Wedged between China, Korea, Japan, and the United States, the
Russian Far East has for centuries been a meeting ground for
Eurasian and American peoples and cultures. Conventionally regarded
as a perimeter, it is in fact a collage of overlapping borderlands
with a distinct historical identity. Based on a quarter-century of
research by a leading authority on the area, this is a monumental
survey of Pacific Siberia from prehistoric times to the present.
Drawing from political, diplomatic, economic, geographical, social,
and cultural evidence, the book reveals that this vast, rugged, and
supposedly insular land has harbored vibrantly cosmopolitan
lifestyles. For over a millennium, Chinese culture found expression
in Tungus, Mongol, and Korean politics. Russian penetration in the
seventeenth century eventually turned the region into a colony
sustained by state subsidies, foreign enterprise, and a mosaic of
Ukrainian, Estonian, Finnish, German, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese
communities. Tsarist and Soviet penal policies contributed to the
diversity and volatility of Far Eastern society. Regional
aspirations articulated by Siberian intellectuals, disingenuously
institutionalized in a Far Eastern Republic (1920-22), survived
lethal bouts of economic and demographic engineering to come to
life again in the post-Soviet era. The Russian Far East today
reverberates with autonomist rhetoric, but if the region is no
longer an appanage, it is still far short of independence. For the
time being, the robust tradition of cosmopolitanism is reinventing
itself under the banner of capitalism. Reexamining
twentieth-century history through a Far Eastern prism, the book
offers fresh and often provocativeperspectives on imperial
rivalries, colonialism, revolution, civil war, and utopianism gone
awry in Northeast Asia.
General
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