2013 Presentations (Communicative Events)

Documenting and Preserving Histories and Legacies

Pivovarov, Evgenii

At the end of the XIXth century emigration from the Russian Empire began drawing attention of statisticians (N. Borodin, S. Patkanov, O. Kurchevsky et al.) which laid the foundation for further studies and methods for the evaluation of migration processes. Since that time thousands of publications concerning the Diaspora appeared not only in Russia and America, but around the world. To give a brief description of the literature devoted to the topic is a complicated problem which may be divided into three groups: 1) perception of the migration processes in Russia (K. Vobloi, V. Obolensky (Osinsky), L. Bagramov, A. Kiperman, A. Chernenko, E. Nitoburg, et al.); 2) its interpretation by Western scholars and journalists (J. Davis, P. Young, W. Chapin-Huntington, B. Johnston, E. Hassell, M. Raeff, et al.) and 3) émigré self-appraisal (M. Vilchur, L. Sokoloff, A. Simirenko, V. Petrov, I. Okuntsov et al). After 1917 the hegemony of ideology in the works made by Soviet scholars and its rejection by the majority of their émigré and Western colleagues caused difficulties in the mutual enrichment of the researches conducted within and outside Russia which was overcome only after the ending of censorship during "Perestroika" resulted in a boom of original Russian articles and monographs, documents publication, reissue of the émigré literature and works of the Western scholars. The development of scientific exchanges between two countries, new information technologies, especially Internet databases–all broaden the academic dialogue between scholars studying the history of "Russia Abroad".