WEBVTT - S4 – Interview 3: Joshua Sanborn 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:10.280 Doctor Joshua Sanborn is a historian of Russia in the 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:13.239 twentieth century, and if you want to understand World War 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:16.720 One from a Russian perspective, you simply can't miss his books. 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:19.919 If you've listened through this season of Unobscured, you already 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:23.200 know what an expert he is on imperial state politics 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:26.159 and the nasty mess the Royal family found themselves in. 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:30.200 But Dr Sandborn's books and his conversation with this season's 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.280 writer Carl Nillis, covers so much more than that. His 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:36.680 scholarship is a deep exploration of the connections between war 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:39.760 and politics in the Romanov Empire and the way that 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:43.520 the bloodshed rippled out across all of Russian society, from 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.599 high to low. So it's a pleasure to offer you 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:50.120 this conversation. But strap in because this train moves at 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:52.560 one hundred miles an hour and we're headed for the 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:56.000 Eastern Front of the Great War. This is the Unobscured 0:00:56.040 --> 0:01:04.680 Interview series for season four. I'm Aaron Minky for Unobscured podcast. 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:08.440 I'm Carl Nellis, and I'm joined today by Dr Joshua Sanborn. 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:11.520 Dr Sandborn is professor of history at Lafayette College in 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.200 eastern Pennsylvania. He has been recognized with numerous awards for 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.240 his teaching and scholarship, including a fellowship from the National 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:21.560 Endowment for the Humanities. In two thousand three, he published 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:25.199 Drafting the Russian Nation, Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:29.560 Politics from nineteen o five to and more recently he 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:33.440 published Imperial Apocalypse, The Great War and the Destruction of 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:38.000 the Russian Empire with Oxford University Press. Dr Sanborn is fantastic, 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:40.399 His writing is great. I hope you grated and check 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:42.840 out his books if you're interested in really digging into 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.920 the history of this period. Um, it's fantastic to have 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:48.480 you joined us on Unobscured. Dr Sanborn, welcome. Oh, it's 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:52.160 great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. So let's 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:56.240 start kind of from that general picture of your work, UM, 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:58.720 maybe with Imperial Apocalypse in particular, that you've written a 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:02.360 fascinating book here on the internal dynamics of the late 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:06.400 Russian Empire, especially the significance of the resistance to Russian 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:10.480 control in the border countries, but all the ramifications of 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:12.560 that as well, can you say a few things about 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:16.440 what brought you to this work in particular? Sure. Yeah, 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.280 As as with many scholar careers, it sort of follows 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:24.520 a certain kind of trajectory. UM. I got interested in 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:28.080 Russia and in Russian history actually back in high school. 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:29.800 I grew up at the very end of the Cold War, 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:33.760 very interested in what was happening in terms of arms control, disarmament, 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:36.840 as very concerned about UM, the way the world was 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:40.200 headed and the possibility of of nuclear war between the 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:45.080 two superpowers. I was firmly convinced that UM better better 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.600 relations between the two countries were necessary. By the time 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:52.000 I graduated college in the Soviet Union was ending, and 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:54.280 so when I was in graduate school in the middle 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.520 of the nineteen nineties, that same conflict wasn't present. But 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:00.320 but I certainly had already caught the caught the Russia hug, 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:03.919 and I did have this interest in UM in UH 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:07.800 in thinking about security and thinking about UM military affairs, 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.600 not from the perspective of a military practitioner, of an 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:12.920 officer or people that that work in in in the 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:16.000 defense departments saying, but from the perspective of someone that 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.280 wanted to look at military affairs UH through through a 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:23.880 broader lens, through social, political, or cultural lenses. So UM, 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.920 that's how I got onto the topic of military conscription. 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:30.600 Of chapters in there not only about about conscription itself, 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.240 but also about women and UH and women soldiers in 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:36.520 World War One, about draft resistors and conscientious objectors. It 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:38.280 allowed me to sort of think about a lot of 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:41.520 the ways that that nationhood was constructed through the performance 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:44.280 of violence. UM. And so that was what that that 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:46.680 book was about. And one of the things UM, as 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:48.560 I was doing the research for that book, I realized 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:50.880 that there was a real UM opening and a real 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:55.280 potential UH to write a book about World War One. UM. 