With this issue, Ab Imperio launches its thematic program for 2003, which is devoted to investigating problems of frontiers, boundaries, and zones of liminality that will be discussed in connection with the theory of nationalism, and the history of empire and nationalities in the Russian empire, the Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet states.
The thematic program for 2003 follows the experiment in 2002, in which four issues of the journal were linked under the umbrella of a meta-theme. This was an experiment in the organization of academic media and an attempt to create a narrative-like structure for the evolving research program of the study of empire and nationalism. The introduction of the annual theme was also our modest contribution to the “return to narrative” movement in social sciences and history. We “returned” to the old grand-narrative of social sciences and historiography, the once influential narrative of modernization and modernity, but just in order to uncover, through critical examination, its newest facets. Among those the most important for us were the ones that emerged at the crossroads of modernity and modernization and empire and nationalism studies.
When thinking about the annual theme for 2003, Ab Imperio’s editors faced a problem. How many metanarratives are scholars left with to critically revisit and to use to elucidate problems for their own research? With this question the experiment with annual themes takes on a new stage. Focusing on frontiers, boundaries and zones of liminality, the journal invites its contributors and readers to explore the possibility of those problematic areas becoming a sort of metanarrative – conceptual mediators capable of meaningful and coherent organization of scholarly research of the diversity of human experience with a potential for creating new perspectives on that experience, and thus a more comprehensive representation of its complexity and diversity. The challenge, of course, is encapsulated in the fact that such concepts as frontier, boundary, liminality denote a certain degree of marginality and opposition to metanarratives.
With the emergence and dissemination of the structuralist paradigm in social sciences and humanities, the picture of the world as consisting of monolithic blocks (referred to by Ernst Gellner in reference to the development of nation-building) became dominant. This structuralist paradigm has always privileged collective identities, such as class and nation. In this paradigm a special role is assumed by the notion of boundary, which serves as a system-founding category. Already in the definition of structure by de Saussure, the principal part was the relationship between elements, i.e. it was assumed that social blocks acquire their meaning only in relationship with one another. This makes the notion of difference central to the definition and, therefore, Fredrik Barth’s theory of symbolic boundary was a logical consequence of the structuralist approach to the concept of frontier.
The emergence of post-structuralism exerted a significant influence on the prevailing visions of the concept of boundary and shifted the focus of research from the analysis of large social entities and identities to the scrutiny of individuals’ attitude to those social collectivities. The innovative work by Peter Sahlins^[1] demonstrated that nationbuilding in borderland regions is subject to the influence of multiple factors and that the concept of frontier as an impenetrable line is hardly applicable to even such linear processes as the formation of frontier between two nation-states. Consequently, more important in the understanding of frontier becomes the processes of social self-organization and crystallization of national and ethnic affiliations, e. g. the problems of historical agents’ participation in constituting, correcting and annihilating borders. As a result, the history of different “human” frontiers loses its predefined character and the question of frontier becomes the center of historical analysis for it reflects the nature of human activity aimed at constructing the social world and making sense of it.
Whereas in social and political history the critique of structuralism introduced doubts about the validity of structuralist interpretations of boundary and frontier, in cultural history this same critique resulted in the demolition of grand-narratives of European modernity. One of the most prominent directions of such intellectual thought is the study of processes which historically constituted the modern identity and the borders (and therefore a meaningful place in a hierarchy) of large historical regions (e.g. Europe, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, etc). In this context the symbolic boundary ceases to be a separating line, which, according to Barth’s definition, emerges in everyday communication between members of different social groups and is best reconstructed by the local “view from below”. The mental geography of large regions is related to power and intellectual and cultural hegemony, and therefore often requires a “view from above”. Thus, the concepts of boundary are used in different, sometimes contradictory contexts by modern researchers. Nevertheless, this fact signifies internal depth and multiple meanings of the term, which will help make dialog between diverse methodological stances and empirical researches possible.
The issue of boundary-making assumes special significance for students of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union. The evolution and collapse of these state formations have made lines of division real in their most visible forms – as state frontiers and armed conflicts. It is this historical and regional specificity that makes a critical conceptualization of the concepts of boundary and frontier imperative for the study of empire and nationalism in Russia and the USSR, despite its complexity.
A. Rieber’s article is an important point of departure and a helpful historiographic survey for those who aspire to make frontier and boundaries as a serious analytical point of departure. A. Kappeler’s and D. Laitin’s articles, which follow A. Rieber’s article in the “Methodology and Theory” section, present a sophisticated, detailed and novel analysis of select dimensions of frontier, which are highlighted by Rieber (Kappeler ponders the potential of Turner’s concept of frontier in application to the Russian case; Laitin reflects on boundaries of linguistic community).
The historical section of the present issue testifies to the relevance of the conventional understanding of boundaries of national collectivity. Under the special circumstances of Soviet nation-building the problem of administrative boundaries in the Soviet Union was closely linked both to the internal policy of control over a borderland region and the external dimension of Bolshevik nationality policy, i.e. the promotion of the communist project abroad through the means of nationality (see, the article by P. Varnavskii). Conceptualizing boundaries and frontiers in the context of empire involves an analysis of competition between two or more national or imperial projects. The competition between those projects occurred under the circumstances of dynamic socio-cultural and economic change brought about by modernization. Such an approach is taken by M. Vitukhnovskaia, who combines the understanding of frontier as a boundary of national collectivities with the one of frontier as a zone of interplay between different political and social forces. An open definition of frontier allows for multiple frontier situations (“colonial” enclave, frontier mentality, underdevelopment of the state apparatus). In these frontier situations there arises an opportunity for unique processes of social self-organization and the crossing of social and ethno-religious boundaries. This aspect of boundary making and unmaking is demonstrated by I. Gerasimov in his article on Jewish criminality in Odessa. Another aspect of frontier is illuminated by C. Scharf. He focuses on the frontier as a zone of relative freedom and its relationship with the imperial center, while the latter functions as a normative model. Finally, the materials in this issue demonstrate the vibrant state of studies of symbolic frontiers as part of the developing “frontier” metanarrative (see the articles by T. Skrynnikova, S. Abashin, M. Baker, M. Bobrovnikov).
