B1: Vertrauen durch Anwesenheit

The sub-project considers state authority as a cultural phenomenon. Statehood is a cultural practice that emerges in the form of an exchange of perceptions, norms, interpretations or representations. A culturally oriented approach conceives representations as the concepts but also as the presentations “through which individuals and groups impart meaning to their world” (Roger Chartier). All authority is founded on trust. In modern societies people take state structures and complex institutional rules and regulations for granted. But in pre-modern societies trust is based on presence.

The sub-project examines the representations of the state which the Tsarist elites and the peasant population held and exchanged with one another in the Russian empire of the late 19th century. It deals with the question of how the various representations of authority collided in the presence-based societies of the multi-ethnic Tsarist empire. The limits of communication between elites and peasants and between rulers and the ruled become especially clear in crisis situations. These exceptional situations were places of negotiation and of representation of the different, where elites and peasants faced one another with their different worldviews: with reference to the examples of the travelling law courts, local self-government and the provincial governors' courts in the last third of the 19th century. The nature of the state, how the peasants and the elites viewed it and whether the former accepted the state concept of the latter only becomes clear to historians if they address the representations through which peasants and elites encountered one another.

The exchange of representations is to be investigated on a comparative basis, between the centre and periphery of the Russian empire as well between the various administrative provinces. Court records, investigation reports, petitions, lawyers' speeches, legal magazines and self-portrayals of the elites – diaries, personal records and memoirs – serve as the main sources.

Publications by members of this sub-project

• Jörg Baberowski (Hg): Arbeit an der Geschichte. Wie viel Theorie braucht die Geschichtswissenschaft?. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2010.  (mehr)
• Jörg Baberowski, Gabriele Metzler (Hg): Gewalträume. Soziale Ordnungen im Ausnahmezustand. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2012.  (mehr)
• Jörg Baberowski, Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen Schriewer (Hg): Selbstbilder und Fremdbilder. Repräsentationen sozialer Ordnungen im Wandel. Campus, 2008.  (mehr)
• Jörg Baberowski, David Feest, Christoph Gumb (Hg): Imperiale Herrschaft in der Provinz. Repräsentationen politischer Macht im späten Zarenreich. Campus, 2008.  (mehr)
• Jörg Baberowski, David Feest, Maike Lehmann (Hg): Dem Anderen begegnen. Eigene und fremde Repräsentationen in sozialen Gemeinschaften. Campus, 2009.  (mehr)
• Jörg Baberowski, David Feest, Priska Jones (Hg): Repräsentation sozialer Ordnungen. Formen und Theorien. Campus, 2008. (in Vorbereitung).  (mehr)
• Jörg Baberowski: Der rote Terror. Die Geschichte des Stalinismus. Fischer, München 2003.  (mehr)