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The present article is primarily concerned with the imagined community of liberal intellectuals (starting with the Westernizers, in the 1840s, and ending with the Kadets and the participants of the October Revolution in the early twentieth century), rather than the community that 'objectively' existed. This imaginary community constructed notions of the collective identity of their own group as well as that of Russian society. For this purpose, they instrumentalized the notions of 'progress,' 'backwardness,' 'culturedness' ( kul'turnost') and 'benightedness' (temnota), thereby creating hierarchies in which the 'constructors' of collective identities granted themselves the important role of intermediaries between state and society. Special attention is paid to the prominent role Russia's liberal historians played in this process insofar as historians possessed great power in nineteenth-century Europe--the power to tell their states and societies about their past, present, and future--and this transformed them into professional producers of (national) identities. Their work combined expert knowledge and ideological clichés in a highly complex manner. The central question posed is to what extent and in what respect the reality constructed by Russian intellectuals coincided with the actions of intellectuals in other European regions or, on the contrary, to what extent their discursive activities had a specifically local character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines (on the basis of Russian history) the development of the concept of a 'special path' in societies that have experienced problems with their self-identity. Western European intellectuals who needed an 'other' in the construction and definition of their own cultural and geographical space in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries played an important role in shaping the understanding of a Russian 'special path.' The 'Russian chaos' they postulated was contrasted to 'Western' rationalism and order and Eastern 'slavery' was seen as a counter position to the 'Western' demands regarding human dignity. With the coming of an era of nationalism in Russia, many of these ideas were adopted by Russian intellectuals and laid a foundation for their own work toward the formation of a national identity. Orthodoxy (as opposed to Catholicism and Protestantism), autocracy (as opposed to parliamentarianism), Narodnost' ('national spirit') and communal traditionalism (in contrast to capitalism, private property and individualism) were seen as the only alternatives to the modern West. The Russian 'Westernizers' were captivated by the idea of a 'special path' as much as the 'Slavophiles' and saw this path through the prism of uniquely refracted concepts of 'Orthodoxy, autocracy and Narodnost''. The author considers the concept of the 'special path' not only as a means of forming group identity, but also as a type of social search within the boundaries of the dominant paradigm. Russian intellectuals claiming Russian 'uniqueness' today, as two centuries ago, are doing so, to a very considerable degree, as a result of western intellectualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that anti-essentialism was a pivotal ideological feature of Russian Zionism - the idiom of Zionism that lay behind Russian Zionist periodicals such as Rassvet in Late Imperial Russia. For Russian Zionists, the Jewish nation was the social field that existed as a social fact. While Russian Zionists' concept of the Jewish nation was inevitably influenced by their political context, nonetheless, it was primarily a result of the convergence of the following two ideological movements. First, there emerged a sense that a socioeconomic foundation was crucial in forming a nation. The transformation of Jewish socioeconomic positions in Eastern Europe and Russia was the background of this consciousness. The second is the ideological claim that any collective entity or social field should be respected regardless of its merit and utility vis-a-vis others. More specifically, for Russian Zionists, the Jewish raison d'etre was the simple existence of their own social field; they believed that no further definition was required. The emergence of this viewpoint can be understood as a reaction to the Zionists' perception of Jewish history where Jews pursued the recognition and validation of their place among non-Jews by virtue of their merit or utility vis-a-vis non-Jews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article constitutes an attempt, previously not undertaken in the critical literature, to collate all the known information concerning Nikolai Gogol''s work in 1833-1834 on a history of Ukraine, and, based on this evidence, to formulate a reasoned conclusion as to how much of the history he might have completed beyond what purports to be the introductory chapter, initially published under the title "Fragment from a History of Little Russia" and later as "A Glance at the Composition of Little Russia." Gogol''s original plan was to write a history of Ukraine from the time southern Rus' separated from the northern as a consequence of the conquest of Kyiv by the Mongols in 1240 and later the absorption of Kyivan Rus' by Lithuania in the mid-14th century. The "Fragment" is almost certainly the only part of it, as per this plan, ever written, and is itself probably unfinished, because the writer broke off work on it when he redesigned the history, intending now to begin with the early history of the Eastern Slavs and the founding of the Kyivan state. A two-page prose fragment found among what is represented in the 1937-1952 Academy edition of Gogol''s complete collected works as the writer's notes on Russian history, represents the new beginning, but this breaks off as well, and what would have constituted its continuation is still in the form of an outline and notes, so that, logically, no continuation of either beginning can be expected to surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the development of conservatism in Russia in the 19th century, including its diverse ideological origins. Links between conservatism and nationalism are discussed, and Russian conservatism is compared with its counterpart in Europe. Recent historiography surrounding Russian conservatism is briefly reviewed, and 19th-century trends in Russian political thought are then discussed, with the Decembrist uprising of 1925 seen as a turning point between the influence of progressivism and the ascendancy of conservatism.

Discusses the significance of geographical space to the Russian national consciousness. Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier hypothesis as a mode of analysis in nineteenth-century historiography; Theses of Russian historian Sergei Mikhailovich Solov'ev; Comparison of Turner and Solov'ev's theses; Russia as an organic European state; Colonization in Russia; Curse of empty spaces.