The cluster of materials on the problem of language in multinational society deserves special attention. Among other markers of difference, the linguistic boundary is often the most evident and clear cut. During the 19th century, Romantic ideologues created an association of language with a people’s ‘geist’. Language was conceived of as a genetic and natural manifestation of nationhood. In a sense, the modern principle of national self-determination stems from this romantic tradition for it too derives its power from ethno-linguistic characteristics of a group claiming self-determination.
In the last decade there has emerged a consensus in the humanities and social sciences that language is a means of imagining and constructing social reality. Therefore, representations and, more specifically, linguistic representations have become the primary target of research. In the wake of the “linguistic turn” of the second half of the 20th century, linguistics was recognized as a leading discipline of social science not only by anthropologists, but also by sociologists and historians. Yet, it is often asserted that language is not an ontological given, but a product of discursive work, being constructed and developed over time.
Taking a historical perspective on language involves investigating discourses on language that not only partook in epistemological “climate” of the epoch, but also reflected concrete social and political processes. The latter aspect is especially evident in multinational societies, in which any question of language is of political character, denoting either distancing and erection of linguistic boundaries or forced linguistic assimilation. This binary dichotomy, of course, does not exhaust the range of possible approaches to discourses on language.
In his article David Laitin poses the question of whether a linguistic community is possible, i.e. whether there are conditions in a given society for effective communication between two randomly chosen individuals. Laitin discovers that contemporary linguistics (and its dominant concepts of the genetic affinity of languages) does not provide an appropriate analytical apparatus to measure the effectiveness of linguistic communities. Indeed, the presence in one country of groups that speak genetically different languages does not disqualify those countries form the status of linguistic communities. People in those countries are often able to communicate across linguistic boundaries with the help of one or more shared languages, while the genetic proximity of the languages in question is not necessarily a precondition, although it contributes to intelligibility of communication.
Students of empire in Russian history should not remain indifferent to the fact that the concept of linguistic community (based on mutual intelligibility and counterposed to the concept of genetic links between languages) was developed by J. Greenberg and was close, as far as its stress on mutual experience is concerned, to the theory of “union of languages” of N. S. Trubetskoi and R. O. Jakobson. Contemporary scholars emphasize that Trubetskoi and Jakobson carried out the “Great Revolution” in linguistics by virtue of concentrating not on genetic links, but on links acquired and conditioned by shared historical experience.^[2] It is worth remembering that the theory of the union of languages was part and parcel of the “posthumous” rehabilitation of the multinational Russian empire. The article by Laitin demonstrates that the relativity of linguistic boundaries may contribute to a better understanding of mechanisms of multinational societies, in which there is an option of developing multilingualism (when some groups speak two or three languages) and also an option of manipulating the boundary between “language” and “dialect”, both of which are closely connected with the definition of the national identity of national majorities and minorities.
As D. Staliunas demonstrated in his article, the contradictory and incoherent views of the imperial center on the Belarusian language were often determined by the fluctuating definition of the “Russian nation.” The tendency to include Belarusians into the tripartite Russian nation brought about, on the one hand, the toleration of the Belarusian “dialect” (for it is impossible to russify those who are already Russian) but, on the other hand, also resulted in the forced containment of this language in the area of folklore and at a low level of standardization. The article of C. Woolhiser demonstrates the dependence of language on extralinguistic factors. Woolhiser concentrates on the relationship between ethno-confessional affiliation and the development of language. He convincingly argues the case of the long-term continuity of Slavic dialects on the territory of Polish-Belarusian borderland – unimpeded by religious cleavages – which was discontinued with the advent of modern practices nationalizing language. At the same time and despite half a century of centralization, dialect communities developed special linguistic strategies that have allowed them to retain local parole (by mixing standardized language with elements of dialect) and partake in modernity that is characterized by standardized language. Finally, S. Wertheim explores mechanisms that distance the language of the mobilizing national minority from the prevailing forms of speech associated with political domination. The Soviet project of the “affirmative action empire” created the titular position for this national minority and endowed it with the necessary resources for linguistic policy. Wertheim demonstrates that language assumes the function of the marker of cultural and political boundaries, and phonetic and grammar elements become signs of cultural and political stance.
The cluster of materials written from a linguistic perspective suggests that problem of language should be approached just like any other social problem – in its historical development and in its socio-cultural and political context, one aspect of which is the problem of the functioning of symbolic boundary in multiethnic societies.
A transformation of the concept of frontier from the marginal research aspect to a mediating metanarrative and a research agenda necessarily involves in-depth explorations of its many sides and the possibility of “translating” different approaches and interpretations within one research field. For us, the potential of applying the concept of boundary to different aspects of research in history nationalism, nation-building and empires has a special significance. This exploration will define the contents of our annual experiment in 2003.