The Politics of the Conquest of the Caucasus, 1855-1864
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11046384 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Willis Brooks (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 649-660 |
| Publication date | 1996-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Nationalities Papers (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0090-5992 • E-ISSN: 1465-3923 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00905999608408475 |
| OpenAlex | W2005458918 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 7 |
The study of politics is popular in Russian history; the examination of Russian politics in its regions is not, at least, not yet. The spectrum of interpretations about autocratic politics includes the parading of litanies of imperial arbitrariness and/or manipulation of interest groups against each other, incidents of ministerial incapacity to restrain the autocrat, examples of the inordinate power of favorites, the failure to establish regularizing institutions that would restrain autocrats, and a series of interesting categories including such wonderfully suggestive terms as “free floaters” proposed in Alfred Rieber's important article on the subject. Whether one is wedded to the notion that tsars decided all in the nineteenth century, or advocate some scheme that emphasizes the plurality of conflicting interests at play in decisionmaking, however, the pattern of scholarly production suggests that regional politics has been of secondary importance, and that in any event documentation often is lacking; in short, such approaches are not seen as ideal lines of inquiry. This article seeks to make a contribution to the debate about the politics of autocrats by examining a localized question where documentation is rather complete and where ministerial/bureaucratic lines may be traced fairly closely, in an attempt to shed added light on Russia's leadership in a time of great crisis, specifically the aftermath of the humiliating defeat in the Crimean War and the tension surrounding the preparations and implementation of the Emancipation and other reforms. To be specific as well as anticipatory, it is argued that there are regional questions of great national, indeed international, importance to autocrats, that the Caucasus was so recognized in the post-Crimean War period, and that those involved in the region affected policy decisions in ways that rivaled, as well as displaced, senior officials in the capital
Autocracy · Bureaucracy · Democracy · Documentation · Emancipation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Russia and Soviet political economy · Soviet and Russian History
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |