How can a “Russian” be defined? Although the answer seems simple, the question is far from easy to answer. As Robert P. Geraci manages to show, the answer to this question can be regarded as a work in progress, as the limits of Russian identity are shifting. The essence of any concept can be traced by looking at the way the concept-holders dissociate from other concepts, so the boundaries of a concept somehow are the part of it that really matters.
Geraci’s book dwells on the limits of “Russianness” by concentrating on the way Russians and russified non-Russians dealt with non-Russian minorities in the late 19th century. He concentrates on developments in Kazan, as this town, he argues, “was the chief nineteenth-century site for mediating this troubled and paradoxical relationship with the East.”^[1] Geraci is interested in the history of Russian nationality rather than in the development of Russian nationalism, and one of the ways to analyze the matter is to look at the way the question, “What kind of cultural integration was expected or advocated for the Eastern minorities in the Russian empire?” (p. 9), was answered by the Russian cultural elite. According to Geraci, the answers can be placed on a continuum, ranging from total assimilation on one side, to the idea of a multicultural empire in which minorities are not forced to change their identities. Geraci’s book can be read as the history of answering this question.
It should not surprise us that Nikolai Il’minskii’s activities are one of the central subjects Geraci focuses on. In two chapters, his educational system and missionary approaches are meticulously analyzed. Although there is plenty of secondary literature on Il’minskii’s “system,”^[2] Geraci manages to present new research due to the fact that he uses primary sources inaccessible to most previous researchers. (For instance, he is probably the first to include the unprinted diary of the famous missionary Malov in his research). Il’minskii’s attempts to convert non-Russian minorities by using their own languages inevitably had to touch upon the self-image and understanding of the Russian society: for the first time in Russia, Orthodoxy was not necessarily linked with the Russian language, and the equation “Christians = Russians” did not work any more. Of course there were opponents to Il’minskii’s approach, and others maintained that the best way to assimilate non-Russians would be immediate Russification. However, the success of Ilminskii’s system lasted until the beginning of the 20th century, when it fell, as Geraci writes, “under siege”. Il’minskii’s opponents argued that printing bibles and school books in minority languages was not only unnecessary, as the pupils could easily acquire a sufficient level of Russian, but was also hampering the ultimate goal of assimilation, which in Il’minskii’s view meant total Russification.
Ilminskii’s opponents were especially against the idea of non-Russian clerics assuming responsible roles, as they were regarded as too simple-minded for clerical tasks. According to them, non-Russian clerics were not only incapable of converting people to Christianity, but also of preventing converts from returning to their ancient beliefs. Some of them went further: the development of scripture in non-Russian minority languages, they maintained, might have the unwanted side effect of creating elites capable of accentuating their own goals in their own language. So they would have been “inclined … to maintain non-Russian identities” (p. 253). In fact, it was the Russian’s fear from uncontrollable minorities that posed an end to Ilminskii’s system a short time before Orthodox missionary efforts had to cease totally.
As Geraci demonstrates, apart from missionaries there were also other actors who dealt with non-Russian (“Oriental”) peoples. It was not by accident that Russian ethnography was founded in Kazan: at the beginning of the 19th century, German and Swedish scholars who had come to teach at Kazan University got involved into ethnographic research activities, which served as a catalyst in raising interest in Russian society. At the same time, representatives of the famous Khal’fin family served as Tatar language lecturers at Kazan Gymnasium and founded the academic study of the Tatar language. As early as in 1807, the newly founded Kazan University got its own regular chair of Persian and Arabic, and by 1812 it began to offer instruction in Tatar. The rising importance of Kazan was symbolized by the foundation of the Society for Archaeology, History, and Ethnography at Kazan University (later referred to by its Russian acronym, OAIE). Geraci shows how the OAIE developed into an influential apparatus among both the scientific community and higher political circles: the academic Ivan Nikolaevich Smirnov, who worked within the framework of the OAIE, started to carry out ethnographic research among the Finno-Ugric peoples in the Volga-Ural region in the late 1880s and made use of the “Proceedings” of the OAIE for presenting his research. This represented great progress in the establishment of a critical scientific discourse. However, the young scholar could not conceal his paternalist approach toward the Finno-Ugric peoples: following his evolutionist view of the development of society, he analyzed Russification, which, according to him, went on spontaneously but could be supported by settling a sufficient number of Russian peasants into the lands in question.
Smirnov became a central figure in a court case that occupied the attention of Russian society for some time: the Multan case, which dealt with a group of Votiaks accused of committing a ritual murder by sacrificing a Russian beggar. Smirnov, who had dealt with human sacrifice before, became one of the trial’s most important witnesses. Other ethnographers intervened, and the court case became a mirror of Russian fears from the “other”. The absurdity of the Russians’ fear disclosed itself two years after the end of the trial, when the real murderer (a Russian) was discovered. Smirnov lost his professional credibility, as it became clear that his assumptions about human sacrifice among the Votiaks were not supported by reality.
In the last chapter of his book, Geraci focuses on the fate of Nikolai Katanov, a Siberian Turk who made his career as professor of Turkic languages at Kazan University. Katanov, who was totally Russified, served the Tsarist regime directly as a translator and censor of publications in Turkic languages. Respected in local academic circles (for a long time he served as the president of the OAIE), his hopes to move forward in his academic career were never realized. Sometimes Russian scholars expressed suspicion toward him (doubting that inorodets, a non-Russian, might be able to represent Russian interests). Geraci shows convincingly that Katanov’s only partial acceptance by Russian society was due to his “non-Russianness”, and obviously his outward appearance played a certain role. Katanov’s fate is quite striking and tragic, as he was regarded with suspicion by Russia’s Muslims and with condescension by at least a part of Russian society.
Geraci’s book is a convincing attempt to examine Russian identity in the 19th century by investigating its boundaries. By tracing the different answers to the question of what Russianness exactly is, he shows that there was no unique approach to the problem; the fact that Il’minskii, a defender of cultural assimilation, was attacked by Russian missionaries who regarded linguistic assimilation as a priority, shows how controversial any possible answer would be. Thanks to the wide range of sources Geraci uses, the theses he puts forward are well founded, and apart from this, the fluid style makes reading the book a pleasure. Perhaps the conclusion could have synthesized the findings of the book a bit more extensively, Instead, it merely sums up the different ways Russians looked at Oriental peoples, leaving the reader to sort out by himself what these findings mean for the concept of Russian identity. However, this task may be easily accomplished as Geraci offers rich material for discussion, and the book will prove its usefulness anyhow. It will be preferred reading for any scholar interested in the development not only of Russian society, but also of Russia itself.