Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865.(Review)

Just as, in St Petersburg, developments of the 1990s included the reappearance of a massive equestrian statue of Alexander III and the interment of the remains of Nicholas II, so, far to the east, they included the re-erection at Khabarovsk of a statue of Count Nikolai Nikolaevich Murav'ev-Amurskii and the translation of the Count's remains from Paris to Vladivostok. One of the many virtues of Mark Bassin's Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865 (Cambridge: U.P., 1999; pp. xvi + 329. 45 [pounds sterling]) is its success in explaining why this member of the variegated Murav'ev family still appeals to the …