[The Tsar, the empire, and the nation: dilemmas of nationalization in Russia’s western borderlands, 1905-1915]

ENThis book weighs in on the question of Russian imperial policy toward the western borderlands in the period 1905–15. The editors, Darius Staliūnas and Yoko Aoshima, have compiled a collection of essays to study how the aims and the practices of the Czarist bureaucracy developed in response to the challenges of the assorted nationalist groups who had their own and various agendas. They limit their study to the twelve western provinces of the empire that were identified as Kyiv (Kiev), Volhynia, Podolia, Vilnius, Kaunas, Hrodna (Grodno), Minsk, Vitsebsk (Vitsebk), Mahilioŭ (Mogilev), Kurland, Livland, and Estland, but most of these articles examine the Baltic and Polish territories, which are defined throughout the book as the northwest region. The chronological scope of 1905–15 results in a series of contributions that study the impact of the reforms after the 1905 Revolution on the interactions that occurred between assorted departments and various officials of the Czarist bureaucracy and many different representatives of civil society who sought to enhance the standing of national groups in the empire. Using earlier works, especially those of Alexei Miller and Theodore Weeks, the editors’ point of departure rests on how the Russians pursued two courses – one aimed to strengthen imperial control through a series of measures linked to past Russification policies and the other an attempt to cultivate national identity into a means of indoctrinating and socializing a new cohort of nationalists eager to support the Romanovs and their empire. [...].