At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia's Volga-Kama Region, 1827-1905 / Edition 1

by Paul W. Werth

Overview

In a period of dramatic social change, when Orthodoxy and nationalism were the twin pillars of the Russian state, how did the tsarist bureaucracy govern an expansive realm inhabited by the peoples of many nations and ethnicities professing various faiths? Did the nature of tsarist rule change over time, and did it vary from region to region? Paul W. Werth considers these large questions in his survey of imperial Russian rule in the vast Volga-Kama region.

First conquered in the sixteenth century, the Volga-Kama lands were by the nineteenth century both part of the Russian heartland and resolutely "other"—the home of a mix of Slavic, Finnic, and Turkic peoples where the urge to assimilate was always counterbalanced by determined efforts to preserve cultural and religious differences. The Volga-Kama thus poses the dilemmas of empire in especially complex and telling ways.

Drawing on a wide range of printed and archival sources, Werth untangles and reconstructs this complicated history, focusing on the ways in which the tsarist state and Orthodox missions used conversion in their ongoing (and regularly frustrated) efforts to transform the region's Muslim and animist populations into imperial, Orthodox citizens. He shows that the regime became less concerned with religion and more concerned with secular attributes as the marker of cultural differences, an emphasis that would change dramatically in the early years of Soviet rule.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801438400
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/18/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.94(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Paul W. Werth is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Editorial Reviews

Makes a contribution to a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of Russia's confessional politics in the region where its road to empire began.

Azade-Ayse Rorlichn Historical Review

Werth's At the Margins of Orthodoxy focuses on the Volga-Kama region with its Finnic and Turkic peoples and examines Orthodox missionary endeavors in the region from the 1820s through 1905.... Negotiation is a central theme of this study in which non-Russians and Russian authorities were involved in a mutually constitutive relationship, each forming the other.... Werth also explores the less well known but nonetheless fascinating story of Mari Orthodoxy, and the creation of a Mari monastery.

Journal of Modern History - Nicholas B. Breyfogle

The collapse of the Soviet Union has clearly energized the study of cultural diversity and imperial policies in the Russian borderlands, and Paul Werth's splendid account of confessional politics on the middle Volga is one of the finest results of this focus.

The Russian Review - Stephen Batalden

Makes a contribution to a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of Russia's confessional politics in the region where its road to empire began.

American Historical Review - Azade-Ayse Rorlich

"Makes a contribution to a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of Russia's confessional politics in the region where its road to empire began."—Azade-Ayse Rorlich, University of Southern California, American Historical Review, June 2003

"The collapse of the Soviet Union has clearly energized the study of cultural diversity and imperial policies in the Russian borderlands, and Paul Werth's splendid account of confessional politics on the middle Volga is one of the finest results of this focus."—Stephen Batalden, Arizona State University, The Russian Review, vol. 63, no. 3, July 2004

"Werth's At the Margins of Orthodoxy focuses on the Volga-Kama region with its Finnic and Turkic peoples and examines Orthodox missionary endeavors in the region from the 1820s through 1905. . . . Negotiation is a central theme of this study in which non-Russians and Russian authorities were involved in a mutually constitutive relationship, each forming the other. . . . Werth also explores the less well known but nonetheless fascinating story of Mari Orthodoxy, and the creation of a Mari monastery."—Nicholas B. Breyfogle, The Ohio State University, Journal of Modern History, vol. 77, no. 1, 1 March 2005

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