Podcasts about russian rule

For centuries, Russia was home to the largest Jewish community in the world. But why did Jews choose to move to a country that never wanted them? Understanding this complex history is at the heart of Jewish Modern history.  And was Kiev or Moscow the capital of the Empire.   Chapters 00:00 Political Intrigue 11:01 The History of Russian Jewry 25:48 Catherine the Great's Reign and Jewish Policies 27:41 The Transformation of the Russian Empire 30:00 The Jewish Population in Eastern Europe 34:21 The Impact of Russian Rule on Jewish Life 37:22 Resistance and Rebellion in Poland 40:01 Diverging Paths: Prussian and Galician Jews 42:11 The Russian Government's Approach to Jews 45:05 The Long Nightmare of Russian Governance 50:28 Reactions from Jewish Leaders 54:00 The Legacy of Eastern European Jewry

There are some truths about dining at Asian restaurants that are universal. This occurred at least 10+ years back.

In Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Cornell University Press, 2017), Ian W. Campbell investigates the connections between knowledge production and policy formation on the Kazak steppes of the Russian Empire. Hoping to better govern the region, tsarist officials were desperate to obtain reliable information about an unfamiliar environment and population. This thirst for knowledge created opportunities for Kazak intermediaries to represent themselves and their landscape to the tsarist state. Because tsarist officials were uncertain of what the steppe was, and disagreed on what could be made of it, Kazaks were able to be part of these debates, at times influencing the policies that were pursued.  Drawing on archival materials from Russia and Kazakhstan and a wide range of nineteenth-century periodicals in Russian and Kazak, Campbell tells a story that highlights the contingencies of and opportunities for cooperation with imperial rule. Kazak intermediaries were at first able to put forward their own idiosyncratic views on whether the steppe was to be Muslim or secular, whether it should be a center of stock-raising or of agriculture, and the extent to which local institutions needed to give way to imperial institutions. It was when the tsarist state was most confident in its knowledge of the steppe that it committed its gravest errors by alienating Kazak intermediaries and placing unbearable stresses on pastoral nomads. From the 1890s on, when the dominant visions in St. Petersburg were of large-scale peasant colonization of the steppe and its transformation into a hearth of sedentary agriculture, the same local knowledge that Kazaks had used to negotiate tsarist rule was transformed into a language of resistance. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Her work focuses on histories of nomad-state relationships and uses of architecture in nomadic contexts, with a focus on the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Cornell University Press, 2017), Ian W. Campbell investigates the connections between knowledge production and policy formation on the Kazak steppes of the Russian Empire. Hoping to better govern the region, tsarist officials were desperate to obtain reliable information about an unfamiliar environment and population. This thirst for knowledge created opportunities for Kazak intermediaries to represent themselves and their landscape to the tsarist state. Because tsarist officials were uncertain of what the steppe was, and disagreed on what could be made of it, Kazaks were able to be part of these debates, at times influencing the policies that were pursued.  Drawing on archival materials from Russia and Kazakhstan and a wide range of nineteenth-century periodicals in Russian and Kazak, Campbell tells a story that highlights the contingencies of and opportunities for cooperation with imperial rule. Kazak intermediaries were at first able to put forward their own idiosyncratic views on whether the steppe was to be Muslim or secular, whether it should be a center of stock-raising or of agriculture, and the extent to which local institutions needed to give way to imperial institutions. It was when the tsarist state was most confident in its knowledge of the steppe that it committed its gravest errors by alienating Kazak intermediaries and placing unbearable stresses on pastoral nomads. From the 1890s on, when the dominant visions in St. Petersburg were of large-scale peasant colonization of the steppe and its transformation into a hearth of sedentary agriculture, the same local knowledge that Kazaks had used to negotiate tsarist rule was transformed into a language of resistance. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Her work focuses on histories of nomad-state relationships and uses of architecture in nomadic contexts, with a focus on the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Cornell University Press, 2017), Ian W. Campbell investigates the connections between knowledge production and policy formation on the Kazak steppes of the Russian Empire. Hoping to better govern the region, tsarist officials were desperate to obtain reliable information about an unfamiliar environment and population. This thirst for knowledge created opportunities for Kazak intermediaries to represent themselves and their landscape to the tsarist state. Because tsarist officials were uncertain of what the steppe was, and disagreed on what could be made of it, Kazaks were able to be part of these debates, at times influencing the policies that were pursued.  Drawing on archival materials from Russia and Kazakhstan and a wide range of nineteenth-century periodicals in Russian and Kazak, Campbell tells a story that highlights the contingencies of and opportunities for cooperation with imperial rule. Kazak intermediaries were at first able to put forward their own idiosyncratic views on whether the steppe was to be Muslim or secular, whether it should be a center of stock-raising or of agriculture, and the extent to which local institutions needed to give way to imperial institutions. It was when the tsarist state was most confident in its knowledge of the steppe that it committed its gravest errors by alienating Kazak intermediaries and placing unbearable stresses on pastoral nomads. From the 1890s on, when the dominant visions in St. Petersburg were of large-scale peasant colonization of the steppe and its transformation into a hearth of sedentary agriculture, the same local knowledge that Kazaks had used to negotiate tsarist rule was transformed into a language of resistance. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Her work focuses on histories of nomad-state relationships and uses of architecture in nomadic contexts, with a focus on the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/central-asian-studies

In Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Cornell University Press, 2017), Ian W. Campbell investigates the connections between knowledge production and policy formation on the Kazak steppes of the Russian Empire. Hoping to better govern the region, tsarist officials were desperate to obtain reliable information about an unfamiliar environment and population. This thirst for knowledge created opportunities for Kazak intermediaries to represent themselves and their landscape to the tsarist state. Because tsarist officials were uncertain of what the steppe was, and disagreed on what could be made of it, Kazaks were able to be part of these debates, at times influencing the policies that were pursued.  Drawing on archival materials from Russia and Kazakhstan and a wide range of nineteenth-century periodicals in Russian and Kazak, Campbell tells a story that highlights the contingencies of and opportunities for cooperation with imperial rule. Kazak intermediaries were at first able to put forward their own idiosyncratic views on whether the steppe was to be Muslim or secular, whether it should be a center of stock-raising or of agriculture, and the extent to which local institutions needed to give way to imperial institutions. It was when the tsarist state was most confident in its knowledge of the steppe that it committed its gravest errors by alienating Kazak intermediaries and placing unbearable stresses on pastoral nomads. From the 1890s on, when the dominant visions in St. Petersburg were of large-scale peasant colonization of the steppe and its transformation into a hearth of sedentary agriculture, the same local knowledge that Kazaks had used to negotiate tsarist rule was transformed into a language of resistance. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Her work focuses on histories of nomad-state relationships and uses of architecture in nomadic contexts, with a focus on the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Cornell University Press, 2017), Ian W. Campbell investigates the connections between knowledge production and policy formation on the Kazak steppes of the Russian Empire. Hoping to better govern the region, tsarist officials were desperate to obtain reliable information about an unfamiliar environment and population. This thirst for knowledge created opportunities for Kazak intermediaries to represent themselves and their landscape to the tsarist state. Because tsarist officials were uncertain of what the steppe was, and disagreed on what could be made of it, Kazaks were able to be part of these debates, at times influencing the policies that were pursued.  Drawing on archival materials from Russia and Kazakhstan and a wide range of nineteenth-century periodicals in Russian and Kazak, Campbell tells a story that highlights the contingencies of and opportunities for cooperation with imperial rule. Kazak intermediaries were at first able to put forward their own idiosyncratic views on whether the steppe was to be Muslim or secular, whether it should be a center of stock-raising or of agriculture, and the extent to which local institutions needed to give way to imperial institutions. It was when the tsarist state was most confident in its knowledge of the steppe that it committed its gravest errors by alienating Kazak intermediaries and placing unbearable stresses on pastoral nomads. From the 1890s on, when the dominant visions in St. Petersburg were of large-scale peasant colonization of the steppe and its transformation into a hearth of sedentary agriculture, the same local knowledge that Kazaks had used to negotiate tsarist rule was transformed into a language of resistance. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Her work focuses on histories of nomad-state relationships and uses of architecture in nomadic contexts, with a focus on the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Cornell University Press, 2017), Ian W. Campbell investigates the connections between knowledge production and policy formation on the Kazak steppes of the Russian Empire. Hoping to better govern the region, tsarist officials were desperate to obtain reliable information about an unfamiliar environment and population. This thirst for knowledge created opportunities for Kazak intermediaries to represent themselves and their landscape to the tsarist state. Because tsarist officials were uncertain of what the steppe was, and disagreed on what could be made of it, Kazaks were able to be part of these debates, at times influencing the policies that were pursued.  Drawing on archival materials from Russia and Kazakhstan and a wide range of nineteenth-century periodicals in Russian and Kazak, Campbell tells a story that highlights the contingencies of and opportunities for cooperation with imperial rule. Kazak intermediaries were at first able to put forward their own idiosyncratic views on whether the steppe was to be Muslim or secular, whether it should be a center of stock-raising or of agriculture, and the extent to which local institutions needed to give way to imperial institutions. It was when the tsarist state was most confident in its knowledge of the steppe that it committed its gravest errors by alienating Kazak intermediaries and placing unbearable stresses on pastoral nomads. From the 1890s on, when the dominant visions in St. Petersburg were of large-scale peasant colonization of the steppe and its transformation into a hearth of sedentary agriculture, the same local knowledge that Kazaks had used to negotiate tsarist rule was transformed into a language of resistance. Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Her work focuses on histories of nomad-state relationships and uses of architecture in nomadic contexts, with a focus on the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 90:This week we're continuing Russia in Revolution An Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928 by S. A. Smith[Part 1]Introduction[Part 2 - This Week]1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905 - 00:38Autocracy and Orthodoxy - 21:23Popular Religion - 33:17[Part 3 - 4?]1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905[Part 5 - 7?]2. From Reform to War, 1906–1917[Part 8 - 10?]3. From February to October 1917[Part 11 - 14?]4. Civil War and Bolshevik Power[Part 15 - 17?]5. War Communism[Part 18 - 20?]6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy[Part 21 - 24?]7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture[Part 25?]ConclusionFigures:1) Nicholas II, Alexandra, and their family. - 21:31Footnotes:1) 00:58Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996).2) 05:08V. O. Kliuchevsky, A History of Russia, vol. 1 (London: J. M. Dent, 1911), 2.3) 07:13D. C. B. Lieven, Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia (London: Allen Lane, 2015), 9.4) 08:05Cited in Paul Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), 177.5) 13:02Lieven, Towards the Flame, 85.6) 14:07http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus_lan_97.php7) 14:38Jane Burbank and Mark von Hagen (eds), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); John W. Slocum, ‘Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the Category of “Aliens” in Imperial Russia', Russian Review, 57:2 (1998), 173–90.8) 15:05Theodore Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996); Alexei Miller, ‘The Empire and Nation in the Imagination of Russian Nationalism', in A. Miller and A. J. Rieber (eds), Imperial Rule (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004), 9–22.9) 15:37Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).10) 17:26Paul Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia's Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1905 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).11) 18:11Alexander Morrison, Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868–1910: A Comparison with British India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).12) 18:38Robert Geraci, Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late-Imperial Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).13) 19:13Charles Steinwedel, ‘To Make a Difference: The Category of Ethnicity in Late Imperial Russian Politics, 1861–1917', in D. L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis (eds), Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 67–86.14) 19:49Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (Harlow: Pearson, 2001); Willard Sunderland, ‘The Ministry of Asiatic Russia: The Colonial Office That Never Was But Might Have Been', Slavic Review, 60:1 (2010), 120–50.15) 20:04Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire (London: Fontana, 1998).16) 21:19Miller, ‘The Empire and Nation', 9–22.17) 21:48Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Emperor of All the Russias (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989).18) 22:25http://www.angelfire.com/pa/ImperialRussian/royalty/russia/rfl.html19) 25:04Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, vol. 2: Authority Restored (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 222.20) 25:09Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (New York: Penguin, 1977).21) 26:36Peter Waldron, ‘States of Emergency: Autocracy and Extraordinary Legislation, 1881–1917', Revolutionary Russia, 8:1 (1995), 1–25.22) 26:56Waldron, ‘States of Emergency', 24.23) 27:26Neil Weissman, ‘Regular Police in Tsarist Russia, 1900–1914', Russian Review, 44:1 (1985), 45–68 ( 49).24) 27:47Jonathan W. Daly, The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906–1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 5–6. Daly, incidentally, gives a higher figure—100,000—than Weissman for the number of police of all kinds in 1900.25) 28:14Figes, People's Tragedy, 46.26) 28:50T. Emmons and W. S. Vucinich (eds), The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 215.27) 30:25Hans Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution, 1881–1917 (London: Longman, 1983), 72.28) 31:18J. S. Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), 10.29) 32:09Gregory L. Freeze, ‘Handmaiden of the State? The Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985), 82–102.30) 32:46Simon Dixon, ‘The Orthodox Church and the Workers of St Petersburg, 1880–1914', in Hugh McLeod, European Religion in the Age of Great Cities, 1830–1930 (London: Routledge, 1995), 119–41.31) 33:49Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).32) 35:23A. K. Baiburin, ‘Poliarnosti v rituale (tverdoe i miagkoe)', Poliarnost' v kul'ture: Almanakh ‘Kanun' 2 (1996), 157–65.33) 36:28Vera Shevzov, ‘Chapels and the Ecclesial World of Pre-revolutionary Peasants', Slavic Review, 55:3 (1996), 585–613.34) 37:00Chris J. Chulos, Converging Worlds: Religion and Community in Peasant Russia, 1861–1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 159.35) 37:59J. S. Curtiss, Church and State in Russia: the Last Years of the Empire, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 118.36) 38:46David G. Rowley, ‘ “Redeemer Empire”: Russian Millenarianism', American Historical Review, 104 (1999), 1582–602.37) 39:18James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 514.38) 40:18Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John Kronstadt and the Russian People (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 271.39) 40:34Sergei Fomin (comp.), Rossiia pered vtorym prishestviem: prorochestva russkikh sviatykh (Moscow: Sviato-Troitskaia Sergieva Lavra, 1993). This is a compendium of prophecies of doom about the fate of Russia by saints, monks, nuns, priests, theologians, and a sprinking of lay writers, including Dostoevsky, V. V. Rozanov, and Lev Tikhomirov.

