A Public Empire: Property and the Quest for the Common Good in Imperial Russia

448 Pages·2014·9.918 MB·English

by  Ekaterina Pravilova

A Public Empire

A Public Empire
Property and the Quest for the Common
Good in Imperial Russia
Ekaterina Pravilova
Princeton University Press • Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock,
Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
Jacket illustration: Mstislav Dobuzhinskii, Troitskii most, 1903, Poland. © 2014 The State
Russian Museum.
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pravilova, E. A. (Ekaterina Anatol’evna), author.
A public empire : property and the quest for the common good in imperial Russia /
Ekaterina Pravilova.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-15905-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Public domain—Russia—History.
2. Right of property—Russia—History. 3. Government ownership—Russia—History.
4. Russia—History—1613–1917. I. Title.
KLA3040.P73 2014
333.10947’09034—dc23 2013028580
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Minion Pro
Printed on acid- free paper ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations xi
Introduction: Res Publica in the Imperial State 1
part i
Whose Nature? Environmentalism, Industrialization,
and the Politics of Property 19
1. The Meanings of Property 21
2. Forests, Minerals, and the Controversy over Property
in Post- Emancipation Russia 55
3. Nationalizing Rivers, Expropriating Lands 93
part ii
The Treasures of the Fatherland 129
4. Inventing National Patrimony 131
5. Private Possessions and National Art 178
part iii
“Estates on Parnassus”: Literary Property and Cultural Reform 213
6. Writers and the Audience: Legal Provisions and Public Discourse 215
7. The Private Letters of National Literature 241
Epilogue 270
Notes 291
Index 403

Acknowledgments
“One can’t undo a knot with one hand,” says an old Russian proverb attesting
to the vanity of solitary work, and this is certainly true about my work on this
book. Many hands (and minds) have joined together to help me untangle the
knot and sort out the complexities of Russian thinking about property, and I
am deeply indebted to everyone who has assisted me with their encourage-
ment, assistance, and friendly critique.
The idea for this book originated with a paper that I delivered at a workshop
on the “Materiality of Res Publica” hosted by the European University in St.
Petersburg in 2007. I am grateful to all the workshop participants and especially
to Professors Oleg Kharkhordin and Quentin Skinner for the initial inspiration
to explore the world of “public things” in the Russian context. In addition to
this, I presented earlier versions of what have now become a number of the
book’s chapters at a variety of academic venues and in each case greatly ben-
efited from the advice of numerous colleagues—i n particular, the organizers of
and participants in the Russian kruzhok at Princeton University; the Russian
history workshop at Columbia University; the workshops on Russian and So-
viet History and Culture and Economic History at the University of Pennsyl-
vania; the Russian History Workshop at the Center of Russian, East European,
and Eurasian Studies at the University of Michigan; and the Russian workshop
at Georgetown University. Numerous friends and colleagues then helped me
once I began work on the manuscript: Zhanna Kormina helped me untangle
the particulars of Orthodox ritual; Edyta Bojanowska, Caryl Emerson, Serguei
Oushakine, William Mills Todd III, and Michael Wachtel opened my eyes to
the politics of literary property in the imperial era; and Tatiana Borisova, Yanni
Kotsonis, Alberto Masoero, and Paul Werth each read individual chapters in
a number of different incarnations, offering me suggestions that helped me to
greatly improve my argument. I also shamelessly abused the generosity of Peter
Holquist, who introduced me to numerous references and research materials,
commented on multiple papers and articles, and kindly read the manuscript
both as a whole as well as piece by piece. Last, I am endlessly grateful to Jane Bur-
bank, Michael Gordin, Stephen Kotkin, Philip Nord, and Willard Sunderland,
who generously took on reading the entire manuscript and shared comments
viii | Acknowledgments
and criticisms that always pushed me to write the best book I could. Any of the
shortcomings that remain are all my own.
The Department of History at Princeton has been my intellectual home since
I began work on this project. Conversations over the years with Jeremy Adel-
man, Molly Greene, Hendrik Hartog, Yair Mintzker, Rebecca Rix, and Martha
Sandweiss have helped me to look at the issues of property in a broader context.
I am also deeply indebted to my teacher and academic advisor Boris Vasilievich
Ananich for everything to date that I have been able to produce as a historian.
Boris Vasilievich has taught me the subtleties of the historian’s craft and has
constantly supported me in all my academic endeavors.
A number of institutions provided the critical financial and logistical sup-
port that I needed to complete my project. A Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fel-
lowship from the American Council of Learned Societies gave me much needed
support for research and writing, while Princeton University’s Committee on
Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences generously sponsored several
years of research trips to Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine. In 2010– 2011, I had the
good fortune to spend a year working on my manuscript at the New Economic
School (NES) in Moscow. One cannot imagine a better place than the NES to
write a book, and I am endlessly grateful to Sergei Guriev, Igor Fedyukin, and
Konstantin Sonin for inviting me to the school and to all my colleagues there
for their enduring friendship and support.
Anne O’Donnell has edited numerous versions of this text: I am deeply
grateful to her for her efforts to add smoothness and elegance to my nonna-
tive English. Margarita Emelina and Tatiana Voronina have been wonderful
research assistants: their work made a huge difference for my work in Russian
libraries and archives. I have also benefited from the kind assistance of nu-
merous Russian academic institutions and repositories, though I owe special
thanks to Irina Zolotinkina and Vera Kessenich of the Russian Museum, Na-
talya Andreevna Belova of the Institute of the History of Material Culture, and
Anna Gorskaia of the Museum of Art and History in Murom.
I am grateful to the editors of Kritika: Exploration in Russian and Eurasian
History and Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales for allowing me to use the por-
tions of articles that have appeared in these editions as “The Property of Em-
pire: Islamic Law and Russian Agrarian Policy in Transcaucasia and Turkestan,”
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 12, no. 2 (Spring
2011), pp. 353– 386, and “Les res publicae russes: Discours sur la propriété pu-
blique à la fin de l’Empire,” Annales HSS, vol. 64, no. 3 (2009), pp. 579–6 09,
© Ehess, Paris. Chapters 1 and 3 incorporate these materials in revised form.
By now, my husband, Igor, knows by heart all my stories about forests and
icons; over the years, he has been both my most engaged critic and my foremost
fan. I am deeply grateful for all he has done to help me. My father, Anatolii
Mikhailovich, a scientist and himself an author, knows all too well the joys and
hardships of academic writing; his relentless nagging to make sure I met my
Acknowledgments | ix
deadlines gave me the motivation to keep moving forward. My mother, Natalya
Vasilievna, took care of my children during several archival trips and traveled
across the Atlantic to babysit while I was struggling to finish the last chapters.
Zhenia and Liza do not know much yet about the intricacies of property—
except perhaps for their claims to toys and computer games. However, they will
be glad to know that this particular property book is over.