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Grigor'ev in Orenburg, 1851-1862: Russian Orientalism in the Service of Empire?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Nathaniel Knight
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In December 1851, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, one of Russia's foremost specialists on the history and languages of Central Asia and the Near East, set off from St. Petersburg to build a new career as an administrator in the turbulent borderlands around the city of Orenburg. Grigor'ev's reasons for leaving Petersburg were both professional and personal. Unable to find an acceptable position in either the educational system or the state bureaucracy, Grigor'ev, formerly a professor at the Richelieu Lycee in Odessa, had subsisted for several years as assistant editor of the journal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and by 1851, with little prospect for advancement, he was willing to look further afield for employment. Grigor'ev's biographer also alludes to personal problems—a painful conflict with a close friend that made his presence in St. Petersburg unpleasant if not unbearable.

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Slavic Review , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , Spring 2000 , pp. 74 - 100
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2000

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References

1. Grigor'ev's lack of success in finding employment can be attributed in part to the lack of appropriate positions (university chairs in Oriental studies were few and far between in the 1840s), to academic politics, and to Grigor'ev's impulsive and often abrasive personality. He had decided to resign his position in Odessa in anticipation of an appointment to a vacant chair in eastern languages and history at Moscow University. His plans were thwarted, however, by the rivalry between his patron, Count Stroganov, the head of the Moscow Educational District, and the minister of education, Sergei Uvarov, who declined to approve the appointment. After his rejection, Grigor'ev refused to resume his position in Odessa. Subsequent hopes for a chair at St. Petersburg University were similarly dashed. For an account of Grigor'ev's tribulations on the job market, see Barsukov, N. P., Zhizn'i trudy M. P. Pogodina (St. Petersburg, 1888–1906) 7: 313–24.Google Scholar

2. The basic biographical source on Grigor'ev is N. I. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev po ego pis'mam i trudam (St. Petersburg, 1887). In addition to a biographical narrative, Veselovskii's work contains extensive excerpts from Grigor'ev's personal correspondence and published work, making it an indispensable source of primary material.

3. On the struggle in the Geographical Society, see Knight, Nathaniel, “Science, Empire and Nationality: Ethnography in the Russian Geographical Society, 1845–1855,” in Burbank, Jane and Ransel, David L., eds., Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire (Bloomington, 1998), 108–41Google Scholar. See also Semenov, P. P. (Tian-Shanskii, ), Istoriia poluvekovoi deiatel'nosti Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo obshchestva, 1843–1895 (St. Petersburg, 1896), vol. 1 Google Scholar; and Berg, L. S., Vsesoiuznoe geograficheskoe obshchestvo za sto let (Moscow–Leningrad, 1946)Google Scholar. Grigor'ev's views are best represented by a widely circulated memorandum that he wrote in 1848 in response to a new charter proposed by the leadership of the society. The complete document can be found in Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), f. 853, op. 1, ed. kh. 10 (Proekt novogo ustava RGO i zamechaniia k nemu). Excerpts are published in Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 95–96.

4. Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York, 1978), 36.Google Scholar

5. Scholarship on non-Russian nationalities produced during the Cold War was never lacking in sympathy for the victims of Russian and later communist imperial oppression. See, for example, Allworth, Edward, ed., Central Asia: A Century of Russian Rule (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; d'Encausse, Hélène Carrère, The Decline of an Empire (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; and Conquest, Robert, ed., The Last Empire: Nationality and the Soviet Future (Stanford, 1986)Google Scholar. But few of these writers were willing to place the Russian imperial experience in the context of a comprehensive theoretical critique of western imperialism as a whole. More recent writers often evoke Said without explicitly addressing the question of his applicability in the Russian context. See, for example, the set of articles by Katya Hokanson, Daniel Brower, and Thomas Barrett that appeared in Russian Review 53, no. 3 (1994). See also Layton, Susan, “The Creation of an Imaginative Caucasian Geography,” Slavic Review 45, no. 3 (Fall 1986): 470–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but note Layton's rather different position on Said in “Nineteenth Century Mythologies of Caucasian Savagery,” in Brower, Daniel R. and Lazzerini, Edward J., eds., Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917 (Bloomington, 1997), 81–82Google Scholar. A brief discussion of the applicability of Said can also be found in the conclusion to Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, 1994)Google Scholar.