On his return to Russia from Germany, where he'd been recuperating after being poisoned by a nerve agent, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested for criminal charges resurrected by the Kremlin from a years-old conviction. In the days since, peaceful protesters have taken to the streets demanding Navalny's freedom. They've been met with brutality. Does this mean trouble for Vladmir Putin and the Kremlin? In this episode, Emily Tamkin in Washington DC and Ido Vock in Berlin are joined, from Moscow, by Felix Light, a reporter for The Moscow Times and regular contributor to the New Statesman. They discuss the trial of Alexei Navalny, protest movements against Putin's rule, and what international sanctions are available if Russia continues to flout international norms.Further reading:Ido argues that by returning to Russia and facing arrest, Alexei Navalny has forced the Kremlin on to the back foot.For background, read Felix Light's piece explaining why, for Navalny, a comfortable life abroad was not an option.Emily has been following the vote in Congress to strip extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. She's written this piece exploring why republicans have chosen to support the congresswoman who has promoted racist, Islamophobic and anti-semitic views.We'd love to hear from you! Send us your You Ask Us questions at youaskus.co.uk. Find us on Twitter: @idvck and @emilyctamkin.Subscribing to the New Statesman helps us keep producing this podcast. You can now subscribe for 12 weeks for just £12. Visit newstatesman.com/subscribe12More audio from the New Statesman: listen to our twice-weekly UK politics podcast The New Statesman podcastIf you are a New Statesman digital subscriber you can get ad-free access to this podcast by visiting newstatesman.com/nssubscribers. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It Catherine the Great's chance to rule Estonia. We find out what changes in Estonia under her reign.

