Author: Robert D. Crews
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674262859
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490
Book Description
Russia occupies a unique position in the Muslim world. Unlike any other non-Islamic state, it has ruled Muslim populations for over five hundred years. Though Russia today is plagued by its unrelenting war in Chechnya, Russia’s approach toward Islam once yielded stability. In stark contrast to the popular “clash of civilizations” theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Robert D. Crews reveals the remarkable ways in which Russia constructed an empire with broad Muslim support. In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great inaugurated a policy of religious toleration that made Islam an essential pillar of Orthodox Russia. For ensuing generations, tsars and their police forces supported official Muslim authorities willing to submit to imperial directions in exchange for defense against brands of Islam they deemed heretical and destabilizing. As a result, Russian officials assumed the powerful but often awkward role of arbitrator in disputes between Muslims. And just as the state became a presence in the local mosque, Muslims became inextricably integrated into the empire and shaped tsarist will in Muslim communities stretching from the Volga River to Central Asia. For Prophet and Tsar draws on police and court records, and Muslim petitions, denunciations, and clerical writings—not accessible prior to 1991—to unearth the fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debate how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations, Crews offers a unique and critical historical vantage point.
For Prophet and Tsar
Author: Robert D. Crews
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674262859
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490
Book Description
Russia occupies a unique position in the Muslim world. Unlike any other non-Islamic state, it has ruled Muslim populations for over five hundred years. Though Russia today is plagued by its unrelenting war in Chechnya, Russia’s approach toward Islam once yielded stability. In stark contrast to the popular “clash of civilizations” theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Robert D. Crews reveals the remarkable ways in which Russia constructed an empire with broad Muslim support. In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great inaugurated a policy of religious toleration that made Islam an essential pillar of Orthodox Russia. For ensuing generations, tsars and their police forces supported official Muslim authorities willing to submit to imperial directions in exchange for defense against brands of Islam they deemed heretical and destabilizing. As a result, Russian officials assumed the powerful but often awkward role of arbitrator in disputes between Muslims. And just as the state became a presence in the local mosque, Muslims became inextricably integrated into the empire and shaped tsarist will in Muslim communities stretching from the Volga River to Central Asia. For Prophet and Tsar draws on police and court records, and Muslim petitions, denunciations, and clerical writings—not accessible prior to 1991—to unearth the fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debate how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations, Crews offers a unique and critical historical vantage point.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674262859
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490
Book Description
Russia occupies a unique position in the Muslim world. Unlike any other non-Islamic state, it has ruled Muslim populations for over five hundred years. Though Russia today is plagued by its unrelenting war in Chechnya, Russia’s approach toward Islam once yielded stability. In stark contrast to the popular “clash of civilizations” theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Robert D. Crews reveals the remarkable ways in which Russia constructed an empire with broad Muslim support. In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great inaugurated a policy of religious toleration that made Islam an essential pillar of Orthodox Russia. For ensuing generations, tsars and their police forces supported official Muslim authorities willing to submit to imperial directions in exchange for defense against brands of Islam they deemed heretical and destabilizing. As a result, Russian officials assumed the powerful but often awkward role of arbitrator in disputes between Muslims. And just as the state became a presence in the local mosque, Muslims became inextricably integrated into the empire and shaped tsarist will in Muslim communities stretching from the Volga River to Central Asia. For Prophet and Tsar draws on police and court records, and Muslim petitions, denunciations, and clerical writings—not accessible prior to 1991—to unearth the fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debate how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations, Crews offers a unique and critical historical vantage point.
Of Religion and Empire
Author: Robert P. Geraci
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801433276
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
This book is the first to investigate the role of religious conversion in the long history of Russian state building, with geographic coverage from Poland and European Russia to the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, and Alaska.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801433276
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
This book is the first to investigate the role of religious conversion in the long history of Russian state building, with geographic coverage from Poland and European Russia to the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, and Alaska.
The Tsar's Foreign Faiths
Author: Paul W. Werth
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199591776
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Explores the scope and character of religious freedom for Russia's diverse non-Orthodox religions during the tzarist regime.
