070368 PS Proseminar - Russia and the Sea (2021S)

The demise of Sweden’s Baltic Empire and the Russian breakthrough to the Baltic coastline marked a turning point in Russian and European history. The practically landlocked Russian Tsardom gained access to an ice-free port and transformed it into an imperial capital and Baltic metropolis, which gained significance as Russia’s “window to Europe”. Incorporating the formerly Swedish possessions of Estonia, Livonia, Courland, and later even Finland, the newborn Russian Empire gained access to strategically and economically important territories and a range of conveniently located seaports. The confrontation with decidedly European, German- and Swedish-speaking local elites and a non-Slavic peasant population, however, stressed the inherently non-Russian features of the lands along the Baltic rim, which would preserve their “foreign” and thus threatening character throughout the persistence of the Russian Empire and the USSR. The aim of the course is to approach Russian and Soviet history from its northwestern peripheries, combining the borderland perspective with a focus on maritime history, which is an important, albeit often neglected aspect of the history of the Russian and Soviet Empires. Addressing Russia’s maritime history beyond the narrowly defined field of naval warfare, the seminar will touch upon imperialist expansion, territoriality, and foreign policy, but also the shifting dynamics of center-periphery relations. This approach aims to give agency to the borderland populations and to reveal the significance of the littoral lands along the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea as a bridge to Western Europe, but also as a setting of conflict and geopolitical rivalries.

The seminar is conceptualized as a survey course on the history of Russia/the Soviet Union as a multinational state and as a regional and European great power covering the time span from the early eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. The aim of the course is to discuss a number of specific key topics in the field of Russian/Soviet history such as territorial expansion, the mechanisms of pragmatic and dogmatic imperial rule, and the post-imperial legacy. By the end of the seminar, the students are expected to be able to demonstrate an understanding of general patterns of center-periphery dynamics in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the significance of the access to the Baltic Sea in Russian and Soviet geopolitical thought, and the long-term consequences of Russia’s westward expansion under Peter the Great for the populations around the Baltic rim and Europe at large.