My project will trace the ways in which Russian identity at the empire’s far eastern frontier was shaped by ideals of colonial expansion, by images of Europe and Asia, and by Russian interaction with the Chinese and Koreans in the region – who were identified by the tsarist state as both a threat and a necessity to Russian dominance in the Far East. My topic will further explore whether this identity -- founded on the fusion of empire-building and frontier development -- survived into the period of Soviet rule, and whether it formed a common thread between tsarist and Soviet regimes.
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Chia Yin Hsu, of the New York University, was a 2001-02 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) [8] fellow.
