Severo-Zapadnyi krai

[Elena Gapova]

Thank you for suggestion. It helped me to realize that I should probably
address my question (about the term in English) to the American Slavic
historians' community.

About the Ekspeditsii: as you probably now, many of them resulted in the
publication of comprehensive ethnographical volumes of the "Zhivopisnaya
Rossiya" series, as the modern task of effective administration demanded
classification and description of imperial subjects. The volume on
"Severo-Zapadnyi Krai" (from Polessje - around Gomel - to Kovenskaya
guberniya in Lithiania, and, if I remember correctly, up to Smolensk in the
East,a huge volume, describing nature, history, peoples and languages) was
reprinted (as an "exact double") in 1993 (I am not sure about others) and is
a facinating reading. The region probably stood for "faded glory" from long
ago (involving 'prekrasnye polyachki" and evil Polish invasions) and
"wilderness" ("lesa i bolota"), as this is where Pushkin's "Metel' takes
place: colonel Butyrin says at the end that all that happened near
Wilno/Wilnya (Vilnius) and he does not remember the name of the village and
there's no way of finding out, probably, meaning that the krai is so wild,
that there's no hope.

e.g.

-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU]On Behalf Of nataliek
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 11:54 PM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Severo-Zapadnyi krai


A suggestion - at one point the Imperatorskoe russkoe geograficheskoe
obshchestvo divided the territory into regions and sent out ekspeditsii to
the
various krai's.  I  know that some of the Ukrainian material I wanted was
under Ekspeditsiia v iugo-zapadnyi krai.  It might help to see what the
Geograficheskoe obshchestvo considered severo-zapadnyi krai.

Natalie Kononenko
Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography
University of Alberta
Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies
441C Arts Building
Edmonton, AB Canada T6G 2E6
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/uvp/
Phone: 780-492-6810

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