“Think More about Camels”, or A Usual Year in the History of Russia Seen from an Unusual Angle
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2022.3.724Keywords:
Nicholas I, national politics, Russian Empire, reforms, narodnost’, revolutionAbstract
The authors review 1837. Russia’s Quiet Revolution, a monograph by P. Werth published by Oxford University Press in 2021. The book is an attempt to conceptualise the reign of tsar Nicholas I until 1837, the year of a “Quiet Revolution” in the Russian Empire – manifesting itself in a series of sweeping changes leading to the creation of new institutions, concepts, and experiences that finally showed its results in the following periods of Russian history. The author examines ten thematic episodes (historical events) that took place in the Russian Empire during the year 1837 in its broader historical contexts (within the country and beyond its borders), which he united around the common issue of the formation of the Russian national identity. The book is interesting, on the one hand, as a genuinely scholarly study, which, on the other hand, includes all characteristics typical of popular science in terms of structure and linguistic style. Apart from this, the author’s conceptual observations make it possible to take a new look at the well-known events of Russian history during the period of Nicholas I’s “minor reforms”.
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