Bringing the Provinces Into Focus: Subnational Spaces in the Recent Historiography of Russia‪.‬

The picture on the next page is clearly that of a provincial city, but what is it that tells us so? Is it the skyline, or lack thereof?. The two-story architecture, which yet so evidently proclaims itself as part of the historical core? Or is it the traffic and pedestrians? We may know that it is provincial but not be able to say quite how we know. This essay seeks to bring such provincial scenes into focus. Many scholars are going beyond the city limits of Moscow and St. Petersburg to study what was happening there, based on a growing realization that a focus on the two capitals can mean that the rest of the country appears as a blurry afterthought. It is important to have the big picture, yet ironically that is often missing in works on the provinces. The view can be even smaller from the provinces than from the capitals because the latter are part of a preexisting national narrative, while the former often are not. This can lead to a sort of myopia, as scholars sometimes look only at their own province or region, ignoring theory, other provinces, and other disciplines. Synthesis is thus the most important task in this field, and this essay is designed to represent a step in that direction.