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This digital document is a journal article from Political Geography, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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The article focuses on the interplay of the narratives of 'exclusion' and 'self-exclusion' in the Russian discourse on EU-Russian relations. Since the late 1990s, this discourse has acquired an increasingly conflictual orientation, whereby the official foreign policy objectives of 'strategic partnership' with the EU and Russia's 'integration with Europe' are increasingly problematised across the entire Russian political spectrum. In the analysis of the Russian conflict discourse we shall identify two at first glance opposed narratives. Firstly, the EU enlargement has raised the issue of the expansion of the Schengen visa regime for Russian citizens, travelling to Europe. Particularly acute with regard to Kaliningrad Oblast', this issue has also generated a wider identity-related discourse on the EU's exclusionary policies towards Russia. Secondly, the perception of Russia's passive or subordinate status in EU-Russian cooperative arrangements at national, regional and local levels resulted in the problematisation of the insufficiently reciprocal or intersubjective nature of the EU-Russian 'partnership' and the increasing tendency towards Russia's 'self-exclusion' from integrative processes, grounded in the reaffirmation of state sovereignty that generally characterises the Putin presidency. This article concludes with the interpretation of the two conflict narratives in the wider context of debates around the project of European integration. ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Rivers; Russian River; Juvenile Nonfiction / Science ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the expanding Russian empire was embroiled in a dramatic confrontation with the nomadic people known as the Kalmyks who had moved westward from Inner Asia onto the vast Caspian and Volga steppes. Drawing on an unparalleled body of Russian and Turkish sources--including chronicles, epics, travelogues, and previously unstudied Ottoman archival materials--Michael Khodarkovsky offers a fresh interpretation of this long and destructive conflict, which ended with the unruly frontier becoming another province of the Russian empire.

Khodarkovsky first sketches a cultural anthropology of the Kalmyk tribes, focusing on the assumptions they brought to the interactions with one another and with the sedentary cultures they encountered. In light of this portrait of Kalmyk culture and internal politics, Khodarkovsky rereads from the Kalmyk point of view the Russian history of disputes between the two peoples. Whenever possible, he compares Ottoman accounts of these events with the Russian sources on which earlier interpretations have been based. Khodarkovsky’s analysis deepens our understanding of the history of Russian expansion and establishes a new paradigm for future study of the interaction between the Russians and the non-Russian peoples of Central Asia and Transcaucasia. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

let's see
The book is not so interesting even tho I will read it in a better mood sooner o later!

revealing
While analyzing the geography of a country and the influences on its history is not a novel concept (Richard Pipes has a fascinating first chapter in Russia under the Old Regime detailing that), I found Sunderland's approach to be original and provocative through its complexity. He focuses on just one geographic form, namely the Russian steppe, and builds his argument brilliantly: in his view, the intellectuals and political officials of the 18th and 19th centuries transformed Russia, through the colonization of its wide steppe, from a nation initially viewed as barbaric, with vast lands of wilderness, to a serious European player. The steppe certainly is for Sunderland not an arbitrary choice, but rather serves as metaphor for the wide, agriculturally challenging unknown.

Perhaps the most useful idea for me to take away from this book was the clear distinction between imperialism and colonialism that the author makes. Too often these two terms are being used interchangeably, and yet they are not at all synonyms. Unlike imperialism, which suggests complete subordination of new territories, colonialism suggests transfers of population, allowing them, however, to continue to exercise their political loyalties to their original country. In that regard, I considered the most illustrative description of that specific distinction to be made as part of the chapter detailing the changes implemented during the reign of Catherine II. Arguably an "enlightened despot," the empress "opened the gates" to the steppe with almost no restrictions whatsoever. People's preferences and aspirations were very little important in the official view compared to the sheer desire to populate those lands.

