Ilya Vinkovetsky

  • Associate Professor
  • Department of History
  • Simon Fraser University
  •  
  • PhD, University of California, Berkeley
  • BA, Wesleyan University
  • 8888 University Drive
  • Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
  • Canada
  • Tel: 778-782-4306
  • Fax: 778-782-5837
  • E-mail me: ivink@sfu.ca
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Last updated: November 2011
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Selected Writings Teaching Matters Overseas Colony Research Interests

  • Book

    • Russian America

      An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804-1867.

      New York & London: Oxford University Press, 2011.

  • Articles

    • “Building a Diocese Overseas: The Orthodox Church in Partnership with the Russian-American Company in Alaska.” Ab Imperio, 2010, no. 3. Pp. 152-194.
    • "Why Did Russia Sell Alaska?" Acta Slavica Iaponica, vol. 23, 2006. Pp. 202-210.
    • "The Russian-American Company as a Colonial Contractor for the Russian Empire." In Alexei Miller and Alfred J. Rieber, eds., Imperial Rule. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004. Pp. 161-176.
    • "Circumnavigation, Empire, Modernity, Race: The Impact of Round-the-World Voyages on Russia's Imperial Consciousness." Ab Imperio, 2001, nos. 1-2. Pp. 191-210.
    • "Classical Eurasianism and Its Legacy." Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 34, no. 2 (Summer 2000). Pp. 125-139.
    • "Eurasianism in Its Time: A Bibliography." In Exodus to the East (see entry below). Pp. 143-174.

  • Editor/Translator

    • Petr Savitskii, Petr Suvchinskii, Nikolai Trubetskoi, Georgii Florovskii, Exodus to the East: Forebodings and Events: An Affirmation of the Eurasians. Idyllwild, Calif.: Charles Schlacks, Jr. Publisher, 1996.
      [Original Iskhod k Vostoku. Predchuvstviia i sversheniia. Utverzhdenie evraziitsev. Sofia: Tipografiia "Balkan", 1921.]

  • Review Essays and Longer Reviews

    • Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. H-Empire, 3 November 2011.
    • Aleksandr Petrov, Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia: deiatel'nost' na otechestvennom i zarubezhnom rynkakh, 1799-1867 [Russian-American Company: Activity in the Home and Foreign Markets, 1799-1867] (Moscow: IVI RAN, 2006); Anatolii Remnev, Rossiia Dal'nego Vostoka: Imperskaia geografiia vlasti XIX - nachala XX vekov [Russia of the Far East: Imperial Geography of Power, 19th through early 20th Centuries] (Omsk: Izdatel'stvo Omskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2004). Kritika 9, 2 (Spring 2008): 463-71.
    • Sergei Kan, Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries (University of Washington Press, 1999); Andrei Grinev, Indeitsy tlinkity v period Russkoi Ameriki ("Nauka," 1991); Andrei Znamenski, Shamanism and Christianity: Native Encounters with Russian Orthodox Missions in Siberia and Alaska, 1820-1917 (Greenwood Press, 1999); Through Orthodox Eyes: Russian Missionary Narratives of Travels to the Dena'ina and Ahtna, 1850s - 1930s, ed. and trans. Andrei Znamenski (University of Alaska Press, 2003); The First Russian Voyage Around the World: The Journal of Herman Ludwig von Löwenstern, 1803-1806, trans. Victoria Joan Moessner (University of Alaska Press, 2003). Kritika, 6, 3 (Fall 2005) Pp. 627-633.
    • Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2001); Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War (Columbia University Press, 2000). Kritika, 6, 1 (Winter 2005): 241-52.

  • Dissertation

    • "Native Americans and the Russian Empire, 1804-1867." University of California, Berkeley, 2002.

  • Courses I offer from time to time:

    • History 224 "19th century Europe"
    • History 225 "20th century Europe"
    These are European stream general courses, which are regularly taught by a rotation of faculty members.
    • History 334 "Russia to 1917"
    • History 335 "The Soviet Project"
    These are courses I offer on a regular basis to introduce students to Russian history.
    • History 419: Titles and themes vary
    This course varies widely across themes. Some of these have been: Russia as a Multiethnic Empire; Tolstoy’s and Napoleon’s 1812; Ethnicity and Identity in 20th Century Russia; Native/European Contact in North America and Siberia; Revolutions in Russia and Elsewhere; Russia's 19th Century; Cultural History of the Russian Empire; Stalin & Stalinism. For the course topic in a particular semester, check the course outline on the department's website.

  • Primary Topical Interests

    • Russia and the Soviet Union, late 18th - early 21st century
    • People’s lives and political developments
    • Colonialism, Expansion, Exploration
    • Empires in Comparative Context
    • The East and the West
    • Eastern Europe and Eurasia
    • Ecological and economic change
    • Nationalism
    • Modern Revolutions
    • Historiography

  • "If you want to know an empire, you must look at its colonies."

    I wrote a book about how Russia's 19th-century colony in North America and its inhabitants fit into the Russian Empire. It was published in 2011 by Oxford University Press.

    See it on Amazon

    The Surrealist map of the world, first published in Variètès (June 1929).

  • My current research explores, among other themes:

    • merchant networks in the Russian empire and abroad
    • the importation of American and Asian products into nineteenth-century Russia; roads and ship lanes
    • companies as contractors of empire
    • Russia in the Balkans
    • colonialism