6. Said, Orientalism, 63.

7. In anthropology, for example, Said's ideas have helped to undermine the assumption of objectivity and disinterestedness that had traditionally grounded the ethnographic endeavor, leading postmodern anthropologists in a challenging but inevitably futile search for ways to produce texts without authors. A seminal work in this regard is the collection by Clifford, James and Marcus, George E., eds., Writing Culture (Berkeley, 1986)Google Scholar. Historians influenced by Said have turned their critical attention to groups whose voices and experiences have supposedly been silenced by the workings of Orientalist discourse. The subaltern studies group is particularly prominent in this regard. For an overview that relates the work of these scholars back to Said, see Prakash, Gyan, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 2 (April 1990): 383–408 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Hanlon, Rosalind and Washbrook, David, “After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism and Politics in the Third World,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34, no. 1 (January 1992): 141–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. See, for example, Lewis, Bernard, Islam and the West (New York, 1993)Google Scholar. For Said's response, see Said, Edward W., “Orientalism, an Afterword,” Raritan 14, no. 3 (Winter 1995): 32–59.Google Scholar

9. Critiques of Said from a theoretical perspective include Clifford, James, “On Orientalism,” in his The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth–Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass., 1988)Google Scholar; and Martin, Catherine Gimelli, “Orientalism and the Ethnographer: Said, Herodotus and the Discourse of Alterity,” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 32, no. 4 (Fall 1990): 511–29Google Scholar. For critical views from a regional perspective, see Breckenridge, Carol A. and van der Veer, Peter, eds., Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia (Philadelphia, 1993)Google Scholar; and Dirlik, Arif, “Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism, “History and Theory 35, no. 4 (December 1996): 96–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. On western early modern travel accounts of Russia, see Berry, Lloyd Eason and Crummey, Robert, eds., Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth–Century English Voyagers (Madison, 1968)Google Scholar; Poe, Marshall, “A People Born to Slavery“: The Early Modern Origins of the Idea of ‘Enslaved Russia “ (Ithaca, forthcoming).Google Scholar

11. Said, Orientalism, 12–13; Layton, “Nineteenth Century Mythologies of Caucasian Savagery,” 81–82.

12. Malia, Martin, “What Is the Intelligentsia?” in Pipes, Richard, ed. The Russian Intelligentsia (New York, 1961), 1–18Google Scholar; Riasanovsky, Nicholas, The Parting of the Ways: Government and the Educated Public in Russia, 1801–1855 (Oxford, 1976).Google Scholar

13. On the impact of Schellingian philosophy in Russia, see Miliukov, P. N., Glavny. techeniia russkoi istoricheskoi mysli (St. Petersburg, 1913), 278–300Google Scholar; Malia, Martin, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (Cambridge, Mass, 1961), chap. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Narodnost’ refers of course only to the ethnic as opposed to the political dimensions of “nationality.” Ideas of nativeness, national spirit, and national style come closer, perhaps, to expressing its range of meanings. For discussion of narodnost', see Nathaniel Knight, “Ethnicity, Nationality and the Masses: Narodnost’ and Modernity in Imperial Russia,” in Kotsonis, Yanni and Hoffmann, David, eds., Russian Modernity (London, 1999)Google Scholar; and Leighton, Lauren G., “ Narodnost’ as a Concept of Russian Romanticism,” in his Russian Romanticism: Two Essays (The Hague, 1975), 43–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. RGIA, f. 853, op. 1, ed. kh. 12 (Zametki Grigor'eva ob izdanii Zhurnala Severnoe obozrenie). These comments were taken from a prospectus written by Grigor'ev for the journal Severnoe obozrenie, which he published together with his friend P. S. Savel'ev in 1848–49.

