Gulnar T. Kendirbai's Russian Practices of Governance in Eurasia: Frontier Power Dynamics, Sixteenth Century to Nineteenth Century is a book with two critical claims. First, local traditions arising from the “mobility” needs of nomadic peoples in the north Asian steppes defined the Russian (as well as Qing) policies toward this region between the sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Second, semiotics provides a useful probe to understand the “frontier power dynamics” that characterized these policies. Unfortunately, both claims are made in passing, without proper engagement with the relevant English-language literature, and without elaborate analytical sections in the text that could substantiate and sufficiently explain the author's claims.

Andreas Kappeler highlighted the steppe's centrality in Russia's eastward expansion for German and English-language readers. Kendirbai evokes Kappeler's theory about the “gathering of the lands of the Golden Horde” (25) but without referencing him—which appears to be an oversight—or engaging the idea in depth. Then, Michael Khodarkovsky suggested that fundamental incompatibilities between the sedentary Russian and nomadic steppe traditions propelled Russia's expansion into the region by forcing it to defend its territories against the incursions of ever-warring nomads. Kendirbai's entire narrative can be considered a response to this theory, but again, without proper elaboration on the theory. She suggests that rather than being on the defensive, Russia actively involved itself in the rivalries of the Kalmyk and Kazakh nomadic elites over pasturelands and benefited from this involvement. It secured trade routes, buffered itself from its imperial rivals across the steppe, and in the long run, acquired new territories and subjects. Kendirbai's detailed analyses of the diplomatic language, gift politics, and ceremonial engagements that characterized Russia's involvement in the region convincingly demonstrate her argument. These analyses are inspired by Richard Wortman's work on the semiotics of imperial governance, and Kendirbai thanks him personally for his instrumentality in clarifying the book's direction (xi). The theoretical relevance of Wortman's work, however, is not spelled out in the narrative.

Thus, for those who are already familiar with the scholarship on Russia's eastward expansion and can identify the reference points, this monograph provides a useful corrective based on a synthesis of Russian-language secondary sources, primary sources that have appeared in print, and some archival material. The text is not gentle on uninitiated readers because of a failure to introduce individuals, institutions, key events, and technical terms sufficiently or as they first appear. However, for non-specialists willing to put some extra research into the reading experience, the book can still be eye-opening. Kendirbai's example of the north Asian steppe strikingly shows the insufficiency of Eurocentric concepts and analytical tools to understand the politics and culture of other regions around the world, especially before the advent of European modernity. The book illustrates how “they do things differently there”—to use Leslie Poles Hartley's wise words—and challenges us to try to understand the steppe of the past in its own terms.

The Kalmyks and Kazakhs occupied the post-Mongol world of the steppes where nomadic leaders of Chingissid descent ensured the following of lesser nobles by continually searching for and securing pasture lands and regulating their followers’ access to it. In return, the lesser nobles and their ordinary followers offered the leaders their services in the frequent conflicts resulting from the constant mobility of tribes in search of land. If a leader proved incapable of securing access to needed pastures or failed to win its followers’ loyalty through his generosity, arbitration skills, and kinship politics, the lesser nobles and ordinary nomads could vote with their feet and move to the protection of other leaders. Occasionally, a Chingissid leader's fortunes rose thanks to large land grasps made possible by the accumulation of followers during migration into power vacuums that the steppe offered. Over time, a more centralized power structure evolved among Kalmyks with the spread of Tibetan Buddhism, but the Muslim Kazakhs remained fragmented to the end.

The Russian monarchs entered into this ecological, economic, political, and cultural context during their eastward expansion and quickly noticed that they could use sedentary Russia's resources to become the “khan” makers of the steppe by offering protection, titles, gifts, and land access to the nomadic leaders of their choice. They lacked the administrative and military resources to incorporate steppe lands into the empire's core territories until the nineteenth century. However, incorporation was not a desirable move regardless, since the steppe's fractured power configurations conveniently buffered Russia from the Jungar and—after its destruction in 1758—Qing empires. Meanwhile, tsarist agents mastered the steppe traditions, pitting competing nomadic groups against one another, luring aspirant leaders to the Russian sphere of influence, and making sure that the nomads neither united into a formidable force nor fell too weak to be swallowed by rival empires.