PODCASTS

Zemstvo teacher, zemstvo doctor. These words are well known to us from Russian literature. What is a zemstvo? When did it emerge—after the reforms of Alexander II, or had it existed before? What did zemstvo institutions do, and how important was their role in self-government and social life in Russia? We spoke with Kirill Solovyov, a specialist in the political history of Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Doctor of Historical Sciences.

What did the guild system—or rather, its division into guilds—gain for the merchant class? What role did self-government play, and did it open up opportunities for participation in the country's public life? Today, we speak with Arkady Kontev, a Siberian historian and researcher from Barnaul.

What we know about the Old Believers is that they live in closed communities, avoiding contact with the outside world, or at least maintaining very limited contact, and preserving their faith as it existed before the Nikonian reform of the 17th century. Today, we speak with Natalia Litvina, head of the archaeological laboratory at the History Department of Moscow State University and a researcher of Old Believer life.

The Pskov Republic—and even earlier the Novgorod Republic—was liquidated, everything became subordinate to the will of the Moscow prince, and there were no alternatives to the one-man rule, which eventually evolved into autocracy. How did the republic function in these cities? We spoke with Alexei Vovin, a historian and specialist in the Pskov and Novgorod Republics.

Historian Alfred Bustanov discusses how the empire perceived and organized self-government in regions populated by people of Islamic culture. To what extent did this correspond to Muslim tradition, and how did the cultural and philosophical concept of a homeland for Russian Muslims reconcile with the reality of the empire.

A congress of exiles in the governor's office, a team of free masons, and a library in a zemstvo warehouse. What did political exiles do in the northern provinces of the Russian Empire, how did they organize their lives, and how did they influence local government? We spoke with historian and researcher of the lives of political exiles, Pavel Tikhomirov.

We still often refer to these former imperial territories as Central Asia out of habit. However, now a different term is in use: Central Asia. We spoke with Sergei Abashin, a doctor of historical sciences, anthropologist, and historian.

The word "Cossack" is always associated with the word "freedom." How free were the Cossacks in reality? To what extent were they able to decide for themselves how to live and what to do? We'll try to look at all this without stereotypes with historian and Cossack expert Alexander Kamenets.

A vast region where Russia fought its own Hundred Years' War. A territory where the interests of various empires converged. Why did the imperial authorities want their control of this region to be a continuation of its conquest? We spoke with historian Amiran Urushadze, author of "The Caucasian War: Seven Stories," and an expert on the history of the Caucasus in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Vyacheslav Shadrin, a member of the Council of Elders of the Yukaghir People, Vice President of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North of the Sakha-Yakutia Republic, and a research fellow at the Institute of Humanitarian Research and Problems of Indigenous Peoples of the North of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, discusses how central government, epidemics, and economic developments have changed the lives of indigenous peoples and influenced their self-government at different times.

Finland and Poland enjoyed the broadest autonomy. Finland was incorporated into Russia piecemeal, says Professor Dmitry Frolov, a researcher at the National Archives of Finland.

We spoke with Valery Dymshits, a research fellow at the Center for St. Petersburg Judaica at the European University at St. Petersburg, about how self-government was organized in Jewish communities.

What does it mean to be Siberian? Is there a distinct Siberian identity? What place does Siberia occupy in Russia? We're not talking about geography—though we're talking about that, too—but about the role these vast lands have played and continue to play in the life of the country. We're talking about the projects and plans that Grigory Potanin and Nikolai Yadrintsev, the founders of the movement known as "Siberian Regionalism," meticulously conceived in the second half of the 19th century. We're speaking with Mikhail Nemtsev, a research fellow at the School of Anthropology at Tyumen State University, a historian, and philosopher.

It would seem that this is it, Russia no longer exists. It's a comprehensive crisis, essentially a civil war, involving all sorts of sectors of the population. There were no orders from above, the entire vertical power structure had collapsed, and there was nowhere to expect anything from. And accordingly, by this logic, Russia should have ceased to exist. But no. No way.