15. Quoted in Bassin, Mark, “The Russian Geographical Society, the ‘Amur Epoch’ and the Great Siberian Expedition 1855–1863,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73, no. 2 (1983): 243.Google Scholar

16. For a typical example of Grigor'ev's approach, see O kuficheskikh monetakh nakhodimykh v Rossii i pribaltiiskikh stranakh kak istochnik dlia drevneishei otechestvennoi istorii (Odessa, 1842), later republished in the collection Rossiia i Aziia: Sbornik izsledovanii i statei po istorii, etnografii i geografii, napisannykh v raznoe vremia V. V. Grigor'evym (St. Petersburg, 1876), 107–69. In this study, Grigor'ev exhaustively describes hoards of Central Asian coins dating from the ninth to the eleventh centuries found in the territory of European Russia and the Baltic lands. On the basis of this numismatic evidence he proposes several theories about trading activities, material life, and even the national character of the ancient Slavs. A glance through the bibliography of Grigor'ev's works reveals numerous examples of similar endeavors. See Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 085–0105. Similar examples can be found in the works of Grigor'ev's close friend and colleague, P. S. Savel'ev. See Grigor'ev, V. V, Zhizn’ i trudy P. S. Savel'eva (St. Petersburg, 1861), 178–201.Google Scholar

17. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigorev, 33. There are clear parallels between the views of Grigor'ev in 1837 and the ideas of Sergei Uvarov, particularly as expressed in his famous 1809 proposal for an Asiatic Academy in Russia. See Whittaker, Cynthia H., “The Impact of the Oriental Renaissance in Russia: The Case of Sergei Uvarov,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 26, no. 4 (1978).Google Scholar

18. In this respect, Grigor'ev's views were close to those of Mikhail Pogodin with whom he was acquainted and with whom he maintained, for the most part, good relations. On the varieties of “Official Nationality,” see Riasanovsky, Nicholas, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825–1855 (Berkeley, 1959), 124–40.Google Scholar

19. On the enlightened bureaucrats, see Bruce Lincoln, W., In the Vanguard of Reform (DeKalb, 1982)Google Scholar. Grigor'ev was associated with the enlightened bureaucrats, both through his service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs under Lev Perovskii, and through his participation in the Russian Geographical Society. While Grigor'ev was closely allied with the Miliutin brothers in the struggle with the “German” faction, correspondence from the time of his move to Orenburg shows hostile relations with Nikolai Miliutin apparently in connection with the latter's excessive “westernizing” tendencies. See, for example, Veselovskii, Vasilii ‘Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 116, 119.

20. Grigor'ev addresses this issue most explicitly in Ob otnoshenii Rossii k Vostoku (Odessa, 1840). In general, however, the theme of a civilizing mission does not occupy a prominent place in his early scholarly works.

21. The term conceptual conquest is borrowed, albeit with a rather different connotation, from the work of Francine Hirsch. See her “The Soviet Union as a Work–in–Progress: Ethnographers and the Category Nationality in the 1926, 1937, and 1939 Censuses,” Slavic Review 56, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 256.

22. Said, Orientalism, 76–88; Sheldon Pollock, “Deep Orientalism: Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj,” in Breckenridge and van der Veer, eds., Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament. For a discussion along these lines in the Russian context, see Hokanson, Katya, “Literary Imperialism, Narodnost’ and Pushkin's Invention of the Caucasus,” Russian Review 53, no. 3 (1994): 336–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Becker, Seymour, “The Muslim East in Nineteenth Century Russian Popular Historiography,” Central Asian Survey 5, no. 3/4 (1986): 25–47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Willard Sunderland, “Making the Empire: Colonists and Colonization in Russia, 1800–1850s” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1997); Bassin, Mark, “Turner, Solov'ev and the ‘Frontier Hypothesis': The Nationalist Signification of Open Spaces, “Journal of Modern History 65, no. 3 (September 1993): 473–511 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a typical example, see Kliuchevskii, V O., Kurs russkoi istorii (Moscow, 1908), 1: 23–.Google Scholar

24. The very idea of seeing knowledge as inherently linked to a particular ideology and practice is problematic. As David Ludden points out in the case of India, knowledge generated by orientalism could provide a rich lode of material for the construction of national histories often mobilized in direct opposition to European dominance. See David Ludden, “Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge,” in Breckenridge and van der Veer, eds., Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, 252.

25. Grigor'ev's major scholarly works in the period before his move to Orenburg include: Opisanie kuficheskikh monet X veka, naidennykh v Riazanskoi gubernii (St. Petersburg, 1841); O dostovernosti iarlikov, dannykh khanami Zolotoi ordy russkomu dukhovenstvu (Moscow, 1842); O kuficheskykh monetakh nakhodimykh v Rossii i pribaltiiskikh stranakh, kak istochnik dlia drevneishei otechestvennoi istorii (Odessa, 1842); “O mestopolozhenii Saraia, stolitsi Zolotoi Ordy,” Zhurnal Ministerstva vnutrennykh del, 1845, nos. 2, 3, 4; Evreiskie religioznye sekty v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1847); “Tsari Vospora Kimmeriiskogo, preimushchestvenno po sovremennym im pamiatnikam i monetam,” Zhurnal Ministerstva vnutrennykh del, vol. 36, pp. 110–46, 267–96, 413–83; and “Oblastnye velikorusskie slova vostochnogo proiskhozhdeniia: zamechaniia k'Opytu’ oblastnogo Velikorusskogo Slovaria,” Izvestiia Imperatorskogo Akademii nauk po otdeleniiu russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti, vol. 1 (1852). Most of these articles were later republished in a single volume entitled Rossiia i Aziia: Sbornik issledovanii i statei po istorii, etnografii i geografii, napisannykh v raznoe vremia V. V. Grigor'evym (St. Petersburg, 1876).

26. Belavin, K., Orenburg: Geografichesko–statisticheskii ocherk (Orenburg, 1891), 41.Google Scholar

27. On the Orenburg Tatars, see Kosach, G. G., “A Russian City between Two Continents: Orenburg's Tatar Minority and State Power,” in Schleifman, Nurit, ed., Russia at a Crossroads: History, Memory and Political Practice (London, 1998).Google Scholar

28. The confusion surrounding the terms Kirgiz and Kazakh (or Kirgiz–Kaisak as they were often referred to in the nineteenth century) seems to have stemmed from the need to ascribe ethnicity in a context in which the concept itself had no clear meaning. Kirgiz was, apparently, a generic term for pastoral nomad. See Brower, Daniel, “Islam and Ethnicity: Russian Colonial Policy in Turkestan,” in Brower, and Lazzerini, , eds., Russia's Orient, 128–29.Google Scholar

29. Grigor'ev, V., “The Russian Policy regarding Central Asia: An Historical Sketch,” in Schuyler, E., Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara and Kuldja (New York, 1877), 2: 410–14Google Scholar. See also Allworth, Central Asia.

30. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 117.

31. Ibid., 118. Grigor'ev wrote to Nikolai Nadezhdin in a similar vein: “I will tell you as an example, from the place where I am now standing for four hundred versts on all sides you will not find a single state councillor; and to the east you could go all the way to the empire of China and you still will not find a state councillor, although they say that in the empire of China they have a few.” Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI), f. 1387, op. 2, ed. kh. 1, 1. lob. (Pis'mo V. V Grigor'eva N. I. Nadezhdinu).

32. On Vorontsov, see Hamilton Rhinelander, L., Prince Michael Vorontsov: Viceroy to the Tsars (Montreal, 1990)Google Scholar

33. Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform, 34–36; P. I. Mel'nikov, “Vospominaniia o Vladimire Ivanoviche Dale,” Russkii vestnik, vol. 103, bk. 3 (1873): 310–11.

34. Perovskii was not a newcomer to steppe administration. A hero of 1812 and close friend of Nicholas I, Perovskii had served successfully as Orenburg governor in the late 1830s, until a disastrous expedition against Khiva in 1840 put an end to his administration. After several years of semiretirement in the Senate, however, Perovskii was ready to return to active service and some energetic lobbying succeeded in persuading Nicholas to appoint him again as governor-general. The post of Orenburg governor-general was in fact created specially for Perovskii to allow him to serve despite his high rank. See Russkii biograficheskii slovar', 25 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1896–1918), 13: 530–40.

35. See Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 127.

36. Ibid., 117, 125. In all likelihood the unpublished manuscript “Opisanie Orenburgskikh stepei i otnosheniia Kirgizov k russkim, izbavivshim ikh ot kokandskogo iga,” located at RGALI, f. 159, op. 1, ed. kh. 63, is one such memorandum.

37. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 132.

38. Grigor'ev's difficulties in this regard were compounded by his poor personal relations with E. P. Kovalevskii, the head of the Asiatic Department in St. Petersburg, which apparently stemmed from a critical review Grigor'ev once wrote of Kovalevskii's work. See Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 215.

