Long rivers have a way of capturing one’s imagination. The mighty Mississippi river, for example, flows nearly 2,340 miles from its origin in Minnesota down to the Gulf of Mexico. Any person wishing to undertake a coast-to-coast journey makes a memorable crossing at some point. The centrality of the river points to the phenomenon of how from previous centuries to the present day, civilizations have been defined along the banks of rivers. Besides serving as physical places for human transit, rivers serve a larger political purpose as both dividing lines between peoples and arteries connecting different cultural groups. Indeed, all the great rivers of the world, from the Yangtze, to the Nile, to the Volga, have played important roles in statecraft and cultural identity. London School of Economics Professor Janet Hartley’s recently published book, The Volga, ambitiously covers both the river itself and the people who over the past 2,000 years have lived astride its fertile banks.
Hartley’s work is breathtaking in its scope, but allows for the book to escape easy categorization. The Volga is not a history weaved into a travelogue like O’Shea’s 2017 The Alps, nor is it simply a regional history. Although the book does include familiar Russian figures and political entities that readers may already be familiar with, Hartley’s aim is also not to write another political history of the Second World War, Catherine the Great, or the USSR. Rather, Hartley uses the historical events occurring around the winding river to paint a picture of the people living there. Political events like Pugachev’s rebellion are tied to social themes, such as the tension between restricted serfdom and freer Cossack life, for example. The book aims to introduce readers to the Volga’s complicated history and the important role the river has played in the Russian national consciousness.
The strongest part of Hartley’s political history of the Volga is the attention that is paid to the different ethnic groups that existed within the Russian or Soviet state since the 16th century Russian conquest of the upper and middle Volga. This book comes at an important time when more scholars are studying Russia’s “interior” and the ethnic minorities that make up the Caucasus, Siberia, and Volga Delta regions. The book’s expansive historical nature lends itself to an examination of ethnic relationships, since it covers the formation of the Tatars and other ethnic groups. Hartley examines the relationship between the Muslim Tatars and the Orthodox Christian Russians from the Imperial period to the present day, while also introducing readers to lesser-known ethnic groups such as the Volga Germans and Mordvins.
Hartley also presents impressively precise data on the numbers of churches and mosques in Kazan and other large Volga cities, even recording their decline during the state-enforced atheism of the Soviet period (p. 263). Hartley’s discussion of interfaith relations through the prism of different ethnicities reveals the wealth of ethnic diversity that so often falls under the umbrella of “Russian.” Interesting comparisons may be drawn between the Russian Empire and the Western states, where in both cases emerging early-modern powers struggled to balance competing goals of unity and tolerance.
The pacing of the novel is another major strength, as Hartley wisely chooses not to dwell too long on any one period in the history of the Volga, thereby giving full play to the ever-changing dynamics of the lands along the river. Several of the book’s most interesting parts occur in between the big moments in Russian history. For example, many of the major cities on the Volga such as Saratov, Samara, and Tolyatti, all experienced major growth just after World War II, when many found they could escape rural poverty on collective farms for greater opportunities (p. 281). This swelling urbanization laid the framework for the industrialized Volga of today, with large cities lining the banks and giving the region a reputation of trade and industry. The rapid industrialization of the Volga marked a major shift in Russian economic geography. The terrifying descriptions of the Battle of Stalingrad and Stalin’s disastrous collectivization are balanced by explanations of the industrialization and urbanization of the region. The novel’s pacing allows the author to weave a more complex picture of the region, helping readers understand how the Volga emerged as one of the most important regions — from both economic and social perspectives — in today’s Russian Federation.
Ultimately, The Volga could have benefitted from greater use of local narrative to bring life to the larger political and historical brushstrokes that are painted. Hartley devotes much of the book to the Russians, Tatars, Chuvash, and Cossacks who lived in the Volga region, but there are curiously few personal recollections included from the lives of these locals. Hartley relates the observations of foreigners such as William Spottiswoode and Baron Haxthausen, which provides insight into how the river trade and social system differed from that of the Elbe or Danube, but also does not replace the value of understanding family relations, and what kinds of everyday social interactions would happen in the markets of Nizhny Novgorod or Astrakhan. Of course, such written accounts dating from the 17th and 18th century might not even exist, but surely there are journals and newspapers from the Soviet Period at least, that might paint a clearer picture of what it was like to live in say, Tolyatti in the 1970’s. Thus, the book could have benefited more from the perspective of citizens of the Volga’s great cities, either during the Russian Empire, or during the Soviet Period. This oversight renders the book somewhat less effective in delivering a living picture of the Volga’s reflection of the Russian state and consciousness.
By focusing on one of Russia’s most multicultural regions, a place with immense trading power and agricultural potential, readers are acquainted with a picture of Russia far less monolithic than is often portrayed in general political histories of Imperial or Soviet Russia. Even today, many foreign readers might not recognize the importance of Islam in Russia. In fact, the Volga is a central artery for the Russian Federation’s roughly 10 million Muslim adherents. The exploration of the Russian expansion into the Volga river delta, and the subsequent development of this massive region, parallels the rise of Russia as a major power. Much like the Mississippi River Delta is considered a major economic asset that helped catapult the United States to global superpower status, the Volga region can be understood as a deep reservoir of Russian culture and industry. The Russian poet Nekrasov claims the Volga as his “cradle” in the poem “On The Volga.” Hartley’s The Volga makes a good case for the river as the cradle of the modern Russian state, with its vast territory, diverse ethnic makeup, and complicated history.
Sunset over the Volga in Astrakhan by Sergey Semin is licensed under the Unsplash License.
