Subjects for empire: Orthodox mission and imperial governance in the Volga-Kama region, 1825-1881.

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the specific principles and practices by which the Russian Empire was constituted and maintained in the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Volga-Kama region. Drawing on archival documents, published sources, and recent work in anthropology and colonial studies, it traces the evolution of an ambitious project of moral and civic transformation of the indigenous population, involving the reduction of the insularity of indigenous communities, the elimination of administrative peculiarities, and the induction of native peoples into the value system that Russian administrators considered beneficial and progressive. Orthodox Christianity had a prominent role in these processes, both as a religious system that was seen to facilitate the internalization of Russian customs and practices, and as a set of institutions constituting a principal node of contact between the Russian state and non-Russian inhabitants (Tatars, Chuvash, Maris (Cheremis), and Udmurts (Votiaks)). Among other issues, the dissertation therefore engages the economy of the local parish, the activities of priests and missionaries in non-Russian villages, and the attempts of native inhabitants to mitigate these missionary intrusions. This study operates in the realm both of representation and of actual encounter. In the first case it investigates the discourses of empire, imperial ideologies, and attitudes of Russian officials and clergy, as well as the tensions and contradictions within them. But this study's principal innovation lies in its exploration of the missionary encounter itself, at the ground level, where Orthodoxy and its associated values were negotiated and invested with meaning. The need for negotiation afforded non-Russians considerably greater power and influence over the formation of the Empire than they may otherwise seem to have possessed. The study thus concentrates on the interactions arising from proselytism, pagan religious gatherings, and movements of apostasy, paying close attention to the indigenous cultural systems (Islam and native paganisms) and the social factors that conditioned this encounter. The study thus attempts to bring different levels of activity and policy into a single analytical field, and argues that a fuller understanding of empire needs to be sought in the practices and conceptions by which it was constituted at the local level.