Imperial Boundaries is a study of imperial expansion and local transformation on Russia's Don Steppe frontier during the age of Peter the Great. Brian Boeck connects the rivalry of the Russian and Ottoman empires in the northern Black Sea basin to the social history of the Don Cossacks, who were transformed from an open, democratic, multiethnic, male fraternity dedicated to frontier raiding into a closed, ethnic community devoted to defending and advancing the boundaries of the Russian state. He shows how by promoting border patrol, migration control, bureaucratic regulation of cross-border contacts and deportation of dissidents, Peter I destroyed the world of the old steppe and created a new imperial Cossack order in its place. In examining this transformation, Imperial Boundaries addresses key historical issues of imperial expansion, the delegitimization of non-state violence, the construction of borders, and the encroaching boundaries of state authority in the lives of local communities.
The Cossacks are coming straight out of some nineteenth century nightmare. Those fearsome horsemen once again stalk the Russian steppes, whips stashed in their belts, defending God and country and longing for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty.Kyle Crichton,New York TimesThe emergence of a strong Cossack movement has great implications for the future of Russia and the post-Soviet space. It is at once the glorification of a mythical past and a powerful alternate vision of the future. Old questions of Cossack identity are once again being debated and a Cossack presence is strongly felt in the cities of southern Russia. In the volatile North Caucasus region the Cossack revival has increasingly assumed many of the features of national movements in other areas of the former Soviet Union.
SUMMARY:
В статье Брайена Боука проводится мысль о том, что официальное “отсутствие” казачества как национальной группы в советский период не означало его уничтожения. Не случайно в постсоветский период быстро сформировались различные модусы описания и концептуализации “особости” кубанских казаков. В глазах части наблюдателей политика категоризации привела к размыванию границ между казаками и русскими, однако ни перепись 1926 г., ни перепись 2002 г. не предоставляли объективных возможностей для выражения местных идентичностей. То, что в конечном счете члены общества казацкого наследия не смогли принять казацкую национальность , вовсе не свидетельствует об уничтожении последней и отказе казаков от политики самоотмежевания. Автор статьи делает вывод, что на Кубани сохраняются идеосинкратические, двойственные, персонифицированные образы казацкой этнической идентичности.
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