The government's approach to empire and nation was not a simple matter of Russian nationalist revivalism and the repression of the 'Other', however. Indeed, 'Russification' could also be a policy of trying to assimilate various ethnic groups (or at least individuals) into a common imperial polity, and could mean in practice limited respect for local customs, education in native languages and an active if circumscribed role in administration or education for non-Russians themselves, all in the pursuit of a deeper integration. Imperial diversity was sometimes visibly celebrated in rituals such as the tsar's coronation or the arrival in the borderlands of imperial dignitaries.[41] But apparent celebration of the empire's many peoples was often entwined with a complicating ideology of national hierarchy and mission. Russian national identity, for many leaders of state and society, was constructed upon notions of Russia as a 'civilised' nation bringing 'order' and 'culture' to 'backward' peoples. Even the reforms of 1905-6, which stipulated religious tolerance and greater possibilities for native leaders to play active roles in civic life, were conceived as part of the effort to integrate the various peoples of the empire into a coherent whole, marked by ideals of citizenship, of a non-parochial common good, and even of the universalism of empire.[42] Such talk clashed with other official discourses that relegated Russia's diversity to the shadows and focused on the mythic recovery of the purified national spirit of old Rus'. Still, the dominant official vision remained that of integration and uniformity. This was sometimes elaborated in generous and inclusive ways; but most often, especially in the final years of the empire, the model (however contradictory and unstable) was a polity that was simultaneously national-Russian and imperial.[43]
The perspectives and actions of non-Russians themselves greatly complicated efforts to strengthen the empire. The late 1800s and early 1900s were a time ofwidespread cultural awakening and nationalist activism. Many groups - Poles, Ukrainians, Finns, Balts, Jews, Georgians, Armenians, Muslims and others - defined themselves as 'nations' and organised movements seeking cultural autonomy and perhaps an independent nation-state, though many activists (especially socialists) saw national revival and emancipation best served in common cause with Russians to fight for civil rights and democracy for all within the empire. Changes in the lives and expectations of non- Russians, however, were not limited to the history of political and nationalist movements. For many non-Russian communities, these were also years of social and cultural change and exploring of new possibilities and new identities - probably more than we know, as historians are still only beginning to recover and retell these 'other' Russian histories.
Among Jews, for example, we see the rise around the turn of the century and after of schools promoting Hebrew or Yiddish (each with quite different national agendas) along with growing numbers of Russian-educated Jews; the emergence of a new Jewish literature, written in both Hebrew and Yiddish, and of a Jewish periodical press; increasing secular studies in the yeshivas; the rise of both mysticism and secularising trends within religious life; organised political movements of both Jewish socialism, which sought a transformed Russian Empire, and Zionism, which sought salvation in a new land; and large numbers of Jews living and working outside the Pale of Settlement, often negotiating complex new identities as 'Russian Jews'. Boundaries (not just of settlement but of culture) were far from stable or absolute in Jewish life in these years: we know, for example, that religious Jews were attracted to secular ideologies and that secular radicals might be attracted to prayer and even mysticism. What is certain is that it was no longer possible to speak of Jewish life in Russia, even in the Pale and least of all among the Jewish populations of cities like Kiev, Odessa and St Petersburg, as ghettoised and tradition-bound. Indeed, widespread anti-Jewish prejudice and hatred seemed less a timeless response to Jewish 'otherness' than a reaction to Russia's intensifying crisis and the increasing visibility of Jews in public life.[44]
We see a similar movement of cultural revival and reform, and of civic visibility and engagement, especially after 1905, among Russia's Muslims. Organisations proliferated - including libraries, charities, credit unions, national congresses and political unions and parties - expressing ideologies ranging from liberalism and socialism to Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism. The drive for cultural reform was especially strong. The Jadid (new-method) movement in Islamic education - which grew into a widespread movement of cultural and social reform, echoing trends throughout the Muslim world - sought to create a new modern Muslim steeped both in a revitalised and 'purified' Islam and in modern cosmopolitan knowledge. A major sign and catalyst of change was the growth of native-language publishing, including influential magazines such as the satirical Mulla Nasreddin from Tiflis, which elaborated a new hybrid discourse that blended the world-view of Western modernity (thus, for example, satirising Muslim 'backwardness' and advocating women's rights) with Muslim identities and values (though these too were to be debated
and renewed). [45]
Many non-Russian communities and individuals sought to articulate the meaning of their own 'national' selves and their relationships to others. As an ideal, many sought to be hybrids at once reconnected to their national and religious traditions, free to practise this culture and faith how they wished and imbued with a modern knowledge and identity. Others, just as fervently, resisted challenges to tradition and viewed reformers and those with hybrid ethnic and religious identities with hostility. The sense of crisis and opportunity that marked so much of the Russian fin de siecle was evident in the experience of being a non-Russian subject of the empire, as well as in state policy towards the nationalities 'problem'.
Fin de siecle
The contemporary sense that Russian life in the early years of the twentieth century had become deeply unstable and contradictory highlights the characteristic modernity of Russia's historical moment. Modern displacement - of people, traditions, the order of public spaces, identities and values - was everywhere. So was the modern ambiguity of pervading progress and collapse, possibility and crisis. Historians have long debated whether pre-war Russia was heading towards inevitable crisis and revolution or towards creating a viable civil society and a reformed political order. This chapter has pointed to evidence for the visibility and plausibility of both narratives. But the focus has been beneath these surfaces to a still deeper contradictoriness. A working-class author, looking back on these years through the wake of the war, revolution and civil war that followed, described the experience of this age as ambiguously marked by 'unexpected pains and joys' and by 'tragedies of immense weight appearing at every step', as a time when 'people sicken, go mad from exhaustion, but really live'.[46] As this writer understood, as late as i9i4, the greatest tragedies and joys were still to come.
41
Wortman,
43
Theodore Weeks,
44
Zvi Gitelman,
45
Geraci,
46
N. Liashko, 'O byte i literature perekhodnogo vremeni',
29-30, 34.