Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation

by Serhii Plokhy

Uvarov’s first choice for writing a history text integrating the western provinces into the empire was Mikhail Pogodin, a professor of history at Moscow University who enthusiastically embraced the task. Pogodin, who assured the minister that he would fight the Polish historians as General Paskevich had fought the Polish insurgents in 1831, was approached in November 1834 and submitted his text a year later—Uvarov reported directly to the tsar about the scholar’s progress. But Pogodin turned out to be too good a historian to satisfy the minister’s demands. His book presented the history of northeastern Rus’, or Russia, as distinct—indeed, separate—from that of southwestern Rus’ (Ukraine and Belarus), undermining the project’s main goal of linking the western provinces with Russia in a seamless historical narrative. Uvarov explained the failure to the tsar by citing the novelty of presenting the history of the Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian provinces as a single narrative. But Pogodin’s failure did not discourage Uvarov. He established a special prize of 10,000 rubles for an author who could present the history of the western provinces as part of Russian history, then asked another history professor, this time from St. Petersburg University, to attempt the task. His name was Nikolai Ustrialov, and he set to work on a four-volume history of Russia. In December 1836, Ustrialov submitted the first volume of his work. Uvarov approved it a month later, recommending the volume a...