The workshop “Politics in and after the Russian Empire: Violence, Public Sphere, Political Economy” will take an interdisciplinary approach (literature, cultural studies, history and economics) to the dimensions of political, economic and epistemic violence in the Russian Empire in the long 19th century. The genesis and form of violence is reflected against the background of institutional practices (e.g. the example of the monastery), social change and the emergence of a class society, political economy, the rise of violent entrepreneurs in the (anti-)colonial context (e.g. Pugačev and Makhno) and catastrophic events (e.g. epidemics) in their cultural and media representations and located in terms of the transnational diffusion of violent practices and technologies. Against the background of the current explosion of violence in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the aim is to identify long-term trajectories of specific imperial cultures of violence and to outline a period of investigation that has so far received little attention in relation to this topic – in contrast to the 20th century and Stalinism – and to enrich it with new perspectives of investigation beyond established research fields (including Russian terrorism).
The workshop will be held in English and registration is not required.