SOCIAL IDENTITIES IN REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA
Edited by MADHAVAN K. PALAT
2001, xv+246pp., gloss., index, ISBN: 0-333-92947-0, 45 pounds
This volume explores the crisis of identity that faced Russia before and after the Revolution. The essays discuss how a re-evaluation of national identity challenged widely held ideas and rocked traditional institutions such as the Church. Local notables, peasants, artists and the intelligentsia all gorged new identities in relation to their own perceptions of ”Russia”. For peasants this was the idea of Ukraine and Russia as “nations”; for artists such as the futurist poet Khlebnikov this was the contribution of the supranation, “Eurasia”. The essays take a fresh look at the Russian Revolution, showing great diversity, covering such areas as the Stolypin agrarian reform, the fracture of the intelligentsia, and Church reform, as well as encompassing the central focus of “identity”. Also included in this volume is Khlenikov’s manifesto “An Indo-Russian Union”, published here in Russian with a new English translation.