This book is a comprehensive reconstruction of the successful attempt by rural professionals in late imperial Russia to engage peasants in a common public sphere. Covers a range of aspects, from personal income and the dynamics of the job market to ideological conflicts and psychological transformation. Based on hundreds of individual life stories.

Auteur
ILYA GERASIMOV holds Russian and American PhDs, and is a founder and the Executive Editor of the international
quarterly Ab Imperio dedicated to the studies of new imperial history and nationalism in the post-Soviet space (since
2000). He has published in several languages on Russian social history, the history of criminality and new imperial history.

Contenu
Introduction PART I: STRUCTURES OF MOBILIZATION Becoming 'Progressive': Structural Settings and Mental Mapping of Reformism Bringing Up a New Generation of Intelligentsia Transfer of the Italian Technology of Modernization and Birth of the Russian 'Public Agronomy' Project PART II: DYNAMICS OF MODERNIZATION The Ambivalent Role of the State: A Conservative Patron and a 'Progressive' Rival The Economic Foundations of Social Mobilization From Knowledge to Influence: Building a Bridge to the New Peasant At the Crossroads: Coping with Modernization as Routine PART III: PATTERNS OF 'NATIONALIZATION' Nation as Motherland Nation as the People Revolutionary Nation The Dissolution of the 'Imagined Community': Nationalization as Expropriation Postscript