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:57.600 The centennial World War One was coming up. I published 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.000 this book on the Hunter the anniversary of the UH 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:02.200 the start of the war, and there were other historians, 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.200 many other historians who were who were also developing projects 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:07.840 at this time. UM and I began this project as 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:11.280 sort of, UM yeah, a an investigation of life in 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:14.120 frontline zones. I was really interested in the civilian experience, 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.400 what happened to civilians that we're living in these occupied 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:21.440 territories who were subject to deportations, millions of whom became refugees, um. 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.560 Were tossed back and forth between these empires and had 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.560 this really interesting political experience as nationalism really sort of 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:29.960 grew in the period too UM. And so I moved 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:33.320 from that to to a larger conception of the war, 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.240 not just as a lived experience, but also as this 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.120 moment of decolonization. At this moment where European empires, UM, 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:44.119 we're collapsing, the big Land empires were collapsing, the German Empire, 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:46.760 the Austriungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire. 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:49.840 And what relationship did the did the war have to that? 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:51.560 In other words, was it just sort of the final 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.680 blow or was it something more more substantial? And so 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:56.960 that was that was what was beginning to govern the 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.359 way I then structured and wrote the book m HM. 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:04.640 And if someone who is not a historian or is 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:09.440 not a specialist was to pick up Imperial Apocalypse, UM, 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:11.240 what would you hope that they would take away from 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:13.480 reading it? So, if if that was the idea coming 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.320 in to discover, what would you hope that a reader 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:19.120 would come away thinking about the relationship between the end 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.200 of European empires? And Yeah, so in the first place, 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:28.440 it was an attempt to give especially English language readers, 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.400 the possibility to learn more about the war looked like 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:35.200 from the Eastern Front. Um. There have been many works 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:37.800 actually written on the Eastern Front, but most of the 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:42.040 ones that sort of had a um uh an ability 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:43.520 to sort of look at the thing in the whole 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:46.599 um uh. Many of those were quite dated back to 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.800 the nineteen seventies, and the archives had opened since then. 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:51.440 There were a lot of new ways about thinking about 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:54.600 Russian politics and the Russian Revolution um and so this 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:56.839 is a relatively compact way for them to get to 0:05:56.880 --> 0:05:59.159 know what's going on on the Eastern Front. So I 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:01.240 talked about the stical things that are going on and 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.000 talk about these social experiences, but I also talk about 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:07.039 the military events um and and and and all of 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:09.040 these are are tightly linked. As as I try to 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:12.160 show in the book, that you can't actually understand um 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:14.360 what's happening on the front without understanding what's happening in 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:17.480 the home front and vice versa. So that's the first thing, 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:20.720 this sort of compact understanding of of of the Eastern 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.320 Front and World War One UM and the second thing 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:27.600 is to understand this relationship between empires, wars and revolutions. UM. 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:30.400 Empires are not just big states. There are states that 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:34.240 are built around the principle of inequality. Right, one political 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:38.440 society is dominating other ones UM. And the metropolitan centers 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.280 are privileged, whether you're in London or in St. Petersburg, 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.359 And the colonial spaces are dominated, right, whether you're in 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:46.760 Ireland or in Poland. Right, those are places that that 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:49.920 you are not UM, you know, sort of experiencing equality 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:52.440 in the in the years building up to DA fourteen. 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:55.800 And this domination is enacted by the state UM. And 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.680 so when wars weakened states, as they sometimes do, and 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.599 they definitely did in Eastern Europe at this time, you 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:05.400 get opportunities for different kinds of political futures, including social 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.000 revolutions which we see in the in the period, but 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:13.040 also nationalist bits for independence. Would you briefly describe the 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:17.800 role in that imperial context that autocracy played in Russian 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.000 life and maybe in Russian life and consciousness, or you know, 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:24.200 kind of a cultural history approach to it UM at 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:26.840 the end of the eighteen hundreds into the early nineteen 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:29.680 dred How would you characterize the relationship between the czaars 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:32.000 and the people they ruled. And and this is a 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.240 little curve of maybe on the question that I handed you, 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.720 But would you want to make a distinction between the 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.560 relationship between the oars and the people in the center 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:45.240 of Russian and thestars and the people elsewhere? Yeah, no, 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.880 this is a this is surprisingly difficult question to answer. Actually, 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:51.600 it's it's hard to know what the relationship between that's 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.640 are and the people were. Um uh, in large part, 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.840 I mean, if you were right, there no surveys, there 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:00.080 are no polls, there are no there's no way to 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:02.000 really get at this question. And so much of what 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.280 we have is the representation of the autocracy itself for 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:07.880 how it wanted that relationship to be, how it wanted 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:09.840 it to look, and they had a lot of resources 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:12.520 in order to sort of have that happen. Indeed, in 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:14.200 the years building up to World War One, there are 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:19.040 a series of celebrations um that sort of Um yeah, 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:22.120 they they they they heightened this um that they were 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:24.880 intended to heighten this bond between the monarch and the people, 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:29.960 and these build up to the um the term centenary, 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:34.959 the anniversary of the Romanov dynasty itself in nt UM 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:37.960 and so they have big celebrations that always always are 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:40.280 trying to stress this bond between that's Are and the people. 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:44.480 And generations actually of historians have um have sort of 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:46.480 accepted this in a lot of ways. Uh, you know, 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:49.439 have accepted this notion that, yeah, there was this thing called, um, 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.439 you know, popular monarchism where the peasants they loved That's Are. 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:54.440 They might not like their landlord, but they love their 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:58.679 It's Are. That's Are represented Russia for them, UM. And uh, 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:01.559 there's just not a lot of evidence to to support that. UM. 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:03.200 There's not a lot of evidence to suggest that it 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:06.320 wasn't there either, UM, other than what actually ends up 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:08.920 happening in the war. And so my argument ultimately is 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.760 that you know, when you see this revolt against it's Are, UM, 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:14.480 you start to get these signals UM. And indeed these 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:17.880 have been building for years that um. Uh that that peasants, 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.640 who you know, the farmers, Russian farmers throughout the empire, UM, 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:25.160 are not satisfied with UM with That's Are. Do not 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:27.080 look at him as a little god, do not look 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:29.920 at them him as their as their little father. UM. 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.480 And so you know, it's kind of hard to know 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.680 that now the relationship between um that's are in ethnic 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:38.600 Russians and and and those on the periphery UM that 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:41.880 is certainly different um and and that's going to vary 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.480 widely depending on where in the Russian Empire you are. 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.600 So nationalism uh and anti Russian nationalism is developing more 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.600 strongly in certain places than in others, most notably in 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:55.080 Poland um Uh, but also beginning to develop that by 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.439 the time we get to the twentieth century in places 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:00.199 like UH, like Ukraine and in the Baltic State it's 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.319 uh and even to a certain extent, um more broadly 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.040 into sort of the Asian territories of the Russian Empire too. 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:11.079 M um And I guess, you know, just finally, I 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:13.679 guess if I were to characterize this relationship, I think 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:15.479 the thing we have to remember is that this relationship 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:17.920 is distant. That's are always wanted to see this as 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:20.559 an intimate relationship, but but it was a distant one. 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:22.400 You know, most people, of course never saw that's aar 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.360 um And you know, they lived their lives in their 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:27.920 local regions, in these local contexts, and that's oar was 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:29.800 something that was was very far away, and they had 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:37.880 and they thought had very little impact, probably on their lives. Um. 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:41.319 One movement in the prelude to the collapse of the 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:46.040 Russian Empire was the process called Russification or Russianization. You 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:51.840 write that it entailed assaults on churches, language schools. At 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.840 the precise moment when the Great reforms from the eighteen sixties, 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:58.719 we're creating conditions in which the social basis of nationalism 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:01.400 could develop. Would you give us kind of a brief 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:08.080 overview of Ruscification, Um, it's relationship to nationalism maybe, and 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:13.200 especially beyond the metropole of the Russian Empire. Yeah. Sure. Um. 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.360 The first thing we have to keep in mind is 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:19.440 that the Russian Empire was created before nations were born, 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:23.200 including the Russian nation. UM. So nationalism is a fairly 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:26.720 late development historically, not just in Russia but but everywhere. 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.600 We can see its early growth among elite educated populations 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:32.760 in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, but it's not really 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.920 until the late eighteenth century and especially in the nineteenth 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:38.079 century that it begins to take off in Europe, in 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.280 the America's and of course the Romanov dynasty had been 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.440 founded in the seventeenth century. UM, and in the nineteenth century. 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:46.160 It's at the same time that we're seeing not only 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:48.320 the great reforms in Russia, which you're intended to sort 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:52.560 of create a more modern empire, um, but we see 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:55.920 mass industrialization, we see the beginning of mass politics and Russia, 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:58.600 and certainly it's wide expansion elsewhere in Europe. We see 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:02.360 mass education take root, um, huge strides in literacy and 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:04.559 the ability of people to be uh to be reading 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:07.960 newspaper articles about about what's going on. UM. Now, the 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:12.040 political power of nationalism, including its ability to mobilize much 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:15.720 stronger armed forces, was evident quite quickly to politicians UM. 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.360 And so you have all of these pre national multi 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:22.559 ethnic states, the Habsburg Empire, the romanof Dynasty, the Ottoman Empire, 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:26.000 all of them are trying to nationalize themselves over the 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.360 course of the nineteenth century. And so their problem is 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:31.559 in a multi ethnic state, as all of them are, 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:34.200 as Russia certainly, is they either have to figure out 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:37.000 how to fashion a multi ethnic national project, that is 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:38.880 to say, a nation that is not founded on a 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:44.440 single ethnicity, or to engage in building ethnic nationalism. In fact, 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:46.880 Russia tried to do both, but it was this latter 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:50.480 project defending the idea that the Russian Empire was for 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.280 the benefit of ethnic Russians and could be defined by 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:57.040 Russian characteristics in terms of language and church. That caused 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:00.000 the problems of Rucification. So, in concrete terms, what roots 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.080 vacation is it's an attempt to uh to to limit 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:08.600 let's say, um uh Polish participation in politics, UH to 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:13.400 forbid the publishing of of Ukrainian language texts, UH to 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:16.160 ensure that local schools, these new schools that are that 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.160 are building, are being taught in Russian with a Russian sylla, 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.920 with Russian curriculum basically right. So that's on a concrete level, 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:25.600 what what's happening is they're going into these regions and say, no, 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:27.640 you have to go to a Russian language school. No, 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:30.839 the Orthodox Church is the preferred church, not not not 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.560 Catholicism or Lutheranism as it as it is for many 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:35.760 the populations, especially in the west of the Empire or 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:38.800 islam in in in the large squas of of of Asia. 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.199 They're going into all these regions and they're saying, no, Russian, 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.120 this is the Russian Empire and you have to learn Russian. 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.240 This um And you can see why imperial administrators might 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:50.480 want to say, okay, well, look, Ukrainian nationalism is as 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:52.880 a problem we have to figure out. Let's solve it 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:55.640 by by teaching all these Ukrainian kids Russian history and 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:58.200 the Russian language, and maybe we'll we'll sort of forestall it. 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:00.840 But in fact, it was the visit that took place 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:03.800 at the very moment. Like people before the nineteenth century 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:05.559 didn't think of themselves as Ukrainians, they didn't think of 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:07.800 themselves as Russians. They thought of themselves as peasants or 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.760 as Christians, but they didn't have these these strong ethnic 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:14.200 identifications that that that linked them to these political projects. 