39. For example, Grigor'ev's views on the status of Russian traders in Central Asia, which he expressed in a memorandum under his own name and in one of the official reports he wrote for Perovskii, had a significant impact in St. Petersburg. See Khalfin, N. A., Rossiia i khanstva Srednei Azii (Moscow, 1974), 362–66Google Scholar. Grigor'ev also expressed his views in a long printed review: “Razbor sochineniia ‘Ocherki torgovli Rossii s Srednei Asiei’ P. Nebol'sina,” in Otchety na XXV–mprisuzhdenii demidovskikh nagrad (St. Petersburg, 1856). On the other hand, although Grigor'ev participated in the expedition against the Kokand fortress of Al–Mechet in 1853, one of the key events of Perovskii's tenure, there is no evidence he played a role in initiating or planning the event. The fact that he was not sure until the last moment whether he would even go along suggests, on the contrary, that he was “out of the loop.” See Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 126–27.

40. Local inhabitants were rather taken aback by the extravagance of Perovskii's entourage, which included a French chef, who, on a daily basis, produced a multi–course banquet for thirty of Perovskii's closest associates. See Zhakmon, P. P., “Iz vospominanii Orenburgskogo starozhila,” Istoricheskii vestnik, vol. 100, no. 4 (1905): 74–88.Google Scholar

41. On the reasons for heightened tensions in this period, see Khalfin, Rossii i khanstva Srednei Azii, 366–72.

42. Becker, Seymour, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 14–.Google Scholar

43. Grigor'ev expressed his feeling on the exchange of diplomatic missions quite clearly in a letter to V. V. Veliaminov–Zernov that can be found in Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 169–70.

44. Ibid., 184–85.

45. Ibid., 149–51.

46. Ibid., 166–67.

47. Soon after Katenin arrived, Grigor'ev wrote to Savel'ev: “All this time I have been tied up with service affairs, or, I should say, service scribbling, since we write a great deal but very little sense comes out of it. I had thought with Perovskii's departure there would be a little less secretarial work. But that is not what has happened. I fell out of the frying pan into the fire. I am forced to write all sorts of rubbish.” Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 167.

48. RGALI, f. 436, op. 1, ed. kh. 1189, 1. 17 (Pis'ma Grigor'eva V. V Sreznevskomu); see also Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 174–75.

49. Bezak had served most of his career in the western borderlands, where he first earned recognition for his service in suppressing the Polish rebellion of 1831. His distinguished service in the Crimean war brought him to the attention of Alexander II who appointed him to the position in Orenburg after Katenin's death. See Russkii biograficheskii slovar', 2: 630–32. Bezak's reputation in society was that of a petty and autocratic tyrant. For a brief description that touches on Bezak's relations with Grigor'ev, see David MacKenzie, The Lion of Tashkent: The Career of General M. G. Cherniaev (Athens, Ga., 1974), 28–29. See also Zhakmon, P. P., “Iz vospominanii Orenburgskogo starozhila,” Istoricheskii vestnik, vol. 106, no. 7 (1906): 76.Google Scholar

50. The specific disagreements between Grigor'ev and Bezak ranged from plans to reorganize the Orenburg Cossack Host to measures to combat horse theft among the Bashkirs, plans to forcibly settle Bashkir nomads, and the denial of permission for Kazakhs to receive land allotments for agricultural use. For a detailed discussion, see Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 201–3, 210–12.

51. See, for example, “Neskol'ko slov o zheleznoi doroge cherez Ust'–urt,” Vestnik promyshlennosti, 1860, no. 1 (signed V G.); “Zametki otnositel'no zemledeliia v Bashkirii i pozharov vOrenburge,” Vestnik promyshlennosti, 1861, no. 1: 29–41 (signed Sterlitamak, la. Sakharov); “O nashikh sredneaziatskikh delakh,” Aktsioner, 1862, no. 12.

52. V. Grigor'ev, “V oproverzhenie nekotorykh mnenii, vyskazannykh v poslednee vremia, o prepodavanii vostochnykh iazykov v Rossii, i ob izuchenii u nas Vostoka voobshche,” Dew', 1865, no. 18: 433.

