Russia's Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801-1914

by Stephen Badalyan Riegg

Russia's Entangled Embrace traces the relationship between the Romanov state and the Armenian diaspora that populated Russia's territorial fringes and navigated the tsarist empire's metropolitan centers. By engaging the ongoing debates about imperial structures that were simultaneously symbiotic and hierarchically ordered, Stephen Badalyan Riegg helps us to understand how, for Armenians and some other subjects, imperial rule represented not hypothetical, clear-cut alternatives but simultaneous, messy realities. He examines why, and how, Russian architects of empire imagined Armenians as being politically desirable. These circumstances included the familiarity of their faith, perceived degree of social, political, or cultural integration, and their actual or potential contributions to the state's varied priorities. Based on extensive research in the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yerevan, Russia's Entangled Embrace reveals that the Russian government relied on Armenians to build its empire in the Caucasus and beyond. Analyzing the complexities of this imperial relationship―beyond the reductive question of whether Russia was a friend or foe to Armenians―allows us to study the methods of tsarist imperialism in the context of diasporic distribution, interimperial conflict and alliance, nationalism, and religious and economic identity.

Genres: History

330 pages, Hardcover

Published July 15, 2020

Reviews

[Raughley Nuzzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides a great insight into the relationship between Russia and its erstwhile partner in the South Caucasus, Armenia. As Armenia undertakes a strategic realignment in the 2020s, the origins of its closeness with Russia is worth exploring. Riegg does a nice job of touching on a range of alignments between Russia and Armenians within and beyond the Empire's borders throughout the 19th century. The religious and cultural fraternity between Armenians and Russians helped them navigate the complexities of the inter-ethnic border regions between the Russian, Persian, and Ottoman Empires.

This was a solid read, especially for anyone interested in the region.

[Jindřich Zapletal · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very interesting topic to me, but the book left a lot to be desired.

It appears that most if not all of the contents of the book is gleaned from official tsarist archives. As a result, the focus is ideology and abstract questions of Russian religious, ethnic, and diplomatic policy. There are hardly any personalities that would be developed in any detail, there is very little social history, geography, or economic history. The title of the book is just much more general than its actual focus. In addition, I do not think I would have trouble finding 30 paragraphs in the book which all say exactly the same thing.