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:16.880 So the very moment they're learning about this their their 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.360 their earliest the earliest political experiences is one of imperial 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:23.880 oppression basically, and so this helps to generate these ethnic 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:26.360 nationalists on the periphery. They had long tried to say, hey, 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:28.560 you guys are all Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians will be like, 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:30.080 I don't know, I'm kind of a peasant, I'm kind 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:32.000 of a Christian. And now they're coming along and now 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:34.320 they finally have the proof. They're like, see, your Ukrainians, 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:37.280 the state is punishing for being a Ukrainian. Now they say, oh, yeah, 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:39.040 now I see you mean like I can't go to 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:40.800 the church I want to go to. My kids are 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:42.800 speaking some weird language when they come home from school 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.120 with a weird accent, right like that, all of that 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:48.200 becomes too much more concrete for them. And so as 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:51.200 a result, rusification, which is intended to to limit the 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:53.920 spread of ethnic nationalism, actually helps to develop it, especially 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:58.720 in the western borderlands Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Lava Estonia. This 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:00.760 is where a lot of the roots vacation is happening, 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:02.800 and where you see this huge surge and nationalism at 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:06.160 the end of the nineteenth century. And you write this 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:10.080 is later on in your work, especially in nineteen sixteen, 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:14.120 about events in Central Asia. Um. Do we know much 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:19.640 about how Siberia experienced specification? Um? Yeah, So Siberia is 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:22.760 an interesting case. UM. And you know what had happened 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:26.000 over the course of conquest in Siberia Um, from the 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:29.680 sixteenth into the into the seventeenth centuries. Basically, UM, is 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.560 that there had been especially in the north. The further 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.160 north you went, they tended to be very small communities 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:39.120 that got conquered and sort of incorporated into into the 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:42.720 Russian Empire and also settled by by ethnic slaws. Again, 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:45.160 there there wasn't a strong sense of there are a 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:47.400 lot of sort of people we were now called ethnic Ukrainians. 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:49.680 We are doing this colonizing work out in out in 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:53.240 Siberia and elsewhere. Um. The more you got on the 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:56.480 big rivers in Siberia and and especially down towards towards 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.840 Central Asia, you you had more a large scale and 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.280 settled Muslim communities, the remnants of the Mongol Empire basically 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:07.000 and um and and those were places where they had 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:10.320 a much more complicated time um sort of dealing with 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.760 these this question of russianists and honestly, especially from the 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.920 early nineteenth century, Uh, the goal was, the goal over 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:19.360 the centuries of the Russian administration was let's let's not 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:21.800 do things to make people upset. We don't have a rebellion. 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:24.320 So if people want to go to their own church, fine, 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:26.720 who cares if if Muslims go go to a mosque, 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:28.080 We we're not going to force them to go to 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.000 an Orthodox church. They go to a mosque, as long 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:32.440 as they're paying taxes and they're not rebelling, um, you know, 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:34.840 and their elites are basically on board. We're we're fine 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.000 with all of this and so. But you know, it's 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.320 only in the nineteenth century again that you start to 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:44.440 see these pressures towards um, towards greater assimilation in a 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.840 certain way. And this is more possible for the ones 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.520 that are closer to or conceived of as more possible 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:52.400 for for those who are closer to the to the 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:55.400 Russian Empire and had been conquered much earlier, especially along 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.480 the Volga, the so called tatars Um along the Vulgar River, 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:01.960 than it is for the newly conquered territories in the 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:04.399 middle of the nineteenth century and what's called Turkestan at 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:08.520 the time, what's now Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, parts of Kyrkistan. So, 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:11.800 so this region is newly conquered, um. And and this 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.520 is a very special it's it's it's a colonial territory. 