It is a truth sometimes acknowledged that Russia consists of more than just Moscow and St. Petersburg. Recent years have accordingly given us a number of works on Russia's provinces and regions by historians, social scientists, and literary specialists—including contributors to the volume under review here. Positing that a focus on “centrifugal forces” can generate “a richer and more complex view of contemporary Russia” (x), the editors of Russia's Regional Identities have assembled an interdisciplinary group to plumb the “mentalities and value systems” (2) of those residing beyond Russia's capitals. The result is an intriguing, if also eclectic and uneven exploration of diverse Russian locales and their implication in broader systems of geography and meaning.
Focusing primarily but not exclusively on contemporary Russia, the volume is noteworthy for situating in one analytical framework regions extending across several administrative entities (the Urals and Siberia), two areas with significant Muslim populations (the Volga-Ural and Dagestan), and individual towns and oblasts of European Russia (Pskov, Orel, and Voronezh). Making their appearance on these pages are the topics of sacred hills, Lenin monuments, holy springs, enchanted geographies, fashion, literature, music, cinema, Orthodox missionaries, museums, the Gulag, and even the severed head of Khadzhi Murat. The very diversity of this list suggests why it is impossible to summarize the volume's contents here. It is likewise difficult to articulate a single argument, though the editors themselves come admirably close by proposing that in looking beyond the capitals the chapters reveal “impressive people claiming agency, defining themselves in their own terms, acting often imaginatively and creatively, narrating their own highly credible versions of their local and regional past, and charting, in however limited ways, an alternative course in their public endeavors, sometimes resisting and sometimes cooperating with trends supported by the current government” (3).
Broadest in their scope and import are two “framing” pieces by Susan Smith-Peter, who identifies six “waves” of regionalism beginning in the 1830s and discerns a Russia in step with, rather than behind, western Europe (at least until Iosif Stalin); and Anne Lounsbery, who investigates the dominant image of stagnant, homogeneous, and monotonous provinces in the “often grotesquely deforming” (44) gaze of mainstream Russian literary culture. (Monographs by both authors over the last two years have contributed handsomely to our conception of Russia beyond the capitals in the nineteenth century.) A brief afterword by Catherine Evtuhov offers a stimulating meditation on “the power of the provinces” (278) to provide historical models for the management of local resources, to generate ideals and symbols specific to each, and to subvert assumptions of historical laws of development as well as the very idea of “modernity.” Russia's regions, then, not only fill in a picture of Russia that is grossly incomplete without them; they are also good to think. For this humble reviewer, the more historical essays also provide gratifying confirmation of the importance of the 1830s for making Russia what it became, though this observation undoubtedly reflects his own strange obsessions.
It is hard to deny that one feels as though one knows Russia a little bit better as a result of having read this book. The chapters also reinforce one's desire to venture into and across Russia's expanses, whether literally or through targeted reading. The volume admittedly confirms that we perhaps remain too dependent on the concept of “identity” as a conceptual framework: it encompasses so much (and simultaneously so little) and often serves as a default category in lieu of more challenging and rewarding conceptualizations. (Editors admittedly do acknowledge the famous critique of this concept issued by Rogers Brubaker and Fred Cooper.) I wonder also if the editors, rather than organizing chapters along regional lines (European Russia, then Urals, then Siberia, then “outside the Orthodox zone” [227]) might have instead identified distinct problems or challenges facing their regional protagonists, which might have done more both to elucidate common themes and to elaborate distinctions between regional issues and colonial ones. As is perhaps inevitable in such collections, the essays are uneven. If, for example, Mark Lipovetsky's account of Sverdlovsk's “regional cultural revolution” (143) and Lyudmila Parts's on Voronezh's efforts to brand itself as “the capital of noncapital Russia” (126) engaged me as informative and intriguing, then certain other chapters (though by no means all) left me uncertain about how their findings were expected to inflect readers’ conceptions of regions and their “power.” And if some contributions, like Victoria Donovan's on patriotic rebranding in Pskov, foreground shifting relations between region and center in cultural politics, then others do substantially less to position their analysis clearly on this axis or another. The editors remark that chapters share a parallel structure designed to permit comparison of “otherwise disparate formations and experiences” (6), but if such parallels are indeed present, they did little actually to promote such thinking in this reviewer.
Still, this volume coheres better than many such exercises, and its overall effect is stimulating. With its interdisciplinary character, moreover, it should have broad appeal to diverse scholars. Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Russia's regions would do well to engage with it.