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199591776
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Explores the scope and character of religious freedom for Russia's diverse non-Orthodox religions during the tzarist regime.
The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians: The religion
Author: Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Russia
Languages : en
Pages : 638
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Russia
Languages : en
Pages : 638
Book Description
Confessions of the Shtetl
Author: Ellie R. Schainker
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503600246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
Over the course of the nineteenth century, some 84,500 Jews in imperial Russia converted to Christianity. Confessions of the Shtetl explores the day-to-day world of these people, including the social, geographic, religious, and economic links among converts, Christians, and Jews. The book narrates converts' tales of love, desperation, and fear, tracing the uneasy contest between religious choice and collective Jewish identity in tsarist Russia. Rather than viewing the shtetl as the foundation myth for modern Jewish nationhood, this work reveals the shtetl's history of conversions and communal engagement with converts, which ultimately yielded a cultural hybridity that both challenged and fueled visions of Jewish separatism. Drawing on extensive research with conversion files in imperial Russian archives, in addition to the mass press, novels, and memoirs, Ellie R. Schainker offers a sociocultural history of religious toleration and Jewish life that sees baptism not as the fundamental departure from Jewishness or the Jewish community, but as a conversion that marked the start of a complicated experiment with new forms of identity and belonging. Ultimately, she argues that the Jewish encounter with imperial Russia did not revolve around coercion and ghettoization but was a genuinely religious drama with a diverse, attractive, and aggressive Christianity.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503600246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
Over the course of the nineteenth century, some 84,500 Jews in imperial Russia converted to Christianity. Confessions of the Shtetl explores the day-to-day world of these people, including the social, geographic, religious, and economic links among converts, Christians, and Jews. The book narrates converts' tales of love, desperation, and fear, tracing the uneasy contest between religious choice and collective Jewish identity in tsarist Russia. Rather than viewing the shtetl as the foundation myth for modern Jewish nationhood, this work reveals the shtetl's history of conversions and communal engagement with converts, which ultimately yielded a cultural hybridity that both challenged and fueled visions of Jewish separatism. Drawing on extensive research with conversion files in imperial Russian archives, in addition to the mass press, novels, and memoirs, Ellie R. Schainker offers a sociocultural history of religious toleration and Jewish life that sees baptism not as the fundamental departure from Jewishness or the Jewish community, but as a conversion that marked the start of a complicated experiment with new forms of identity and belonging. Ultimately, she argues that the Jewish encounter with imperial Russia did not revolve around coercion and ghettoization but was a genuinely religious drama with a diverse, attractive, and aggressive Christianity.
"Tsar and God" and Other Essays in Russian Cultural Semiotics
Author: Victor Zhivov
Publisher: Ars Rossica
ISBN: 9781618118042
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
Featuring a number of pioneering essays by the internationally known Russian cultural historians Boris Uspenskij and Victor Zhivov, this collection includes a number of essays appearing in English for the fi rst time. Focusing on several of the most interesting and problematic aspects of Russia's cultural development, these essaysexamine the survival and the reconceptualization of the past in later cultural systems and some of the key transformations of Russian cultural consciousness. The essays in this collection contain some important examples of Russian cultural semiotics and remain indispensable contributions to the history of Russian civilization.
Publisher: Ars Rossica
ISBN: 9781618118042
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
Featuring a number of pioneering essays by the internationally known Russian cultural historians Boris Uspenskij and Victor Zhivov, this collection includes a number of essays appearing in English for the fi rst time. Focusing on several of the most interesting and problematic aspects of Russia's cultural development, these essaysexamine the survival and the reconceptualization of the past in later cultural systems and some of the key transformations of Russian cultural consciousness. The essays in this collection contain some important examples of Russian cultural semiotics and remain indispensable contributions to the history of Russian civilization.
Russia on the Eve of Modernity
Author: Leonid Heretz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
Pioneering history of the ordinary Russians and their pre-modern, non-Western culture in late Imperial Russia.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
Pioneering history of the ordinary Russians and their pre-modern, non-Western culture in late Imperial Russia.
