070281 UE Guided Reading Osteuropäische Geschichte - Russian & Soviet Orientalism (2020S)

Controversial and influential in almost equal measure, Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism as “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” has stimulated a wealth of research in the humanities and social sciences since its publication in 1978. We will familiarise ourselves with the debate about its applicability to Russian and Soviet history, in particular with the question of the influence of Oriental studies on late imperial and Soviet policies towards, as well as notions of, national and cultural diversity in Russia’s ‘own’ Orient. Our analysis of the relationship between knowledge and state power in late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union will further our understanding of the continuities and ruptures in how these two multinational states conceptualised, politicised and administered cultural and national difference. We deal with these questions in a Russian and Soviet context and mainly through secondary literature predominantly based on Russian-language sources. At the same time, we occasionally go beyond that linguistic and geographical focus in order to highlight that the phenomena subsumed under the term Orientalism were global and multilingual even within Russia and the Soviet Union.