Alexeï Evstratov, Les Spectacles francophones à la cour de Russie (1743‑1796), L’invention d’une société

Although rich in cultural creativity and intellectual achievement, the Russian Enlightenment does not always receive the attention it deserves from historians of Europe. Early in Russia’s eighteenth century, the religious traditions and political arrangements of Muscovy intersected with the reforms and resource mobilization of Tsar Peter I to propel an accelerated process of cultural innovation that by the 1750s produced a self‑consciously Europeanized court and nobility. Historians have docu..

From Victory to Peace: Russian Diplomacy after Napoleon

In From Victory to Peace, Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter brings the Russian perspective to a critical moment in European political history. This history of Russian diplomatic thought in the years after the Congress of Vienna concerns a time when Russia and Emperor Alexander I were fully integrated into European society and politics. Wirtschafter looks at how Russia's statesmen who served Alexander I across Europe, in South America, and in Constantinople represented the Russian monarch's foreign policy and sought to act in concert with the allies. Based on archival and published sources—diplomatic communications, conference protocols, personal letters, treaty agreements, and the periodical press—this book illustrates how Russia's policymakers and diplomats responded to events on the ground as the process of implementing peace unfolded.Sponsors: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation / UNC Press’s Sustainable History Monograph Pilot (SHMP

Military Justice and Social Relations in the Prereform Army, 1796 to 1855

E. Wirtschafter’s article was previously published in the Slavic Review published by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (Vol. 44, #1, Spring, 1985, pp. 67-82). It is reprinted in our journal with the permission of the publisher. When a young peasant in early nineteenth-century Russia was conscripted into the army from the taxpaying population, he underwent a fundamental change in juridical status: born into serfdom, he became a "free" man (vol'nyi chelovek) with a ..