exercised legislative, administrative, or judicial authority indepen dent of the monarch--a state of affairs that stood in stark contrast to the role of corporate bodies further west. …
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 2009
Drop a pebble in the water: just a splash, and it is gone; But there's half-a-hundred ripples... more Drop a pebble in the water: just a splash, and it is gone; But there's half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on and on, Spreading from the center, flowing on out to the sea And there is no way of telling where the end is going to be. Drop a pebble in the water: in a minute you forget, But there's little waves a-flowing, and there's ripples circling yet, And those little waves a-flowing to a great big wave have grown; You've disturbed a mighty river just by dropping in a stone. (1) Marc Raeff was like a pebble in the water. In life and in learning, the ripples flowed from his wisdom and erudition, "circling on and on and on." Marc was born in Moscow on 28 July 1923. The only child of Victoria, a biochemist, and Isaac, an engineer, Marc spent his early childhood in Czechoslovakia, where from 1926 his father worked for the Soviet government inspecting imported machinery parts. Isaac, a Menshevik, was recalled to Moscow in 1927 or 1928, but instead of returning he took his family to Berlin. Marc began school there at age seven. The Raeffs moved to Paris in 1933, after the Nazis took power, and in 1941 they emigrated to the United States. In New York, Marc briefly attended City College before being drafted into the military. During World War II, he served as an interpreter in camps for prisoners of war. After the war, Marc attended Harvard University, where he and other "founding fathers" of Russian studies in the United States studied with Michael Karpovich. Marc received his Ph.D. in 1950 and taught at Clark University from 1949 until 1960. There he met Lillian Gottesman, a graduate student in psychology. They married in 1951 and had two daughters, Anne (b. 1959) and Catherine (b. 1964). Marc moved to Columbia University in 1961 and taught there until his retirement in 1988. After retiring, he continued to live in Tenafly, New Jersey, and to enjoy with his wife, Lillian, the cultural offerings of New York and Europe. Just recently, the Raeffs moved to Teaneck, where Marc died on 20 September 2008. (2) As Bakhmeteff Professor of Russian Studies at Columbia University, Marc Raeff trained several generations of historians. The range of his knowledge was legendary and can readily be seen in the titles of his nine books, not to mention the numerous articles, essays, and reviews that he wrote in English, French, German, and Russian. (3) (Marc also read Italian and some Polish.) His love of reading and writing amazed everyone who knew him. It was invariably the case that his friends, colleagues, and students owed him a letter. The swiftness with which he read and commented upon draft manuscripts instilled both fear and admiration. Those manuscripts came back so quickly that one's first thought had to be, "Oh, no! He could not get through it. It's a mess." Always, however, the manuscript brought with it a detailed, perceptive, and honest letter, one that recognized the author's hard work and encouraged him or her to face the next revisions. When I discussed my work with Marc or read his written reaction, I often had the feeling that he understood what I wanted to say better than I did. He could see ideas and implications that had not yet been fully articulated. I do not want to belittle the deep sadness that surrounds Marc Raeff's passing. But still, I imagine Marc up there in heaven (even though he did not believe in heaven), looking at us and saying, "What is all the fuss?" Marc's objectivity, his ability to discern reality in a rational and detached manner, was one of his outstanding intellectual and emotional qualities. Objectivity did not, however, mean coldness or lack of concern. Marc was a devoted son, husband, and father. He helped Russian relatives to emigrate and to live more comfortably in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. He supported colleagues and students in their professional endeavors over and over again. Marc was never too busy to read a manuscript or write a letter of recommendation. …
Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography, 2009
Historians of communism and the former Soviet Union intuitively trace the origins of modem revolu... more Historians of communism and the former Soviet Union intuitively trace the origins of modem revolutionary and totalitarian ideologies back to Enlightenment thought.
Cahiers du monde russe, 2009
In the 1968 edition of Social Theory and Social Structure, Robert K. Merton writes of middle-rang... more In the 1968 edition of Social Theory and Social Structure, Robert K. Merton writes of middle-range sociological theories that they "consist of limited sets of assumptions from which specific hypotheses are logically derived and confirmed by empirical investigation […] The middle-range orientation involves the specification of ignorance. Rather than pretend to knowledge where it is in fact absent, it expressly recognizes what must still be learned in order to lay the foundation for still more knowledge. It does not assume to be equal to the task of providing theoretical solutions to all the urgent practical problems of the day but addresses itself to those problems that might now be clarified in the light of available knowledge." 1 Although Merton's statement refers to applied sociological research, the issue it highlights resonates with historians. In the effort to reconstruct past events, historians are by nature inclined to follow a middle way -a middle way between what current theoretical or intellectual fashion tells us we should want to know and what the documentary source base allows us to know. Michael Confino's essay on "the soslovie (estate) paradigm" leads readers to the sort of "middle-range" conclusion advocated by Merton. Reflecting upon roughly a century of social discourse and historiographic debate, Confino reminds historians of how difficult it can be to find the appropriate vocabulary for describing the social arrangements of old regime Russia. Like almost every historian of Russia, Confino thinks within the conceptual apparatus of European history. Working with the language of estate (état) and class, he traces the long-term development of Russian society with reference to Muscovite ranks (chiny), Petrine service estates (sosloviia or sostoianiia), and late imperial classes. This is to be expected, given that the established historiography is largely the product of how Russian elites, and consequently later generations of historians, understood these categories. But as Confino also makes clear, the categories and concepts derived from European
The Journal of Military History, 1995
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
The American Historical Review, 1996
American Historical Review, 1998
... Only by ex-tending the scope of inquiry from the court to the provinces, how-ever ... Whateve... more ... Only by ex-tending the scope of inquiry from the court to the provinces, how-ever ... Whatever the distant origins of local identities, by the seventeenth century the gentry had not only ac ... display fierce local loyalty and pride, whether to their mountain town in the Spanish Sierra or to ...
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Papers by Elise Wirtschafter