Shtakser reviewed Internal colonization by Aleksandr Ėtkind
Review of 'Internal colonization' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Another brilliant book by Etkind, where he analyzes a special kind of colonization - a case where the elite is colonizing its own territory and people with help of the state, but itself is vulnerable to a change of status due to the fragility of the modes of differentiation. For example, somebody losing social status due to one reason or another would be treated as colonized. The problem was that the difference between colonizers and colonized in a case like Russia, where both belong to the same ethnicity and the same culture was a matter of education and appearance (bearded versus shaved) and that could have easily changed. Etkind claims that after external colonization of the North became impossible due to scarcity of furs, Russia had to turn to agriculture and thus to treat its own peasants as colonized subjects. That entailed cultural differentiation between the elite and the peasantry, …
Another brilliant book by Etkind, where he analyzes a special kind of colonization - a case where the elite is colonizing its own territory and people with help of the state, but itself is vulnerable to a change of status due to the fragility of the modes of differentiation. For example, somebody losing social status due to one reason or another would be treated as colonized. The problem was that the difference between colonizers and colonized in a case like Russia, where both belong to the same ethnicity and the same culture was a matter of education and appearance (bearded versus shaved) and that could have easily changed. Etkind claims that after external colonization of the North became impossible due to scarcity of furs, Russia had to turn to agriculture and thus to treat its own peasants as colonized subjects. That entailed cultural differentiation between the elite and the peasantry, emphasis on real or invented foreignness of the elite and serfdom which, according to Etkind, was not overall profitable (he claims that grain export from the areas of mass serfdom was unprofitable, since these were too far from the ports), but was upheld as part of the political arrangement within the state. Etkind also claims that this arrangement was supported by orientalist views of the exotic peasantry and, surprisingly, by the Russian literature which, due to its humanistic impulse, attracted all kinds of people and created a sort of unity within the Russian empire, an empire constantly widening its borders and its orientalist views. Even though, as Etkind points out, the enserfed were largely ethnically Russian. Overall Etkind claims that in Russia the normal experience of colonialism was as both a colonizer (a peasant sent to fight in the Caucasus) and a colonized (the same peasant in relation to Russian government and its representatives). Similar examples would be rebellious students sent to the North as colonized subjects but there working in the local administration and acting as colonizers towards the local populations. Or a Polish noble acting as a colonizer towards the peasants, but sent to Siberia as a political exile. Etc.