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.600 It's it's treated um as sort of you know, as 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:20.840 sort of the British retreat a colony in Africa or 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:29.720 in Asia. M Um. So starting to look a little 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:36.199 more detailed towards war and revolution and war and revolution again. Um, 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:40.399 would you say a few words about how the nineteen 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:44.680 o four Russo Japanese War and the Revolution of nineteen 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:48.119 o five. Well, in your book you say it transformed 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:52.800 the international balance of power. And we you know, when 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.400 we're talking about World War One, when we're talking about 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.960 the downfall of Russia, we have to understand the rest 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:00.760 of Japanese War and what change in Russian life and 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.320 governance in nineteen o five. Can you talk about how 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:06.639 those things were linked and what happened beyond the borders 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:10.680 and of Russia. Right, Yeah, So, so the Russo Japanese 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:12.680 War happens at a very let me start with the 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:17.320 international question first, it happens at a very volatile moment internationally, Um, 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.000 you're in the midst of this huge arms race which 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:22.920 is going to culminate in in World War One, the 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:27.280 rise of of new powers challenging sort of the pre eminence, 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:30.199 let's say, of the of of especially of the British Empire. 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:32.080 That the story of sort of the German challenge to 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:34.879 the British Empire is well known, and we're fully in 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.399 the midst of that by by nineteen o four and 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:41.080 in nineteen o five. But also you're seeing emerging powers 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:44.639 elsewhere in the world. Most notably Japan UM which is 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:48.160 striving to be sort of the first non European member 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:51.200 of the Club of Great Powers UM. At this stage 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:53.959 they're not quite there. They have they have established um 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:58.880 UH dominance in in East Asia that in they want 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.560 to war against China. The Qing Empire is is certainly 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.520 um in the midst of of fading on the verge 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:08.040 of collapse, which we'll do in a couple of years UM. 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:11.600 And so Japan is clearly um UH the most significant 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.320 power and they want to be recognized as such. And 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:19.200 what happens as China becomes a target of global imperial 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:23.160 control UM you know, you start to have the push 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:25.320 for concessions, not only among the British, who had had 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.200 concessions for a while, but also among the Russians. The 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:30.720 Americans now are are are are are trying to take 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:34.080 take take part in this scramble for China. Japan is 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:37.680 really trying to assert itself as as a regional power 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:41.680 and and hopefully as as a global power. And and 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:45.359 this um UH. The European powers are generally unwilling to 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:48.320 do this, and Russia is for a varide of reasons, 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:50.639 especially unwilling to do this and part of this has 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:53.399 to do with Nicholas himself. Um. He had done a 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:57.760 tour before he became sorrow when he Saraevitch in into Asia, 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.600 had traveled through through Japan, held a series of quite 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:05.840 openly racist views towards towards the Japanese um and and 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:08.320 did not want to think about the Japanese as a 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:13.399 potential um imperial threat to to Russian imperial power um And. 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:17.119 This leads to a series of diplomatic incidents and then 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.560 finally to a surprise attack by the Japanese in nineteen 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:24.560 o four upon the Russian political Pacific fleet in Port 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:28.920 Arthur And this results in a disastrous war for Russia. 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:31.840 They lose. They have three main naval fleets in the 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:34.080 in the Pacific and the Baltic and in the Black Sea. 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:36.879 They lose two of them. The third one is bottled 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:38.600 up in the Black Sea because they can't get through 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:41.719 the Straits um but their Pacific fleet is sunk. Basically 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:43.200 at the beginning of the war, they send their Baltic 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:45.000 fleet all the way around the world. The Japanese sink 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:48.000 it to in the Straits of Sushima. Um And they 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:51.760 lose almost all these All the major land battles, and 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:54.640 so it's it's a complete disaster. And what it triggers 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:58.160 is this mass mobilization not only for for a military 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:00.880 for the military, but also kind of a political mobilization. 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:03.399 At the same moment, you have a political crisis in 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:06.240 nineteen o five, so it leads to revolution, or it 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.240 helps lead to revolutionary events those have also social revolution 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:11.560