We begin to learn what Estonia looked like after the Great Northern War and how Russian rule changed the lives of Estonians.

Episode 374with Ian Campbell & Maria BlackwoodDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudHow did Russia rule its Central Asian borderlands? In this podcast, we explore the long history of local intermediaries in imperial rule through the lens of the Kazakh elite from the 18th century onward. We talk to Ian Campbell about his book Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Cornell University Press) and then continue the discussion into the early Soviet period through a conversation with Maria Blackwood about her dissertation research on the first generation of Soviet Kazakhs.« Click for More »

Great Britain and Russia faced off across the Pamirs for much of the nineteenth century; their rivalries and animosities often obscuring underlying commonalities; these were, after all, colonial Empires governing ‘alien’ peoples, and faced much the same problems insofar as maintaining their rule was concerned. Alexander Morrison‘s Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India (Oxford University Press, 2008) does exactly that; traces the issues faced by the Russian administration in the region around Samarkand and the British administration in the Punjab, issues ranging from judicial systems and grassroots administration to dam building and educating the colonized local populace. This is a book that is at once fluent and erudite; its the great strengths are a very detailed bibliography, and an extensive use of Russian archival sources, as well as local sources in Persian; too often has the story of Russia in Central Asia been recounted to an Anglophone audience from the works and thoughts of British colonial administrators. This is also a work that analyses macro, holistic administrative structures and does not rely on the retelling of anecdotes involving flamboyant frontier officials; a recounting that delves behind the sabre-rattling of the Great Game suffices in itself to make this book a must-read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Great Britain and Russia faced off across the Pamirs for much of the nineteenth century; their rivalries and animosities often obscuring underlying commonalities; these were, after all, colonial Empires governing ‘alien' peoples, and faced much the same problems insofar as maintaining their rule was concerned. Alexander Morrison‘s Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India (Oxford University Press, 2008) does exactly that; traces the issues faced by the Russian administration in the region around Samarkand and the British administration in the Punjab, issues ranging from judicial systems and grassroots administration to dam building and educating the colonized local populace. This is a book that is at once fluent and erudite; its the great strengths are a very detailed bibliography, and an extensive use of Russian archival sources, as well as local sources in Persian; too often has the story of Russia in Central Asia been recounted to an Anglophone audience from the works and thoughts of British colonial administrators. This is also a work that analyses macro, holistic administrative structures and does not rely on the retelling of anecdotes involving flamboyant frontier officials; a recounting that delves behind the sabre-rattling of the Great Game suffices in itself to make this book a must-read.

Great Britain and Russia faced off across the Pamirs for much of the nineteenth century; their rivalries and animosities often obscuring underlying commonalities; these were, after all, colonial Empires governing ‘alien’ peoples, and faced much the same problems insofar as maintaining their rule was concerned. Alexander Morrison‘s Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India (Oxford University Press, 2008) does exactly that; traces the issues faced by the Russian administration in the region around Samarkand and the British administration in the Punjab, issues ranging from judicial systems and grassroots administration to dam building and educating the colonized local populace. This is a book that is at once fluent and erudite; its the great strengths are a very detailed bibliography, and an extensive use of Russian archival sources, as well as local sources in Persian; too often has the story of Russia in Central Asia been recounted to an Anglophone audience from the works and thoughts of British colonial administrators. This is also a work that analyses macro, holistic administrative structures and does not rely on the retelling of anecdotes involving flamboyant frontier officials; a recounting that delves behind the sabre-rattling of the Great Game suffices in itself to make this book a must-read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Great Britain and Russia faced off across the Pamirs for much of the nineteenth century; their rivalries and animosities often obscuring underlying commonalities; these were, after all, colonial Empires governing ‘alien’ peoples, and faced much the same problems insofar as maintaining their rule was concerned. Alexander Morrison‘s Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India (Oxford University Press, 2008) does exactly that; traces the issues faced by the Russian administration in the region around Samarkand and the British administration in the Punjab, issues ranging from judicial systems and grassroots administration to dam building and educating the colonized local populace. This is a book that is at once fluent and erudite; its the great strengths are a very detailed bibliography, and an extensive use of Russian archival sources, as well as local sources in Persian; too often has the story of Russia in Central Asia been recounted to an Anglophone audience from the works and thoughts of British colonial administrators. This is also a work that analyses macro, holistic administrative structures and does not rely on the retelling of anecdotes involving flamboyant frontier officials; a recounting that delves behind the sabre-rattling of the Great Game suffices in itself to make this book a must-read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Great Britain and Russia faced off across the Pamirs for much of the nineteenth century; their rivalries and animosities often obscuring underlying commonalities; these were, after all, colonial Empires governing ‘alien’ peoples, and faced much the same problems insofar as maintaining their rule was concerned. Alexander Morrison‘s Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India (Oxford University Press, 2008) does exactly that; traces the issues faced by the Russian administration in the region around Samarkand and the British administration in the Punjab, issues ranging from judicial systems and grassroots administration to dam building and educating the colonized local populace. This is a book that is at once fluent and erudite; its the great strengths are a very detailed bibliography, and an extensive use of Russian archival sources, as well as local sources in Persian; too often has the story of Russia in Central Asia been recounted to an Anglophone audience from the works and thoughts of British colonial administrators. This is also a work that analyses macro, holistic administrative structures and does not rely on the retelling of anecdotes involving flamboyant frontier officials; a recounting that delves behind the sabre-rattling of the Great Game suffices in itself to make this book a must-read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices