The Return of longue durée in Political History of the Russian Empire

Abstract

The present intervention makes a mental experiment of thinking about recent historiographic “turns” in terms of “returns.” It takes its point of departure from the recent book by John LeDonne Forging a Unitary State: Russia’s Management of the Eurasian Space, 1650–1850. This book shows how much is needed to be done in terms of returning to the institutional, military, and legal history of the Russian imperial state. But there is also a return to the long-term historical perspective that presents the challenge of constructing a coherent historical narrative when the process of imperial expansion produced the growing diversity of the imperial realm. This challenge can be solved and the narrative can be stabilized by projecting nation-centered categories on to the past experience (such as “majority” and “minority”). But the same long-term perspective can also empower historians to align their analytical language with the grammar of the imperial archive and lexicon of the political praxis and register shifts and ruptures in the grand trajectory spanning several centuries.