Heretics and Colonizers

In Heretics and Colonizers, Nicholas B. Breyfogle explores the dynamic intersection of Russian borderland colonization and popular religious culture.

Nicholas B. Breyfogle is Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University. He is coeditor of Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History and the online magazine Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.

This is a book that all specialists in imperial Russia, the Caucasus, and Russian religion need to read. It should also be required for those interested in Russian frontiers or environmental history. It is, finally, accessible and well suited to classroom use.

The long history of Russia's self-colonization has been marked by a combination of compulsion and voluntarism. Here Nicholas B. Breyfogle explores a fascinating element of that history, which illustrates graphically the contradictions in the policies pursued by the Russian state.

Breyfogle's book is an important contribution to the social, cultural, and environmental history of Russian imperialism and popular religiosity.

An outstanding work of scholarship, Heretics and Colonizers offers fresh insight into the subtle and complex relationships between religious sectarianism, tsarist nation-building, and frontier identity. By delving into the lives of Dukhobors, Molokans, and Subbotniks in the Caucasus, Nicholas B. Breyfogle reveals the rich tapestry of Russia's sectarian past. It is the most comprehensive, the most reliable, and the most readable book on this subject and period that I have encountered.

Heretics and Colonizers builds on the vision of the Russian Empire as a complex and multilevel system marked by social and administrative diversity. It is a very important book that should appeal to students of religion, nationalism, and empire in both Russian and European contexts.

Ronald Grigor Suny, The University of Chicago:

In the growing literature on the Russian Empire, Nicholas B. Breyfogle's book on the tsarist colonization of Transcaucasia stands out as an exemplary account of how the changing attitudes of the autocracy toward its imperial peripheries, and the activities of exiled dissenters, shaped the nature of Russian colonialism. From a place to send religious heretics, the South Caucasus became a region to be integrated into the empire and colonized by hardworking 'Russians.' This rich work opens up the southern borderlands for readers interested in Russia's imperial history, the story of empires, and the unique experience of the faithful as they struggled to survive on the frontier.

Frank Wcislo, Vanderbilt University:

Heretics and Colonizers is a rich, expansively argued, and panoramic book that will transform the way in which historians of late imperial Russia conceptualize its polity and society. Nicholas B. Breyfogle tells his story in great detail, skillfully referring to European, African, and North American history and incorporating stunning archival research from a panoply of central and local government archives. Breyfogle's meditations on the proactive and community-based character of Russian peasant behavior and voice are fascinating. This remarkable book about the sectarian Russian peasants who made an empire will be required reading in the field.