One cannot satisfy all questions in such an already vast undertaking, but still I do have at least two curiosities. First, especially since Sunderland links so much of his comparisons to the American wild west, I would have liked to know in further detail whether captives like the ones from the famous Pugachev rising were exiled throughout the steppe lands. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, I would have enjoyed learning about the tensions amongst the various ethnic groups that populated the steppe. I cannot imagine that did not exist, especially since it seems there was no coherent plan implemented as part of the colonization process, so such occurrence almost seems inevitable.

How Russia became an Empire
The great nineteenth-century historian Kliuchevsky observed that colonization was the basic fact of Russian history. In "Taming the Wild Field," Willard Sunderland has offered readers one of the best books on this crucial aspect of Russia's past. Based on years of research--much of it in overlooked Russian archives--rich with insight, and written with rare elegance, "Taming the Wild Field" should be read by everyone interested in the "big questions" of Russian history. ... Read more

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From ninth-century Kievan Rus through World War II, 34 maps and associated commentary detail political, geographical, and historical evolution of Russian state and peoples. "An atlas to be welcomed by every student of Eastern Rurope."--Choice ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Russian Middle Ages
I am studying this subject since years and since years I was seeking a good historical Atlas based on recentest archeological research. This revised edition is really good even tho not the ideal one given the new Russian works that have been edited and re-edited in these latest years. Still I am sure it could be of any help to my studies. ... Read more

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Stretching from the Urals to the Arctic Ocean to China, Siberia is so vast that the continental United States and Western Europe could be fitted into its borders, with land to spare. Yet, in only six decades, Russian trappers, cossacks, and adventurers crossed this huge territory, beginning in the 1580s a process of conquest that continues to this day. As rich in resources as it was large in size, Siberia brought the Russians a sixth of the world's gold and silver, a fifth of its platinum, a third of its iron, and a quarter of its timber. The conquest of Siberia allowed Russia to build the modern world's largest empire, and Siberia's vast natural wealth continues to play a vital part in determining Russia's place in international affairs.

Bleak yet romantic, Siberia's history comes to life in W. Bruce Lincoln's epic telling. The Conquest of a Continent, first published in 1993, stands as the most comprehensive and vivid account of the Russians in Siberia, from their first victories over the Mongol Khans to the environmental degradation of the twentieth century. Dynasties of incomparable wealth, such as the Stroganovs, figure into the story, as do explorers, natives, gold seekers, and the thousands of men and women sentenced to penal servitude or forced labor in Russia's great wilderness prisonhouse. ... Read more

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Siberia from a Russian point of view
In contrast to Forsyth's History of the Peoples of Siberia, this semi-popular book emphasizes the Russians.It is a better read, has more human-interest material and has a better account of the Amur region, but has less infromation.
In the first 30 pages we learn that by 1200 the Chinese had been cultivating maize for thousands of years, that 'Budapest' flourished during the middle ages, that Tamurlane was a Mongol and that Tokhtamysh was the nephew of the 'khan of Kazakhstan'.Later we are told that the moment the 'discovery' of the mariner's compass 'made it possible to sail beyond the sight of land', Europeans began dreaming of a sea route to China.He also thinks that the English were on the California coast in 1715.I have never seen so many obvious mistakes in a book from an acedemic publisher.One hopes that he is more accurate in the areas he has researched directly.

Literate
A rather thorough history of the Russian annexation and subjugation of Siberia and its peoples.The number of people who died in this conquest is unbelievable partcularly considering the somewhat sparse population.The toll rivals the European conquest of the Americas.However, Lincoln spares the reader from considerable graphic detail.If the subject matter were not so grim, the book would be almost enjoyable due to Lincoln's easy style.Worth reading. ... Read more

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After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were high hopes of Russia’s "modernisation" and rapid political and economic integration with the EU. But now, given its own policies of national development, Russia appears to have ‘limits to integration’. Today, much European political discourse again evokes East/West civilisational divides and antagonistic geopolitical interests in EU-Russia relations. This book provides a carefully researched and timely analysis of this complex relationship and examines whether this turn in public debate corresponds to local-level experience – particularly in border areas where the European Union and Russian Federation meet.  This multidisciplinary book - covering geopolitics, international relations, political economy and human geography - argues that the concept ‘limits to integration’ has its roots in geopolitical reasoning; it examines how Russian regional actors have adapted to the challenges of simultaneous internal and external integration, and what kind of strategies they have developed in order to meet the pressures coming across the border and from the federal centre. It analyses the reconstitution of Northwest Russia as an economic, social and political space, and the role cross-border interaction has had in this process. The book illustrates how a comparative regional perspective offers insights into the EU-Russia relationship: even if geopolitics sets certain constraints to co-operation, and market processes have led to conflict in cross-border interaction, several actors have been able to take initiative and create space for increasing cross-border integration in the conditions of Russia’s internal reconstitution.

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The complex and often turbulent history of Russia over the course of the last 2000 years is brought to life in a series of 177 maps. It covers not only the expansion of Russia wars and its war but also provides a wealth of detail on topics such as its history of famine and anarchism to the growth of its naval strength. From 800 BC through the fall of the Soviet Union to the present day, this indispensable cartographic guide to Russian history covers:
* War and conflict: from the triumph of the Goths between 200 and 400 BC to the defeat of Germany at the end of the Second World War, the end of the Cold War and the war in Chechnya.
* Politics: from the rise of Moscow in the Middle Ages to revolution, the fall of the monarchy and the collapse of communism.
* Industry, economics and transport: from the Trans-Siberian Railway between 1891 and 1917 to the Virgin Lands Campaign and contemporary oil and gas exploitation.
* Society, trade and culture: from peasant discontent and labor camps (gulags) to the geographical distribution of ethnic Russians and the Russian arms trade. ... Read more

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One of the most pivotal developments in contemporary literary and cultural studies is the investigation of space and geography, a trend which is proving particularly important for modernist studies. This volume explores the interface between modernism and geography in a range of writers, texts and artists across the twentieth century.

Cross-disciplinary essays test and extend a variety of methodological approaches and reveal the reach of this topic into every corner of modernist scholarship. From Imagist poetry and the Orient to teashops and modernism in London, or from mapping and belonging in James Joyce or Joseph Conrad to the space of new media artists, this remarkable volume offers fresh, invigorating research that ranges across the field of modernism. It also serves to identify the many exciting new directions that future studies may take.

With groundbreaking essays from an international team of highly-regarded scholars, Geographies of Modernism is an important step forward in literary and cultural studies.

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In the bookshops of present-day St. Petersburg, guidebooks abound. Both modern descriptions of Russia's old imperial capital and lavish new editions of pre-Revolutionary texts sell well, primarily attracting an audience of local residents. Why do Russians read one- and two-hundred-year-old guidebooks to a city they already know well? In How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself, Emily Johnson traces the Russian fascination with local guides to the idea of kraevedenie. Kraevedenie (local studies) is a disciplinary tradition that in Russia dates back to the early twentieth century. Practitioners of kraevedenie investigate local areas, study the ways human society and the environment affect each other, and decipher the semiotics of space. They deconstruct urban myths, analyze the conventions governing the depiction of specific regions and towns in works of art and literature, and dissect both outsider and insider perceptions of local population groups. Practitioners of kraevedenie helped develop and popularize the Russian guidebook as a literary form. Johnson traces the history of kraevedenie, showing how St. . Petersburg-based scholars and institutions have played a central role in the evolution of the discipline. Distinguished from obvious Western equivalents such as cultural geography and the German Heimatkunde by both its dramatic history and unique social significance, kraevedenie has, for close to a hundred years, served as a key forum for expressing concepts of regional and national identity within Russian culture. How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself is published in collaboration with the Harriman Institute at Columbia University as part of its Studies of the Harriman Institute series. ... Read more