Ideologies of Race: Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in Global Context

Description

Is the concept of "race" applicable to Russia and the Soviet Union? Citing the idea of Russian exceptionalism, many would argue that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while nationalities mattered, race did not. Others insist that race mattered no less in Russia than it did for European neighbours and countries overseas. These conflicting notions have made it difficult to understand rising racial tensions in Russian and Eurasian societies in recent years. A collection of new studies that reevaluate the meaning of race in Russia and the Soviet Union, Ideologies of Race brings together historians, literary scholars, and anthropologists of Russia, the Soviet Union, Western Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The essays shift the principle question from whether race meant the same thing in the region as it did in the "classic" racialized regimes such as Nazi Germany and the United States, to how race worked in Russia and the Soviet Union during various periods in time. Approaching race as an ideology, this book illuminates the complicated and sometimes contradictory intersection between ideas about race and racializing practices. An essential reminder of the tensions and biases that have had a direct and lasting impact on Russia, Ideologies of Race yields crucial insights into the global history of race and its ongoing effects in the contemporary world. Contributors include Adrienne Edgar (University of California, Santa Barbara), Aisha Khan (New York University), Alaina Lemon (University of Michigan), Susanna Soojung Lim (University of Oregon), Marina Mogilner (University of Illinois, Chicago), Brigid O'Keeffe (Brooklyn College), David Rainbow (University of Houston), Gunja SenGupta (Brooklyn College), Vera Tolz (University of Manchester), Anika Walke (Washington University, St. Louis), Barbara Weinstein (New York University), and Eric Weitz (City University of New York). Cover IDEOLOGIES OF RACE Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Race as Ideology: An Approach PART ONE BEYOND EXCEPTIONAL 1 Constructing Race, Ethnicity, and Nationhood in Imperial Russia: Issues and Misconceptions 2 The Matter of Race 3 Race and Racial Thinking: A View from the Atlantic World PART TWO THE LIMITS OF UNIVERSALISM 4 Racial Purity vs Imperial Hybridity: The Case of Vladimir Jabotinsky against the Russian Empire 5 The Racialization of Soviet Gypsies: Roma, Nationality Politics, and Socialist Transformation in Stalin’s Soviet Union 6 Russia, Germany, and the Problem of Race PART THREE EMPIRES MIXING 7 Racial “Degeneration” and Siberian Regionalism in the Late Imperial Period 8 Children of Mixed Marriage in Soviet Central Asia: Dilemmas of Identity and Belonging 9 Race, Regions, and Ethnicities: A Brazilian Perspective PART FOUR RUSSIA AND THE GLOBE 10 Occidental Bullyism? Russia, Yun Ch’iho, and Race in the Early Twentieth-Century Pacific 11 Was Soviet Internationalism Anti-Racist? Toward a History of Foreign Others in the USSR 12 Pan-Mongolism to Anti-Racist Internationalism: Perspectives from US History Contributors Index