Although geographically, the Russian Far East was formed relatively recently, after the conclusion of the Aigun Treaty with China in 1858, there are already many interesting episodes in its history. One of them is the focus of Ivan Sablin's book Dal΄nevostochnaia respublika: Ot idei do likvidatsii (Far Eastern Republic: From Idea to Liquidation). This is a translation of Sablin's English edition published in 2019 by Routledge: The Rise and Fall of Russia's Far Eastern Republic, 1905–1922: Nationalisms, Imperialisms, and Regionalisms in and after the Russian Empire. The author graduated from the Faculty of International Relations, St. Petersburg University (2009) and received a PhD in History from Heidelberg University (Germany, 2014). Presently, Ivan Sablin is head of a research group at the Department of History at Heidelberg.
This book has a circulation of 1000 copies. The content is as follows: Left-liberal nationalism and self-organization east of Baikal, 1905–1916; Post-imperial particularisms in the Russian Far East, 1917–1919; Nationalisms and the making of the Far Eastern Republic, 1920; The Far Eastern Republic and the Priamur State formation, 1921; and Competing nationalisms and Sovietization in the Russian Far East, 1922. There is a bibliography (439–61) and a name index (462–71). While the author used a wide variety of archives, it is regrettable that the Hoover Institution archives are not among them. The bibliography of Russian and western sources is fairly complete.
Sablin writes in the preface: “This book, paying attention to the intellectual origins of the Far East and its history, is devoted to the development of left-liberal imperial nationalism in the Russian empire, its appropriation by the Bolsheviks during the years of transformation” (27).
A lot of academic studies (Viktor V. Sonin, Boris I. Mukhachev, Grigorii G. Levkin, and others) and memoirs (Petr M. Nikiforov, and others) have been published about the Far Eastern Republic. The main problem of Soviet researchers is that they considered the history of the Far East Republic from a political point of view and did not use foreign literature. Contemporary Russian scholars are more concerned with descriptive problems without historical analysis. Western historians have also dealt with this topic to some extent (Henry K. Norton, 1923; John J. Stephan, 1994; Canfield F. Smith, 1975; John A. White, 1950; Norman G. Pereira, 1996 and others). All of them, to one degree or another, confirm the brilliant idea of the Bolsheviks and their associates to create a buffer-state. It is not surprising that the Far Eastern Republic ceased to exist after the People's Revolutionary Army had come to Vladivostok in late October 1922.
Sablin makes nationalism and interethnic relations one of the central themes, linking the creation of the FER to them. It would be nice to see more information about relationships between Moscow and the Far Eastern Region, including the socio-economic and cultural problems of people in the area. Some more details about the Provisional Government's Commissar for Indigenous Population Affairs (Inorodcheskim delam) Vladimir K. Arseniev and his views on ethnic issues would be also appropriate. The author only mentions this name when he writes about the Chinese in the Ussuriisk region.
Some terms which Sablin uses in his book (the imperial revolution, imperial space, for example) seem awkward in connection with the era under discussion. He states that there was a Russian Far East from the seventeenth century: “They were attracted by resources that could be sold—ginseng, antlers, and trepangs…” (13). In fact, the Russians moved to the East primarily for furs, which the Chinese were eager to buy.
The book is a challenge to read. Sometimes it is difficult to understand what is being discussed, and the narrative jumps from one topic to another. The reader can easily lose the thread of the story. However, it is encouraging to see younger scholars trying to fill in the history of the Far Eastern Republic, the brief entity existing in Russia in 1920–1922. This book would be most useful for those in academia—researchers and teachers of history, in particular. Its appeal to a popular audience would be limited.
