Research areas
The Institute of Russia’s Regional History of the Faculty of Humanities at HSE University was established in 2023 on the basis of the Laboratory 'Russia’s Regions in Historical Perspective' at HSE University, which had been operating since 2019.
The Institute’s tasks include implementing projects in three areas:
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carrying out projects for the development of fundamental science;
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establishing and developing scientific and practical cooperation with regional universities and research centers in Russia;
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expert activity and participation in applied projects.
As part of its fundamental research, the Institute conducts a comprehensive study of the social and socio-political development of Russian regions in the 18th–20th centuries. The project includes the study of such issues as established geographical positioning; the emergence and development of imperial/Soviet/post-Soviet historical-geographical forms; cross-border processes and exchanges; development of territories; social engineering; practices of regional governance; creation and development of human capital; and the formation of regional identities, mental maps, and local presentation models.
The Institute comprises four research centers:
Research focus: strategies and practices of governing Russian regions; “center”–“region” and “region”–“center” interaction; subjecthood and citizenship; development and colonization, resettlement practices and their conceptualization; creation of human capital and management of human diversity in the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods; the historical landscape of network projects (movement of people, reproduction of institutions, recourse to tested practices); the question of changing governance approaches and their persistence even under conditions of radical change in the historical context.
Research focus: economic foundations of the development and colonization of a large territory; the unfolding in the 18th–20th centuries of significant regional projects (including the creation of communications infrastructure); specific features of the economic existence of the borderland (frontier); economic processes and their perception in the regions; the influence of emerging attitudes on a region’s vision of itself and its place in the all-Russian context; the connection between economic processes in the regions and the development of social practices in the given territory.
Research focus: processes of identity formation in Russian regions at different levels; the problem of successful and unsuccessful integration of regional identity into the all-Russian identity; reflection on the region and in the region; collective memory of regions: mechanisms, social practices, and institutions of memory; public space in Russian regions in the chronological span from the empire to modern Russia; regional historical-geographical positioning and its anthropological component; mental (imagined) geography.
Research focus: the socio-political and economic reality of Russian regions during periods of warfare from the imperial to the Soviet period (in the latter case, priority is given to the study of the territory of the RSFSR); zones of military operations, occupied, frontline, and rear territories; the impact of wars on the condition of urban settlements and reconstruction practices; the history of the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War in regional perspective.
Research conducted by each of the centers is interconnected with projects of other units of the Institute. Across all areas of research, particular importance is attached to a comparative perspective and an anthropological dimension.
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