The Romanovs ruled Russia from 1613 until 1917, when revolutions swept them from power. In three centuries, they transformed it from a landlocked country, inhabited largely by ethnic Russians, into a sprawling, western-oriented, multi-ethnic empire, governing well over 100 million people across some 8.6 million square miles. This course will focus on the techniques of rule that the Romanovs used to maintain and expand state power. It will inquire into the extent and limits of the reach of the administrative and military apparatus into subjects’ public and private lives. Nominally, Russia was an autocracy. How powerful were Russia’s Romanov autocrats in practice? What can the Russian experience teach us about the nature of the modern state?

Romanov Russia expanded from a small, landlocked country to become the world’s second largest empire from the beginning of the 17th century through the early 20th century. These conquests, which included Ukraine, came at enormous cost to local populations in the subjugated territories, as well as to inhabitants in the center, who furnished the necessary taxes and recruits. While Russia might be considered as having embarked on a unique, autocratic path in the 19th century, both state and army relied on bureaucratic, military, and technological innovations, mostly borrowed from Western Europe. Over the course of the semester, we will seek to better understand imperial expansion, balancing differing historical explanations. Were Russia’s autocratic rulers blind to the toll they took on the multi-ethnic population? How did they balance the costs of conquest against the needs of impoverished Russians who inhabited the imperial heartland? How did they convince themselves, their servitors, and the wider population of the necessity of expansion? How did they legitimate autocracy? What role did Russia’s nascent intelligentsia and the press play in countering or lending credence to their claims? What resistance did they encounter? We will explore how historians have accounted for these changes and dilemmas, concentrating on major themes such as autocracy, geopolitics, imperialism, nationalism, social structures, serfdom and its legacies, and industrialization, together with the rise of oppositional ideologies, including liberalism and socialism.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills