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This study concerns the sources of the revolutionary Bolshevik elite's social and ethnic origins in Late Imperial Russia. The key finding is that the Bolshevik leadership of the revolutionary years 1917--1924 was highly ethnically diverse in origin with non-Russians---Jews, Latvians, Georgians, Armenians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians---constituting nearly two-thirds of the elite. The 'Russian' Revolution was led primarily by elites of the empire's non-Russian national minorities. This thesis therefore considers the sources of their radicalism in the peripheries of the multinational empire. / Although the 'class' language of socialism has dominated accounts not only of the causes of the Revolution but also of the sources of Bolshevik socialism, in my view the Bolsheviks were more a response to a variety of cultural, linguistic, religious, and ethnic social identities than they were a response to class conflict. The appeal of a theory about class conflict does not necessarily mean that it was class conflict to which the Bolsheviks were responding; they were much more a product of the tensions of a multi-ethnic imperial state than of the alienating 'class' effects of an industrializing Russian state. / How 'peripherals' of the imperial borderlands came to espouse an ideology of the imperial 'center' is the empirical focus. Five substantive chapters on Jews, Poles and Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Transcaucasians, and Latvians, consider the sources of their radicalism by contextualizing their biographies in regional ethnopolitics and in relationships to the Tsarist state. A great attraction of Russian (Bolshevik) socialism was in what it meant for ethnopolitics in the multi-ethnic borderlands: much of the appeal lay in its secularism, its 'ecumenical' political vision, its universalism, its anti-nationalism, and in its implied commitment to "the good imperial ideal". The 'elective affinities' between individuals of different ethnic strata and Russian socialism varied across ethnic groups, and often within them. One of the key themes, therefore, is how a social and political identity is worked out within the context of a multinational empire, invoking social processes such as nationalism, assimilation, Russification, social mobility, access to provincial and imperial 'civil societies', linguistic and cultural choices, and ethnopolitical relationships.

x, 90 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / As a key figure in Imperial Russia's Great Reforms from 1861 to 1874, Count Dmitrii Alekseevich Miliutin has received a good deal of attention by historians and scholars; however, his recently published memoirs have yet to be used extensively as the foundation for any study. Having them readily at one's fingertips would be a boon by itself, but to examine them using a different methodology could potentially provide a totally unique perspective. The methodology in question was based on the assumption that war influenced societies and society affected how war was conducted. By reexamining Imperial Russia's military administrative and social reforms with the newly published memoirs and afore-mentioned methodology, Miliutin's logic in formulating the reforms became apparent, as did his intended results, which included a challenge to the privileged status of Russia's ensconced power elites. / Committee in Charge: Dr. Alan Kimball, Chair; Dr. Julie Hessler; Dr. Alex Dracobly

No abstract included. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

The aim of this essay was to add to the extremely limited fund of knowledge regarding Canada's relations with Siberia during the critical period of the Intervention. The result hopefully is a contribution both to Russian/Soviet and Canadian history. The scope of the subject includes both Canada's military participation in the inter-allied intervention and simultaneously the attempt on the part of Canada to economically penetrate Siberia. The principal research was carried out at the Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa during September and October, 1968. The vast majority of the documents utilized in this essay have never previously been published either in whole or in part. The only research difficulty experienced was in attempting to view the documents relating to the Canadian Economic Commission to Siberia. The documents in question were under the jurisdiction of the Department of Trade and Commerce rather than the Public Archives. In spite of persistent negotiations, it originally appeared dubious whether or not the Department would release the documents. The matter was finally satisfactorily resolved whereby the Department transferred the files of the Commission to the Public Archives on a permanent basis. These documents had never previously been available to researchers. Two basic assumptions about Canada's Siberian policy for the period under study predated the actual archival research. The first was that regardless of Canada's 'colonial status’ in 1918, she had been in fact largely independent of the United Kingdom and had agreed to join the military intervention in Siberia for reasons of strict national interest. The second was that one of the most important elements of Canada's agreement had been economic interest. The documents reviewed would suggest a substantial factual basis for these assumptions. Various aspects of Canada's Siberian intervention are new to this essay. The questions of Canada's economic interest in Siberia; the relationship of the British and Canadian troops in Siberia; and the problem of disaffection in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia) have not previously been discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

This thesis is the only complete and unabridged English translation of Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov’s Opisanie Zemli Kamchatki (The Description of the Land of Kamchatka), first published in 1755 by the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Krasheninnikov (1711-1755) was a member of the Second Bering Expedition (1733-1741), one of the most ambitious scientific expeditions of any age. Its purpose was sixfold: 1) to explore and map Siberia; 2) to establish whether Asia and America were separated by water; 3) to explore Kamchatka; 4) to chart all waters between Kamchatka, America and Japan; 5) to map the entire Arctic coast from the White Sea around to the mouth of the Kamchatka River; 6) to explore the northwest coast of America. Krasheninnikov, a young Russian student when the explorations began, was assigned to assist the distinguished expedition scientists from the Academy of Sciences. As the years went by and his abilities became manifest he was assigned the responsibility of exploring and describing Kamchatka. Still in his mid-twenties, he walked, worked and recorded three and a half years of scientific notes about this still forbidding land. He included detailed descriptions of the geography and natural history of Kamchatka, ethnographic studies of the native tribes and their language, customs, appearance, beliefs and way of life, and the history of Kamchatka from the first Russian penetration late in the seventeenth century. His work is a great scientific tour de force which remains the classic treatise on Kamchatka. Although Opisanie Zemli Kamchatki has been published several times in Russia and has been translated into German and French, the only previous English translation is an interesting but very free and drastically abridged version by James Grieve, a Scottish physician in Russian service, which was published in London in 1764 and reissued by photo offset in Chicago in 1962. The present annotated translation includes an introduction which gives some background on Russian eastward expansion, the fur trade, and the two Bering expeditions. A bibliography is appended.

The question of Russia’s relationship to Western European culture has been discussed by historians of Russian civilization for several centuries. This study aims to broaden the understanding of that relationship by investigating some of the conditions of eighteenth century Russia and Europe which led the Western Europeans to formulate an image of Russia, of Russian civilization, and of the role that Russia should play in Western European affairs. This study attempts to provide the views of a cross-section of eighteenth century Western Europeans and Americans toward the Russia of Empress Catherine II, 1762-1796.

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