53. On Grigor'ev's attitude toward racial conceptions, see “Iz zauralskoi stepi,” Den', 1862, no. 28: 5–7.

54. A small but telling indication of his conception of relations with the “Kirgiz” is his frequent use of the diminutive when referring to them. For example, in a letter to Savel'ev from 1857 he wrote with regard to the arrival of Katenin: “Would that I do not get along with him, if only the region and my little Kirgiz [Kirgiziki] stayed in good hands.” Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 153.

55. Ibid., 146. For an actual account of one such trip to the imperial capital undertaken by three Cheremis (Marii) in 1829, see Paul W. Werth, “Subjects for Empire: Orthodox Mission and Imperial Governance in the Volga–Kama Region, 1825–1881” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1996), 196–207.

56. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 120.

57. [Grigor'ev], “Iz zaural'skoi stepi … [pt. 2],” Den', 1862, no. 32: 13. A note on translation: I have chosen to render dukhovnoe as “cultural” rather than “spiritual,” the more commonly accepted equivalent. Clearly dukhovnoe is one of those terms that can never be gracefully rendered into English. Particularly in this context, however, it seems to me that dukhovnoe evokes a broader image of “the life of the mind” than “spiritual,” with its primarily religious connotations, would tend to convey. “Cultural,” while undoubtedly anachronistic, comes closer to expressing this shade of meaning.

58. See, for example, Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 124–25.

59. Ibid., 213.

60. Ibid., 221–24.

61. The imputing of intent is a problem in general with Said's model of orientalism. As James Clifford points out, Said insists on preserving the premise of individual agency in a conceptual framework that largely precludes its manifestation. Agency, in this case, becomes merely a pretext to posit individual moral accountability. See Clifford, “On Orien talism,” 269–71.

62. Raeff, Marc, “Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy toward the Nationalities,” in Allworth, Edward, ed., Soviet Nationalities Problems (New York, 1971), 22–42Google Scholar; Yaroshevski, Dov, “Empire and Citizenship,” in Brower, and Lazzerini, , eds., Russia's Orient, 58–79.Google Scholar

63. Grigor'ev was well aware of the difficulties with his plan. In keeping with his principle of gradual, organic change, he envisioned replacing the Kazakh rulers only in the immediate borderland area where the population was already familiar with Russian ways. Eventually, he assumed, the new system would be applied to the remaining areas. See Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 213–15.

64. In 1858, Grigor'ev sent to the Russian Geographical Society a manuscript description of a trip to Khiva that depicted the city and its rulers in the darkest possible terms. Veselovskii writes that Grigor'ev “wanted to dampen to some extent our enthusiasm for Central Asians and show what sort of people they were” (173). The manuscript, along with Grigor'ev's extensive annotations, was eventually published as “Opisanie Khivinskogo khanstva i doroga tuda iz Saraichikovskoi kreposti,” Zapiski Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, 1861, bk. 2: 105–38.

65. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 207. For an overall discussion of Russian perceptions of Islam, see Robert Geraci, “Window on the East: Ethnography, Orthodoxy and Russian Nationality in Kazan, 1870–1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1995).

66. Nomadic peoples, it was widely assumed, remained attached to traditional Shamanist beliefs and were therefore less susceptible to the influence of Islam. Chokan Valikhanov, a native Kazakh ethnographer whose work Grigor'ev much admired, noted in a description of the (present day) Kirgiz, that although they claimed to be Muslims, those that he encountered could not recite a single prayer, carried out all the traditional Shamanist rituals, and engaged in sexual behavior that would have been unthinkable in an orthodox Islamic society. See Chokan Valikhanov, “Opisanie Dzhungarii,” Zapiski Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, 1861, bk. 2: 42.

67. On state policy, see Yaroshevski, Dov B., “Imperial Strategy in the Kirghiz Steppe in the Eighteenth Century,” Jahrbucherfur Geschichte Osteuropas 39, no. 2 (1991): 221–24Google Scholar. For Grigor'ev's views, see “Pis'ma iz zaural'skoi stepi, “Den', 1862, no. 35: 12–15.

68. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 207–8.

69. This, in fact, was Grigor'ev's explanation for a series of disturbances among the Kazakhs in 1855. See ibid., 139–40.

70. “Zametka,” Molva, 1857, no. 18. Quoted in Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 168.

71. Grigor'ev's views of nationality were heavily influenced by the ideas of Nikolai Nadezhdin with whom he worked closely during his years in St. Petersburg. Nadezhdin's conception of nationality is laid out most directly in “Ob etnograficheskom izuchenii narodnosti russkoi,” Zapiski Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, vol. 2 (1846): 61–114. Also published in Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, 1994, no. 2. For discussion of Nadezhdin and his ideas, see Nathaniel Knight, “Constructing the Science of Nationality: Ethnography in Mid–Nineteenth Century Russia” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1995), chaps. 2 and 3.

72. See “O znachenii narodnosti, “Molva, 1857, no. 24: 291.

73. Grigor'ev expressed his opposition in the article “Zametki otnositel'no zemledeliia v Bashkirii i pozharov v Orenburge,” Vestnik promyshlennosti, 1861, no. 1: 29–41.

74. Ibid., quoted in Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 212.

75. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 221.

76. Znamenskii, P. V, Napamiat’ oNikolaeIvanovicheIl'minskom (Kazan', 1892), 135–37.Google Scholar

77. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev, 217.

78. One of the most profound consequences of Grigor'ev's education policy was its influence on one of his subordinates, a young philologist from Kazan’ by the name of Nikolai Il'minskii, who later achieved considerable acclaim for his system of schools for inorodtsy, which emphasized the use of native languages as a tool for missionary activity. See Geraci, “Window on the East,” 49–50; Znamenskii, Na pamiat’ o Nikolae Ivanoviche Il'minskom, 137–40. On the expansion of the Kazakh schools, see Grigor'ev's article, “Otkrytie kirgizskoi shkoly v Troitske,” Severnaia pchela, 1861, no. 241: 2.

79. Said, Orientalism, 38.

80. Examples include Chokan Valikhanov, the Kazakh ethnographer; Dorzhi Banzarov, a Buriat specialist in Mongolian languages; Iakinf Bichurin, a native Chuvash responsible in large measure for the establishment of Russian sinology; A. K. Kazem–Bek, a Persian adopted into a Russian family who became an eminent professor of oriental languages at Kazan’ and later at St. Petersburg University. On Valikhanov, see Valikhanov, Ch. Ch., Sobranie sochineniia, 5 vols. (Alma-Ata, 1961–64)Google Scholar; on Bichurin, see Denisov, Petr Vladimirovich, Zhizn’ monakha Iakinfa Bichurina (Cheboksary, 1997)Google Scholar. For information on Banzarov, Kazem-Bek, and other orientalists, see Istoriia otechestvennogo vostokovedeniia do serediny XIX veka (Moscow, 1990); htoriia otechestvennogo vostokovedeniia c serediny XlXveka do 1917 g. (Moscow, 1997); Kononov, A. N., Biobibliograficheskii slovar’ otechestvennykh tiurkologov (Moscow, 1989)Google Scholar. Scholars from mixed marriages between Russians and “orientals” were also not uncommon. Note, for example, A. P. Shchapov, M. L. Mikhailov, and A. A. Bobrovnikov.

81. Said, Orientalism, 122.

82. [Grigor'ev], “Iz zaural'skoi stepi, “Den', 1862, no. 28: 5.

83. Ibid. The word race appears in italics in the original text. My sense, however, is that Grigor'ev's intent in using italics was closer to the present–day use of quotation marks.

84. This, it would seem, was not an uncommon occupational hazard. Note, for example, the case of P. I. Nebol'sin, a colleague of Grigor'ev's at the Russian Geographical Society, who, after writing a sympathetic report on a delegation of Kazakhs to St. Petersburg, was publicly accused of “Kirgizomania.” See Nebol'sin, P., “Puteshestvyiushchie Kirgizi,” Russkii vestnik, vol. 29 (September 1860): 41–49 Google Scholar; and Zhaleznov, Ioasaf, “Kirgizomania,” Russkii vestnik, vol. 30 (November 1860): 45.Google Scholar

85. For an overview of the discussions surrounding Orientalism, see Prakash, Gyan, “Orientalism Now,” History and Theory 34, no. 3 (1995): 199–212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cole, Juan R. I., “Power, Knowledge and Orientalism,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 3 (1995): 507–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86. On Russian ethnography, see Knight, “Constructing the Science of Nationality “; Yuri Slezkine, “Naturalists versus Nations: Eighteenth Century Russian Scholars Confront Ethnic Diversity,” in Brower and Lazzerini, eds., Russia's Orient, 27–57. The phrase “making of difference” is borrowed from Charles Steinwedel's paper “The Making of a Difference: The Construction of a Category of Ethnicity in Late Imperial Russian Politics, 1861 -1917” (paper presented at the workshop “New Approaches to Russian and Soviet History,” University of Maryland, March 1997).

