Why study the Russian-Armenian relationship during the imperial period? What can we learn from it about Russia’s treatment of ethnic and religious ‘Others’? And what does it tell us about the agency that non-Russians had in the process of empire-building? These are some of the main questions raised in Stephen Badalyan Riegg’s recent monograph Russia’s Entangled Embrace. The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801–1914.
Two JUSTIMINO scholars working on the history of the Caucasus, Gevorg Avetikyan and Stefan Kirmse, have engaged with this important book in separate reviews, tracing its undoubtable merits, along with its limitations. Both address matters of research perspective and methodology, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the sources on which the study is based. What are the implications of this choice of sources? As we might expect from JUSTIMINO, both reviews also bring up the notion of ‘minorities’, which Riegg uses consistently. What are ‘minorities’ in an imperial context: are they religious and/or ethnic communities united by a particular ‘minority experience’? Do they mostly emerge in the imagination of others? And who gets to decide?
Avetikyan’s review was published in the Analytical Bulletin (Verlutsakan teghekagir), based at Yerevan State University, while Kirmse’s review came out in Connections, part of the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH).
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Stefan Kirmse (July 11, 2024). New Book Reviews on Armenians in Imperial Russia. In Pursuit of ‘Legality’ and ‘Justice’. Retrieved October 15, 2024 from https://justimino.hypotheses.org/611