Graduate Programs : Department of Central Eurasian Studies

Inner Asian & Uralic National Resource Center (IAUNRC)		Sinor Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies (SRIFIAS)		Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR)		Summer Language Workshop (SWSEEL)

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Russia's Orient 1552-1924
CEUS-R 628
Edward Lazzerini

This course for graduate students examines the relationship between Russia (late Muscovite and imperial) and the Turkic peoples inhabiting the Volga-Ural region, the northern littoral of the Black Sea, the North and South Caucasus, as well as nomadic and sedentary Central and Inner Asia. Russian expansion and its goals, literary and scientific efforts to situate the “oriental” Other within the evolving Empire, the complexities of imperial management (juridical, economic, and political), and the competing attractions to indigenous populations of resistance and accommodation, will be some of the major themes pursued. Requirements include:

Quality reading of primary sources as well as scholarly essays and portions of major secondary studies for in-class discussion. My intention is to make all readings available online through OnCourse CL, along with relevant maps, graphics, and tables, the full syllabus, and other course-related materials. The one exception—although I will attempt to digitize at least early portions—is the anthology Russia’s Orient, ed. by Daniel Brower and Edward Lazzerini (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997). Find or buy a paperback copy, because we will be reading most of its essays during the course of the semester
A brief essay (no more than two pages) that draws from one of a number of primary sources, some in English, but others in Russian (and perhaps a third or fourth language) that will be available in the Resource section of OnCourse CL. If you are able to use one of the non-English documents, please do so for the practice of reading in the field. Your task is to FIND SOMETHING IN THE TEXT ABOUT WHICH TO WRITE. This is not the same as producing a biography of the author or a description of the text. Both of those are examples of narrative writing, the sort that one would find in an encyclopedia. Rather than narrative, I want critical analysis, on the order of that which we will pursue with "The Revolutionist,” and should we have time, a letter from the Qianlong Emperor to King George III.

Initially, your best course of action is to read the text you have chosen quickly and without much effort or thought; then, find opportunities to read it more slowly and carefully, letting your eyes seek what it is that the author is really saying, perhaps being disingenuous about, or not saying at all. The text is a nut to crack, a puzzle to solve, a mystery to unravel, and seldom, if ever, what it seems. That which you discover after close reading is what your essay will reveal.

Following are the documents from which to choose:

1. Memorandum from Prince Potemkin to Catherine II
2. Memorandum from Prince Bariatinskii on Russia and the Caucasus
3. Memorandum from Prince Bariatinskii to Prince Mikhail Nikolaevich
4. Memorandum from Prince Gorchakov to the Great Powers
5. V kakoi sile

A semester project of 12-15 pages on some theme drawn from a traveler’s journal/book, a surveyor’s report, the portfolio of a sketch-artist or painter, or some other product of an eyewitness to an “oriental” region and its Turkic inhabitants within the period surveyed. As with the brief project described above, you should FIND SOMETHING IN THE TEXT ABOUT WHICH TO WRITE. I will make available a bibliography of possible sources. The final draft is due on December 6, but I want a description of the project—at most one page—by October 16.