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Workshop: “Imperial Revolution of 1917: Post-Imperial Imaginaries and Revolutionary Politics in the Context of Diversity”

Event ended

Joint Workshop of “Ab Imperio” Journal and the Center for Historical Research, Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg.



The workshop will be dedicated to exploration of imperial dimensions in the making of the revolution of 1917, the breakup of empire, and the legacy of imperial politics and society for the post-imperial period, including the varieties of post-imperial political imaginaries in the comparative and global context.

Themes for discussion will include:

War mobilization and its impact on imperial collapse;

Societal self-organization in the context of WWI and revolutions of 1917;

Production of knowledge about imperial diversity in the context of WWI and revolutions of 1917;

Changes in the Bolshevik conceptions of the nationality question;

Party politics, local society, regional and national contexts in 1917;

Imperial connexity: mobile and hybrid revolutionaries and national activists;

History of the Constituent assemblies and constitutional debates in 1917;

Ends of WWI: Brest-Litovsk and post-imperial settlements beyond Versailles.


Key note speakers will include:

Ilya Gerasimov, Editor-in-chief, Ab Imperio

Selected publications:

«New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia,» « Ethnic Crime, Imperial City: Practices of Self-Organization and Paradoxes of Illegality in Late Imperial Russia, 1905–1917», «Modernism and Public Reform in Late Imperial Russia: Rural Professionals and Self-Organization, 1905−30» (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Marina Mogilner, Ab Imperio, Edward and Marianna Thaden Chair in Russian and East European Intellectual History, University of Illinois at Chicago

Selected publications:

«Homo Imperii: A History of Physical Anthropology in Russia (=Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology series) (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press), 2013, « Homo imperii: istoriia fizicheskoi antropologii v Rossii [Homo Imperii: A History of Physical Anthropology in Russia] (Moscow: New Literary Review, 2008)», Mifologiia “podpol’nogo cheloveka:” radikal’nyi mikrokosm v Rossii nachala XX veka kak predmet semioticheskogo analiza [Mythology of the “Underground Man:” Russian Radical Microcosm in the Early Twentieth Century as an Object of Semiotic Analysis] (Moscow: New Literary Review, 1999).

Sergey Glebov, Ab Imperio, Smith and Amherst colleges

Selected publications:

«From Empire to Eurasia:Politics, Scholarship, and Ideology in Russian Eurasianism, 1920's–1930's», (De Kalb, Ill: Northern Illinois University Press, 2017); «Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism.» Co-edited with Mark Bassin and Marlene Laruelle. Pittsburgh University Press, 2015; «Region v istorii imperii: istoricheskie esse of Sibiri (Region in Empire’s History: Historical Essays on Siberia), editor and author of introduction (Moscow: Novoe Izdatel’stvo, 2013).

The workshop will be held in the format of pre-circulated papers.

The working languages of the workshop will be Russian and English, no translation will be provided

An application to the workshop should include two page summary of the intended paper and CV. Applications should be sent to Inna Zakharova at iazakharova@hse.ru by April 13, 2017. Full text papers will be due two weeks before the workshop.

The workshop organizers will not be able to cover the transportation or accommodation costs. Low cost accommodation to workshop participants will be available through the HSE.  

For selected participants who will need the Russian visa to attend the workshop the HSE will provide the visa support.