Awards

• Winner of Winner, Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Overview

In April 1917, Lenin arrived at Petrograd's Finland Station and set foot on Russian soil for the first time in over a decade. For most of the past seventeen years, the Bolshevik leader had lived in exile, moving between Europe's many ""Russian colonies""--large and politically active communities of émigrés in London, Paris, and Geneva, among other cities. Thousands of fellow exiles who followed Lenin on his eastward trek in 1917 were in a similar predicament. The returnees plunged themselves into politics, competing to shape the future of a vast country recently liberated from tsarist rule. Yet these activists had been absent from their homeland for so long that their ideas reflected the Russia imagined by residents of the faraway colonies as much as they did events on the ground. The 1917 revolution marked the dawn of a new day in Russian politics, but it also represented the continuation of decades-long conversations that had begun in emigration and were exported back to Russia. Faith Hillis examines how émigré communities evolved into revolutionary social experiments in the heart of bourgeois cities. Feminists, nationalist activists, and Jewish intellectuals seeking to liberate and uplift populations oppressed by the tsarist regime treated the colonies as utopian communities, creating new networks, institutions, and cultural practices that reflected their values and realized the ideal world of the future in the present. The colonies also influenced their European host societies, informing international debates about the meaning of freedom on both the left and the right. Émigrés' efforts to transform the world played crucial roles in the articulation of socialism, liberalism, anarchism, and Zionism across borders. But they also produced unexpected--and explosive--discontents that defined the course of twentieth-century history. This groundbreaking transnational work demonstrates the indelible marks the Russian colonies left on European politics, legal cultures, and social practices, while underscoring their role during a pivotal period of Russian history.

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9780190066338

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Reviews

When we describe the October Revolution as a 'world-historical event', this is usually understood to refer to the global consequences of the rise of the first Marxist state. Faith Hillis, in a brilliant move, has turned this sequence of events on its head. Utopia's Discontents shows how people, places and events situated far beyond the borders of Russia shaped the Revolution. The October Revolution, she shows, was world-historical at its root....Utopia's Discontents narrates the history of these utopian communities in fascinating, intimate detail....An excellent example of history that steps beyond disciplinary divisions and national boundaries. * Kevin M.F. Platt, Times Literary Supplement * Utopia's Discontents literally puts the history of the Russian Revolution-and all that came with it-on the map. By moving our point of reference to the emigre and exile peripheries at the core of twentieth-century history, this fascinating study of the 'Russian colonies' in Europe offers an inspiringly original take on the history of 'post-colonialism.' With uncommon narrative ease and rigorous attention to detail, Hillis does to the reigning historiography of the revolutionary movements what her protagonists did to the liberal order of the late nineteenth century. The history of ideas just got a good deal richer. * Holly Case, author of Age of Questions * Vividly narrated and brimming with insight, Utopia's Discontents brings to life the storied 'Russian colonies' of western Europe's major cities, where revolutions were plotted and new countries imagined. Faith Hillis brilliantly recreates the dense neighborhoods, intimate, often fraught social relationships, and high-pitched theoretical arguments that characterized life in the Russian colonies. Utopia's Discontents is a multi-layered study, at once richly local in focus and broad in scope. It is a truly exciting book. * Tony Michels, author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York * This ground-breaking book rethinks the history of Russia's revolutionaries through their lives in exile communities. Place mattered in their story: for inspiration, for encounters, for everyday radical practices. The book is a rich history of ideas-freedom, equality, community, and justice, and socialism-but as everyday practices rather than dreamy abstractions. Not least, this is magisterial research, written in an accessible and compelling manner. * Mark Steinberg, author of The Russian Revolution, 1905-21 *

Utopia's Discontents literally puts the history of the Russian Revolution-and all that came with it-on the map. By moving our point of reference to the emigre and exile peripheries at the core of twentieth-century history, this fascinating study of the 'Russian colonies' in Europe offers an inspiringly original take on the history of 'post-colonialism.' With uncommon narrative ease and rigorous attention to detail, Hillis does to the reigning historiography of the revolutionary movements what her protagonists did to the liberal order of the late nineteenth century. The history of ideas just got a good deal richer. * Holly Case, author of Age of Questions * Vividly narrated and brimming with insight, Utopia's Discontents brings to life the storied 'Russian colonies' of western Europe's major cities, where revolutions were plotted and new countries imagined. Faith Hillis brilliantly recreates the dense neighborhoods, intimate, often fraught social relationships, and high-pitched theoretical arguments that characterized life in the Russian colonies. Utopia's Discontents is a multi-layered study, at once richly local in focus and broad in scope. It is a truly exciting book. * Tony Michels, author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York * This ground-breaking book rethinks the history of Russia's revolutionaries through their lives in exile communities. Place mattered in their story: for inspiration, for encounters, for everyday radical practices. The book is a rich history of ideas-freedom, equality, community, and justice, and socialism-but as everyday practices rather than dreamy abstractions. Not least, this is magisterial research, written in an accessible and compelling manner. * Mark Steinberg, author of The Russian Revolution, 1905-21 *

Utopia's Discontents literally puts the history of the Russian Revolutionand all that came with iton the map. By moving our point of reference to the migr and exile peripheries at the core of twentieth-century history, this fascinating study of the 'Russian colonies' in Europe offers an inspiringly original take on the history of 'post-colonialism.' With uncommon narrative ease and rigorous attention to detail, Hillis does to the reigning historiography of the revolutionary movements what her protagonists did to the liberal order of the late nineteenth century. The history of ideas just got a good deal richer. -- Holly Case, author of Age of Questions Vividly narrated and brimming with insight, Utopia's Discontents brings to life the storied 'Russian colonies' of western Europe's major cities, where revolutions were plotted and new countries imagined. Faith Hillis brilliantly recreates the dense neighborhoods, intimate, often fraught social relationships, and high-pitched theoretical arguments that characterized life in the Russian colonies. Utopia's Discontents is a multi-layered study, at once richly local in focus and broad in scope. It is a truly exciting book. -- Tony Michels, author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York This ground-breaking book rethinks the history of Russia's revolutionaries through their lives in exile communities. Place mattered in their story: for inspiration, for encounters, for everyday radical practices. The book is a rich history of ideasfreedom, equality, community, and justice, and socialismbut as everyday practices rather than dreamy abstractions. Not least, this is magisterial research, written in an accessible and compelling manner. -- Mark Steinberg, author of The Russian Revolution, 1905-21

Author Information

Faith Hillis is Associate Professor of Russian History at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Children of Rus': Right-Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Nation.

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