From the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century Russia was transformed from a moderate-sized, land-locked principality into the largest empire on earth. How did systems of information and communication shape and reflect this extraordinary change? Information and Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600-1850 brings together a range of contributions to shed some light on this complex question. Communication networks such as the postal service and the gathering and circulation of news are examined alongside the growth of a bureaucratic apparatus that informed the government about its country and its people. The inscription of space is considered from the point of view of mapping and the changing public ‘graphosphere’ of signs and monuments. More than a series of institutional histories, this book is concerned with the way Russia discovered itself, envisioned itself and represented itself to its people. Innovative and scholarly, this collection breaks new ground in its approach to communication and information as a field of study in Russia. More broadly, it is an accessible contribution to pre-modern information studies, taking as its basis a country whose history often serves to challenge habitual Western models of development. It is important reading not only for specialists in Russian Studies, but also for students and non-Russianists who are interested in the history of information and communications.
A short review cannot do justice to the many felicitous discoveries that can be made in this volume.[..] I think the most interesting memory the volume will leave with its readers is of how seventeenth-century Russia operated as a society. We may vaguely imagine that before Peter the Great all was backwardness, chaos, inefficiency and sloth. Here we see, by contrast, a rather well-organized realm, able to meet big challenges; even its famously numerous chanceries did not function badly. This is an unusual work, often demanding but we can be grateful to Open Book Publishers for it.
Prof. Robin Milner-Gulland
"Book Review: Simon Franklin and Katherine Bowers (eds): Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia 1600–1850". Journal of European Studies (1740-2379), vol. 48, no. 2, 2018. doi:10.1177/0047244118773894i
Notes on Contributors
Introduction by Simon Franklin
I. MAP-MAKING
1. Early Mapping: The Tsardom in Manuscript by Valerie Kivelson
2. New Technology and the Mapping of Empire: The Adoption of the Astrolabe by Aleksei Golubinskii
II. INTERNATIONAL NEWS AND POST
3. Muscovy and the European Information Revolution: Creating the Mechanisms for Obtaining Foreign News by Daniel C. Waugh and Ingrid Maier
4. How Was Western Europe Informed about Muscovy? The Razin Rebellion in Focus by Ingrid Maier
III. NEWS AND POST IN RUSSIA
5. Communication and Obligation: The Postal System of the Russian Empire, 1700–1850 by John Randolph
6. Information and Efficiency: Russian Newspapers, ca.1700–1850 by Alison K. Smith
7. What Was News and How Was It Communicated in Pre-Modern Russia? by Daniel C. Waugh
IV. INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND COMMUNICATION
8. Bureaucracy and Knowledge Creation: The Apothecary Chancery by Clare Griffin
9. What Could the Empress Know About Her Money? Russian Poll Tax Revenues in the Eighteenth Century by Elena Korchmina
10. Communication and Official Enlightenment: The Journal of the Ministry of Public Education, 1834–1855 by Ekaterina Basargina
V. INFORMATION AND PUBLIC DISPLAY
11. Information in Plain Sight: The Formation of the Public Graphosphere by Simon Franklin
12. Experiencing Information: An Early Nineteenth-Century Stroll Along Nevskii Prospekt by Katherine Bowers
Selected Further Reading
List of Figures
Index