Broad is my native land : repertoires and regimes of migration in Russia's twentieth century /

Broad is my native land : repertoires and regimes of migration in Russia's twentieth century /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Siegelbaum, Lewis H., author.
Imprint:Ithaca : Cornell University Press, [2014]
©2014
Description:1 online resource (xiv, 421 pages) : illustrations, maps
Language:English
Subject:
Migration, Internal -- Russia (Federation) -- History -- 20th century.
Migration, Internal.
Russia (Federation)
History.
Electronic books.
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11767942
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:Moch, Leslie Page, author.
ISBN:9780801455148
0801455146
9780801479991
9780801453335
0801455138
9780801455131
0801479991
9780801479991
Digital file characteristics:data file
Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
English.
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed December 23, 2014).
Summary:Whether voluntary or coerced, hopeful or desperate, people moved in unprecedented numbers across Russia's vast territory during the twentieth century. Broad Is My Native Land is the first history of late imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russia through the lens of migration. Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Leslie Page Moch tell the stories of Russians on the move, capturing the rich variety of their experiences by distinguishing among categories of migrants-settlers, seasonal workers, migrants to the city, career and military migrants, evacuees and refugees, deportees, and itinerants. So vast and diverse was Russian political space that in their journeys, migrants often crossed multiple cultural, linguistic, and administrative borders. By comparing the institutions and experiences of migration across the century and placing Russia in an international context, Siegelbaum and Moch have made a magisterial contribution to both the history of Russia and the study of global migration.The authors draw on three kinds of sources: letters to authorities (typically appeals for assistance); the myriad forms employed in communication about the provision of transportation, food, accommodation, and employment for migrants; and interviews with and memoirs by people who moved or were moved, often under the most harrowing of circumstances. Taken together, these sources reveal the complex relationship between the regimes of state control that sought to regulate internal movement and the tactical repertoires employed by the migrants themselves in their often successful attempts to manipulate, resist, and survive these official directives.
Other form:Print version: Siegelbaum, Lewis H. Broad Is My Native Land : Repertoires and Regimes of Migration in Russia's Twentieth Century. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, ©1900 9780801479991
Review by Choice Review

Throughout history, human beings have moved around, but only in the modern period has migration taken on mass character. The history of migration is a recent and growing field, and Leslie Moch is one of its most distinguished practitioners. Her colleague at Michigan State, Lewis H. Siegelbaum, is a respected historian of Russia. Together, they have produced a remarkable book on migration in Russia/USSR/Russia since the late czarist years. Their approach is as broad as the Soviet "native land" echoed in their title. Here, migrants include not just people searching for employment or fleeing disaster but also deportees, itinerants (such as nomads and beggars), military personnel on the move, agricultural settlers, and individuals who migrated in massive numbers from the countryside to the city. This is both a history of humanity within the borders of a single country (to be sure, the largest one on Earth) and a novel re-imagining of 20th-century Russian/Soviet history. The authors' approach is particularly brilliant at fitting individual fates (there are many delicious anecdotes and poignant stories) into larger trends. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Theodore R. Weeks, Southern Illinois University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review

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