The Russian Empire 1450-1801
Author: Nancy Shields Kollmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199280517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512
Book Description
Modern Russian identity and historical experience has been largely shaped by Russia's imperial past: an empire that was founded in the early modern era and endures in large part today. The Russian Empire 1450-1801 surveys how the areas that made up the empire were conquered and how they were governed. It considers the Russian empire a 'Eurasian empire', characterized by a 'politics of difference': the rulers and their elites at the center defined the state's needs minimally - with control over defense, criminal law, taxation, and mobilization of resources - and otherwise tolerated local religions, languages, cultures, elites, and institutions. The center related to communities and religions vertically, according each a modicum of rights and autonomies, but didn't allow horizontal connections across nobilities, townsmen, or other groups potentially with common interests to coalesce. Thus, the Russian empire was multi-ethnic and multi-religious; Nancy Kollmann gives detailed attention to the major ethnic and religious groups, and surveys the government's strategies of governance - centralized bureaucracy, military reform, and a changed judicial system. The volume pays particular attention to the dissemination of a supranational ideology of political legitimacy in a variety of media - written sources and primarily public ritual, painting, and particularly architecture. Beginning with foundational features, such as geography, climate, demography, and geopolitical situation, The Russian Empire 1450-1801 explores the empire's primarily agrarian economy, serfdom, towns and trade, as well as the many religious groups - primarily Orthodoxy, Islam, and Buddhism. It tracks the emergence of an 'Imperial nobility' and a national self-consciousness that was, by the end of the eighteenth century, distinctly imperial, embracing the diversity of the empire's many peoples and cultures.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199280517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512
Book Description
Modern Russian identity and historical experience has been largely shaped by Russia's imperial past: an empire that was founded in the early modern era and endures in large part today. The Russian Empire 1450-1801 surveys how the areas that made up the empire were conquered and how they were governed. It considers the Russian empire a 'Eurasian empire', characterized by a 'politics of difference': the rulers and their elites at the center defined the state's needs minimally - with control over defense, criminal law, taxation, and mobilization of resources - and otherwise tolerated local religions, languages, cultures, elites, and institutions. The center related to communities and religions vertically, according each a modicum of rights and autonomies, but didn't allow horizontal connections across nobilities, townsmen, or other groups potentially with common interests to coalesce. Thus, the Russian empire was multi-ethnic and multi-religious; Nancy Kollmann gives detailed attention to the major ethnic and religious groups, and surveys the government's strategies of governance - centralized bureaucracy, military reform, and a changed judicial system. The volume pays particular attention to the dissemination of a supranational ideology of political legitimacy in a variety of media - written sources and primarily public ritual, painting, and particularly architecture. Beginning with foundational features, such as geography, climate, demography, and geopolitical situation, The Russian Empire 1450-1801 explores the empire's primarily agrarian economy, serfdom, towns and trade, as well as the many religious groups - primarily Orthodoxy, Islam, and Buddhism. It tracks the emergence of an 'Imperial nobility' and a national self-consciousness that was, by the end of the eighteenth century, distinctly imperial, embracing the diversity of the empire's many peoples and cultures.
Church and State in Russia
Author: John Shelton Curtiss
Publisher: Acls History E-Book Project
ISBN: 9781597400312
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
Publisher: Acls History E-Book Project
ISBN: 9781597400312
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought
Author: Caryl Emerson
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198796447
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 753
Book Description
A comprehensive collection exploring the role of ideas, institutions, and movements in the evolution of Russian religious thought, Contains cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of one of the richest aspects of Russian cultural and intellectual life, Considers the influence of Russian religious thought in the West and the role of religion in aesthetics, music, poetry, art, film, and the novel, An authoritative reference for students and scholars Book jacket.
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198796447
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 753
Book Description
A comprehensive collection exploring the role of ideas, institutions, and movements in the evolution of Russian religious thought, Contains cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of one of the richest aspects of Russian cultural and intellectual life, Considers the influence of Russian religious thought in the West and the role of religion in aesthetics, music, poetry, art, film, and the novel, An authoritative reference for students and scholars Book jacket.