Integrating Imperial Space

In the second half of the 19th century visions of an infrastructurally integrated imperial space captivated the minds of Russian administrators and businessmen. Infrastructural integration promised to unravel the economic and political potential of the Russian Empire but it also revealed its administrative weakness. The book explores the challenges the Tsarist administration faced in harmonizing the multitudinous regional economic regimes in its vast landed empire. It analyzes conflicting logics towards the imperial space and demonstrates how the modern project of an infrastructurally integrated space limited the leeway in resorting to imperial administrative practices and accelerated the 'nationalization' of the Russian Empire's economic space.

Boris Ganichev war 2015-2019 wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der Graduiertenschule für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Seit Februar 2020 ist er als Referent für die Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes tätig.