The Russian Empire Through the Eyes of the West Dissertation or Thesis Complete

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Fellowship Proposal: Russian Studies, Sovietology, and Orientalism

The motivation for this proposal is based on personal interest in the former Russian Empire. The proposed dissertation that will result from this research will consist of an introduction that will discuss the importance of this study, followed by three main chapters, and a conclusion that provides a summary of the research and important findings concerning the issues of interest. Each of the chapters will cover a specific historical period characterized by a different set of American views, studies, and assumptions about Central Asia prior to the end of the Cold War period. Ending the proposed dissertation with the early Cold War era is also apt because it was a pivotal moment in the formal establishment of Central Asian Studies, albeit as a sub-discipline within Russian and Soviet studies.

Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asia was comprised of five of the 15 USSR's union republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). The northern regions of these lands together with the nomadic populations that lived there were eventually integrated into the Russian Empire beginning during the 1730s. This amalgamation of different peoples would come to represent a significant percentage of the Russian population. For instance, Abashin cites the "intensive annexation of settled lands including the protectorates" which "constituted about 8% of the population of the country, and in 1989, 17%." Although the nature of Central Asian Studies was historically tied to American relations with Russia during this period, it is clear that Russia and then the Soviet Union was not the monolithic entity conceptualized by American scholars.

To determine the facts, the first chapter will examine early American writings about Central Asia in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a particular focus on the writings and the legacy of Eugene Schuyler. Hailing from New York, Schuyler was a consul general and a commissioned diplomatic agent in the U.S. Foreign Service. From 1867 to 1867, Schuyler was an early U.S. consul in Moscow who subsequently published his experiences including memoirs of a week spent with Tolsoy. In fact, Schuyler's interest in Russia began early on in his career and his long years of intimate involvement with this otherwise-reclusive country provide valuable first-hand accounts of life in mid-19th century Russia.

During mid-1863, the Russian Imperial fleet arrived in New York harbor during the peak of the U.S. Civil War. Although the precise goal of this visit remains unclear, there is some indication that the intent of the Russian government was to provide "moral support" for the North's abolitionist goals. In this regard, Wilkonson and Walden report, "A young American just graduated from Columbia Law School, a man of real literary and future diplomatic ability, made the acquaintance of several officers of the Russian flagship. His name was Eugene Schuyler, and he felt an immediate kinship with the Russians."

Although not as important as Schuyler, some other writers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries published works on Central Asia, largely based on Russian and European sources.[footnoteRef:2] When analyzing these works, an examination concerning the reasons for publishing these manuscripts and how they approached their subject of study will again be conducted. To better contextualize the American perspective on Central Asia at the time, the proposed dissertation will also make some comparative analyses with respect to contemporary European and Russian writings on Central Asia. While Americans were influenced by the writings of British colonials in India, Hungarian turkologist and traveler Arminius Vambery, and Russian Orientalists like Schuyler and other Americans offered their own empirical perspective on the events taking place in Central Asia under Russian rule.[footnoteRef:3] [2: John Bookwalter, Siberia and Central Asia (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1899); Alexis Sydney Krausse, Russia in Asia: a Record and a Study, 1558-1899 (New York: H. Holt, 1901); Frederick Wright, Asiatic Russia (New York: McLure, Philips & Co, 1902).] [3: There is a large bulk of British publications on Central Asia from that era, many of which are freely available at Google Books. These publications were available for Americans readers at the time, while some of Vambery's works were translated into English and became available to American readers: A rmin Va mbe-ry, Travels in Central Asia, (London: J. Murray, 1864); Armin Vambery, Sketches of Central Asia, (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1868); A rmin Va mbe-ry, and F. E. Bunnett, Central Asia and the Anglo-Russian Frontier Question: a Series of Political Papers (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1874).

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The second chapter will examine the interwar period, paying particular attention to the writings of Socialist-leaning African-Americans who looked at the newly established Bolshevik Russia as a land building "a national identity putatively free of class, gender, and racial bias," as Kate Baldwin put it.[footnoteRef:4] Since the revolution in Russia had a tremendous influence upon the self-consciousness of many Left-leaning individuals in the U.S., some of them, most notably poet and writer Langston Hughes, traveled to Soviet Central Asia in search of a solution for inequality and racism in the United States.[footnoteRef:5] [4: Kate A. Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922-1963, (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 22. ] [5: In addition to contemporary newspaper publications, Hughes's recollections of his travel to Central Asia were published in a monograph dedicated to his travel and his autobiography: Langston Hughes, A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia (Moscow: Co-operative Pub. Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1934); Langston Hughes, Hugh H. Smythe, and Mabel M. Smythe, I Wonder as I Wander: an Autobiographical Journey, (New York: Rinehart, 1956).]

Chapter three will examine how Socialist-leaning African-Americans sought the Soviet promise of equality, specifically by referring to Soviet experience in Central Asia. One of the main themes of this discussion will be how Americans in search of Soviet promise struggled between their attempts to find the reality behind the Soviet promise and how the Soviet authorities tried to co-opt them for their own propaganda goals, while the lives and experiences of Central Asians were useful insofar as American visitors and Soviet officials could use them to tell their own respective narratives.[footnoteRef:6] [6: Meredith L. Roman, Opposing Jim Crow African-Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 1928-1937, (Lincoln: UNP -- Nebraska, 2012); Joy Gleason Carew, Blacks, Reds, and Russians Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise, (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008).]

The penultimate chapter will examine the first scholarly approaches to learning about Central Asia in an American context, although there are only two known monographs of this kind: an anthropological study of Kazakh social structure by Alfred Hudson and a similar study by Russian emigre and ethnographer Vladimir Jochelson who wrote a book about Soviet Asia on behalf of American Museum of Natural History.[footnoteRef:7] The interwar years also garnered some sympathetic interest about Soviet Asia by other left-leaning American individuals who were excited about what they saw as Communist success in the Asian part of the Soviet Union.[footnoteRef:8] I will particularly examine the context and implications of a monograph published under the guidance of Franklin Roosevelt's Vice-President Henry Wallace, as part of a government effort to improve relations with the Soviet Union.[footnoteRef:9] Besides looking at how scholarly works by Hudson and Waldemar compared with more political and ideological works by social activists and political officials, I will again ask why, how, and what interested these authors in producing their writings. [7: Alfred Hudson, Kazak Social Structure, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938); Waldemar Jochelson, Peoples of Asiatic Russia, (New York, Johnson Reprint Corp, 1970, 1928).] [8: Raymond Davis and Andrew Steiger, Soviet Asia, Democracy's First Line of Defense, (New York: the Dial Press, 1942); William Mandel, The Soviet Far East and Central Asia, (New York, the Dial Press, 1944).] [9: Henry Wallace and Andrew J. Steiger, Soviet Asia Mission, (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock Publishers, 1946). ]

The final chapter will deal with the formal establishment of Central Asian Studies as a sub-discipline of Soviet studies by scholars whose knowledge production was highly influenced by Cold War politics. From this era, we can find a long list of publications on Central Asia by scholars who looked at Soviet nationality policy, the history of Central Asia under Russian colonial rule, the influence of Bolshevism, and recent trends and changes in the economic structure of Soviet Central Asia.[footnoteRef:10] Analyzing sources from the early Cold War era is a challenging task because of the size of available sources and their complexity. While one can see general themes and trends in those works, scholars did not always agree with each other and there was a level of diversity among their views that are worth exploring. Some works by scholars of Western Europe were available in English and Americans editions and some authors were able to visit and conduct first-hand research in the Soviet Union.[footnoteRef:11] While keeping these nuances in mind, I plan to examine these sources.....

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