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Threads Of Empire: Loyalty And Tsarist Authority In Bashkiria, 1552–1917. By Charles Steinwedel., Sean Pollock

History Faculty Publications

This book addresses relations between Russian imperial officials and the peoples of Bashkiria, in the southern Urals Mountains region, in the period between 1552 and 1917. Its purpose is to show the many ways that officials sought to weave Bashkiria into the fabric of Russian empire, as well as the ways that Bashkiria’s peoples shaped the process of their incorporation into it. Steinwedel rightly emphasizes the protracted, negotiated nature of this process. Russia’s “fundamental challenge” in extracting resources from the region was “to cultivate loyal servitors of the tsar who could represent and stabilize imperial authority” (4). As this and …