Though usually forgotten in general surveys of European colonization, the Russians were among the greatest colonizers of the Old World, eventually settling across most of the immense expanse of Northern Europe and Asia, from the Baltic and the Pacific, and from the Arctic Ocean to Central Asia. This book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the Eurasian past by examining the policies, practices, cultural representations, and daily-life experiences of Slavic settlement in non-Russian regions of Eurasia from the time of Ivan the Terrible to the nuclear era.
The movement of tens of millions of Slavic settlers was a central component of Russian empire-building, and of the everyday life of numerous social and ethnic groups and remains a crucial regional security issue today, yet it remains relatively understudied. Peopling the Russian Periphery redresses this omission through a detailed exploration of the varied meanings and dynamics of Slavic settlement from the sixteenth century to the 1960s. Providing an account of the different approaches of settlement and expansion that were adopted in different periods of history, it includes detailed case studies of particular episodes of migration.
Written by upcoming and established experts in Russian history, with exceptional geographical and chronological breadth, this book provides a thorough examination of the history of Slavic settlement and migration from the Muscovite to the Soviet era. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Russian history, comparative history of colonization, migration, interethnic contact, environmental history and European Imperialism.

Though usually forgotten in general surveys of European colonization, the Russians were among the greatest colonizers of the Old World, eventually settling across most of the immense expanse of Northern Europe and Asia, from the Baltic and the Pacific, and from the Arctic Ocean to Central Asia. This book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the Eurasian past by examining the policies, practices, cultural representations, and daily-life experiences of Slavic settlement in non-Russian regions of Eurasia from the time of Ivan the Terrible to the nuclear era. The movement of tens of millions of Slavic settlers was a central component of Russian empire-building, and of the everyday life of numerous social and ethnic groups and remains a crucial regional security issue today, yet it remains relatively understudied. Peopling the Russian Periphery redresses this omission through a detailed exploration of the varied meanings and dynamics of Slavic settlement from the sixteenth century to the 1960s. Providing an account of the different approaches of settlement and expansion that were adopted in different periods of history, it includes detailed case studies of particular episodes of migration. Written by upcoming and established experts in Russian history, with exceptional geographical and chronological breadth, this book provides a thorough examination of the history of Slavic settlement and migration from the Muscovite to the Soviet era. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Russian history, comparative history of colonization, migration, interethnic contact, environmental history and European Imperialism.

Lashings, branding irons, and harsh treatment in labor camps all come to mind when one thinks of Russian methods of punishment. Analyzing the "languages of the lash"—the official definitions and discussions of corporal punishment—Schrader explores the relationship between the punishment of social deviants and the stability of the imperial Russian state. Interpreting penal law and practice in a broad social and political context, she illuminates the process by which Russia developed and reformulated corporal punishment from the era of Catherine the Great to the revolution of 1905. In law and in practice, imperial Russian officials mapped and remapped society as they articulated various languages of punishment. One map was social: the lower classes were punished corporally while the nobility and educated members of society were exempt from corporal punishment. Another map was geographical, in that non-Russian ethnic groups and people exiled to Siberia were treated differently from those who lived in the Russian center. Biological differences constituted yet another map of society, as the young, the very old, women, and the infirm were regarded as weaker than able-bodied men and therefore less able to withstand corporal punishments. Schrader's broad study enriches our understanding of the political, cultural, and social processes at work in Imperial Russia. Tracing penal reform over nearly two centuries, she challenges standard assumptions about Russian history and the roles of gender, the body, and ethnicity in political and cultural discourse.