Cultural History of the Russian Empire

FaculteitFaculty of Humanities

NiveauBachelor

Studiejaar2026-2027

Beschrijving

Course goals

Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to:

Identify and describe key features of the Russian imperial project, and discuss empire as an analytical historical framework;
Evaluate and discuss the extent to which the successors of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and Russian Federation, were (and/or are) imperial formations;
Describe and explain the internal diversity of the Russian Empire and its successors, and identify key policies and frameworks related to Russian imperialism including assimilation, indigenisation (korenizatsiia), nationalities policy, self-determination, collective identity;
Develop interdisciplinary analytical skills to explore historical sources in a variety of media and registers, including intellectual discourse, political rhetoric, the popular press, literary and visual arts, and popular culture;
Relate a range of historical texts, images and objects to key themes in Russian imperial history.

Content

The word ‘empire’ makes one think of the great European naval empires: Portuguese, Dutch, and English. And yet, the third largest empire in history—surpassed only by the Mongol and British Empires—is Russia. Moreover, Russia has sustained its peak territorial extent much longer than any other empire, having been the largest polity on earth for the last 400 years.

How should we understand the Russian empire? And how does it help us get a better grasp on recent political events? Much commentary has tried to describe Russian with the classic categories of Western political thought: autocracy, despotism, dictatorship, nationalism, fascism. Others have followed Winston Churchill in declaring Russia to be incomprehensible: ‘a mystery wrapped in an enigma’.

This course will teach you to think about Russia in a different way, and to recognise it as a complex socio-cultural entity that needs to be understood on its own terms. It will show that the most famous events in Russian history—whether the Revolution of 1917, or the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—can only be properly evaluated within the long-term context of Russian imperial history and identity-formation. And it will teach you to think of a Russia that faces not only ‘the West’, but also a vast frontier stretching from the Caucasus mountains to the Korean peninsula.

We will also place Russian history in comparative perspective, using tools and methods well-known to scholars of International Relations. We will ask whether Russian autocracy is a unique cultural phenomenon, or whether it bears similarities to other political regimes throughout history. Most importantly, we will consider the constant interaction between culture and politics. How did shifting conceptions of gender shape the Russian imperial project? How was the Empire’s extraordinary diversity in terms of religious belief, mother tongue, ethnicity or lifestyle studied, interpreted, codified in law, and leveraged for political gains or reinforcing power hierarchies? How has political authority been conceptualised by Russians and their subjects, not just in high politics and formal treatises, but also in art, literature, and other forms of cultural expression?

At the end of this course, you will understand the long-term origins of the Russian Empire, and be able to debate how these origins shape Russian culture and society today.

Course aim

This course welcomes students from any disciplinary background interested in an introduction to the history of the Russian empire through the lens of cultural history. We will explore and analyse a range of historical texts, images and objects that shed light on the nature of the Russian imperial project. We will discuss to what extent the lens of ‘empire’ can also be applied to the successor polities of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation. We will critically examine the features of Russian imperialism in a comparative perspective.

Additional information

This course is part of the minor America and Russia (previously Transatlantic Studies)

Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final and may still be modified until the 3rd Wednesday in September.

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