The first (and last) Soviet scholar to survey the history of the Imperial Free Economic Society (Imperatorskoe Vol'noe Ekonomicheskoe Obshchestvo, or VEO) arrived at the reasonable conclusion that this important organization deserves far greater notice than it has hitherto received. The same is true of the Society's remarkable and remarkably neglected library, barely mentioned even in the same scholar's monograph but preserved almost intact in Leningrad today. The later activities of the Free Economic Society—the oldest (1765-1919) and most influential economic society in Russia—will be pursued elsewhere as part of a broader inquiry, but a brief note on its library is offered here to alert researchers to the potential usefulness of this unique store of economic, social, technical, and statistical materials.

Andrei Belyi, in Nachalo veka, recalls walks that he took with Aleksandr Blok through the back streets of Petersburg during the weeks that followed Bloody Sunday in January 1905. These walks reminded Belyi of the poems that Blok was writing at the same time and that he published in Nechaiannaia radosť in 1906.

Among the theories about the origin of the Russian heroic epic songs (byliny), the theory of their aristocratic origin has aroused the greatest controversy. This theory was advanced by the main representative of the so-called historical school, Vsevolod Miller, at the turn of this century. In the introduction to his Ekskursy he compared the byliny to grandiose ruins, in whose upper chambers and towers princes once lived, but in whose sheds that were still habitable some unpretentious Olonets peasants had finally settled. Miller dealt with this problem in greater detail in his Ocherki, stressing first that the byliny sang of princes and retainers and their military feats. He argued that “they were created and disseminated among the population that was, in its development and social standing, close to the princely court and retinue, belonging, according to contemporary notions, to the ‘intelligentsia.'” The byliny were, according to Miller, composed among the cream of the society, where the pulse of life throbbed more strongly, where there was affluence and leisure, and where there was a demand for songs.

The article offers a methodological reflection on the practical work of reading race in Russian literary texts, especially from the nineteenth century. It makes four key arguments. First, “racialization,” in the sense of an interactive process, is a more productive lens than an essentially static concept of race. Second, race is not only, and not always, a question of perception or meaning-making, but also ideology. Third, the concept of race typically engages notions of class, gender, and sexuality, an intersectionality that merits particular attention. Fourth, critiquing race can be productively furthered by paying attention to anxieties and insecurities that underlie racial hierarchies and biases, which can be revealed through readings against the grain. As we cast new light on Russia's engagement with race, it is essential that the culture of the Russian nineteen-century become part of this reappraisal.