87. It is interesting to note, though, that in the cases of both Grigor'ev and Chokan Valikhanov (himself an “Asiatic “), the reliance on cultural stereotypes increased the further their discussions were removed from the realm of the familiar. Grigor'ev applies the image of the “Asiatic” to the Central Asian khanates and the Kazakh leadership, but almost never to the ordinary Kazakhs in whom he placed his hopes. Valikhanov depicts the Chinese–ruled city of Kashgar as a veritable theme park of Oriental despotism and Asiatic depravity complete with towers of human skulls, hourly beheadings, “wives” for rent, and the best hashish this side of Kabul. But when he turns to the more familiar Kirgiz, his descriptions take on a far more moderate tone. Valikhanov, , “Opisanie Dzhungarii,” Zapiski Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, 1861, bk. 1: 186–88.Google Scholar

88. Grigor'ev's views and his experiences in Orenburg would tend to lend support to recent interpretations of Russian imperialism that stress its disparate nature, its embeddedness in local contexts, and its dependence on domestic policies, while downplaying monolithic notions of “Russification” and innate Russian expansionism. See, for example, Weeks, Theodore R., Nation and State in Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914 (DeKalb, 1996)Google Scholar; Kappeler, Andreas, Rubland als Vielvölkerreich: Entstehung, Geschichte und Gegenwart (Munich, 1992)Google Scholar; Geyer, Dietrich, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy, 1860–1914 (New Haven, 1987)Google Scholar; Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors; and Brower and Lazzerini, eds., Russia's Orient.

89. Said's critics have been quick to point out the tension between the synchronic view of orientalism as a cohesive discourse, the intertextual fabric of which stretches from Aeschylus to Henry Kissinger, and a diachronic orientalism embedded in the everyday realities of colonial practice. On the one hand, orientalism consists of “representations,” which can, by definition, have no relationship to their purported objects; on the other, orientalism serves as a practical tool in colonial domination. See Young, Robert, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London, 1990), 130.Google Scholar

90. Engelstein, Laura, “Combined Underdevelopment: Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia,” American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (April 1993): 348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

91. Byway of example, one need only recall the exploits of Iakinf Bichurin, a learned monk sent to head the Orthodox Spiritual Mission in Beijing in the 1810s. With the mission literally disintegrating around him, Bichurin abandoned his official duties to learn everything possible about Chinese language, history, and culture. Brought back in deep disgrace along with thirteen camel loads of priceless Chinese manuscripts, Bichurin spent the remainder of his life either in prison or under close surveillance by church authorities. Nonetheless his writings and translations based on his experiences in China established him as one of the founding figures of Russian sinology. For a detailed narrative of Bichurin's career, see Denisov, Zhizn’ monakha Iakinf a Bichurina.

92. One must be careful to distinguish Said's model of orientalism as discourse from the views of Michel Foucault that Said drew upon. While Foucault's writings are, by his own admission, fragmentary and contradictory, he distances himself, particularly in his later works, from global dichotomies conceived in terms of relations between oppressors and oppressed. Rather, he stresses the “dispersed, heteromorphous and localized” nature of power. To be sure, he speaks of “strategies” capable at different points of utilizing and mobilizing procedures of power, but he is careful to add: “One should not assume a massive and primal condition of domination, a binary structure with ‘dominators’ on one side and ‘dominated’ on the other, but rather a multiform production of relations of domination which are partially susceptible of integration into overall strategies.” Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York, 1980), 142 Google Scholar. My reading of these and other passages suggests a far more nuanced and open-ended conception of knowledge and power than is evident in the orientalism paradigm.

93. Said, Orientalism, 6.

94. Said writes: “It is therefore correct that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” Ibid., 204.

95. Michel Foucault, “The Eye of Power,” in Power/Knowledge, 164.