Being or Becoming: Imperial Nation-Building and Subjectivity of the Ethno-Religious Groups in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, 1850s–1910s
A comparative study of how the late Russian and Ottoman empires tried to make loyal subjects out of their ethno-religious communities, and how those communities answered. The project reads reform programmes, schooling and language policy alongside the writings of Muslim and Armenian intellectuals who had to decide what it meant to be, or to become, a subject of empire.
Related publications
- 2026
Naira Sahakyan. “The Newspaper Jarīdat Dāghistān and the Revolutionary Discourse of Daghestani Reformists.” In Imagining the Future in Russia's February Revolution 1917: Instant Voices in the Press Across the Empire, edited by Franziska Schedewie and Dennis Dierks. Brill. December 2026.(forthcoming)
- 2022
Naira Sahakyan. “A Local Face of Revolution: The Confrontation of the Dagestani ʿUlamāʾ over Najm al-Dīn Gotsinsky's Imamate and the Russian Revolutions of 1917.” Revolutionary Russia 35 (1): 72–93.
- 2018
Naira Sahakyan. “Language Debate and the Visions of Future in Revolutionary Dagestan.” Caucasus Survey 6 (2): 147–162.