Window on the East: Ethnography, orthodoxy, and Russian nationality in Kazan, 1870-1914

This dissertation examines Russian views of non-Russian peoples in the eastern part of the tsarist empire and the question of their cultural assimilation. Its setting is the city and region of Kazan, often considered the junction of Europe and Asia. The Kazan khanate, a successor state to the Golden Horde (Russia's erstwhile conqueror), was seized by Russia in 1552 as its first imperial conquest. Over following centuries, the region was integrated administratively into Russia and populated by Russians, but half its population remained culturally distinct. The most numerous non-Russian group was the Muslim Tatars; others were Turkic and Finno-Ugric peoples who had experienced varying degrees of Christianization and Russification. By the mid-19th century, Russian views of empire increasingly stressed cultural homogeneity over diversity, and state and society took up the challenge of assimilating the non-Russian peoples.; Just as Russia thought of St. Petersburg as its "window on Europe," it made Kazan the mediator of Russia's relationship with "the East." Using extensive archival and published sources, the dissertation examines three spheres in Kazan that served this purpose: the Orthodox church and its missions, school systems for non-Russians administered locally and by the Ministry of Education, and ethnographic and archeological research conducted under the auspices of Kazan University. Activities in these three spheres were accompanied by public debates on Russian nationality that had ramifications for much of the empire. Whereas most previous studies of Russian imperial practices and ideologies concentrate either on the political center or on specific peoples at the periphery, my work views Kazan as both a subject and object of efforts at cultural integration.; Part I of the dissertation discusses the invention and application of new strategies of cultural integration in 19th-century Kazan. Part II examines the relationships between these strategies and the social-scientific study of non-Russian peoples in the Kazan region. Part III analyzes the ways in which the issues of nationality and assimilation were transformed in Kazan by the social and political crises of the last decades of tsarism.