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Defence date: 13 January 2014 ; Examining Board: Professor Stephen Anthony Smith, University of Oxford /EUI (Supervisor); Professor Alexander Etkind, EUI Professor; Alexei Miller, CEU Budapest; Professor Boris Kolonitskii, European University in St. Petersburg. ; First made available online on 26 February 2015. ; The dissertation investigates the Russification policy of the late-imperial Russian state, as it related to educational policy in the Middle Volga region. It seeks to understand how the tsarist authorities sought to define Russianness and how they sought to craft relations with pagan minorities and Muslims in a region where the Slavic-Orthodox, the Turkic-Islamic and the Finno-pagan worlds interacted. It asks how far the educational projects of the Orthodox missions and the secular authorities brought about Russification. The analysis of the changes in imperial policy in the period between the 1860s to 1914 allows for the conclusion that the methods, instruments and aims of Russification policy continually changed and that policy was applied quite differently vis-à-vis the Muslim and pagan, or in most cases only superficially Orthodox , population of the region. When dealing with the educational project for the non-Muslim population in the region, also known as the project of N.Ilminskii, the dissertation aims to understand how the russifying and missionary components related to each other. Furthermore, it studies the alternative educational projects aiming at Russification of the non-Russian population of the region that the Ilminskii system had to compete with. A considerable amount of the dissertation is devoted the discussion of the Muslim reform movement and emergence of Jadidism. By analyzing and comparing the curricula of old-method madrasahs and the new-methods ones, the dissertation demonstrates the evolution that the Middle Volga Muslims underwent under the influence of both inner reforms and the actions of the authorities.

"Follows the Volga German people from Germany to Russia in the 1760s, when Catherine the Great invited colonists to settle the Volga River region. When the Russian Senate in 1871 revoked the terms of settlement, more than 100,000 Volga Germans emigrated to North and South America, many of them to the Midwest and later to the Pacific Northwest. Also includes stories based on oral histories from Volga German elders."--Provided by publisher

In Russian and European historiography D. V. Gorbachev's article presents the first example of a critical analysis dealing with memoirs of I. A. Fessler, being a German thinker, public and religious figure, writer and freemason. The author purposes to estimate the reliability of information about Fessler's stay in Saratov Volga region in 1810–1820th which is described in these memoirs. In connection with this aim author ascertains the subjects, which are passed by Fessler over (circumstances of his journey from St. Petersburg to Saratov province, Saratov Freemasonry, conflicts connected with a church practice of the Volga Germans).

Janet M. Hartley's The Volga: a History of Russia's Greatest River gives an overview of the cultural history of the river Volga. Geir Pollen's Volga: A Russian Journey (Volga: En russisk reise) is a meandering travelogue with frequent excursions in time and space. Lena Jonson's Volga and the Inner Russia (Volga och det inre Ryssland) is a political scientist's tour along the same river with a sharp analysis of the uneasy geopolitical situation in the multinational Russian Federation of 2022.
Janet M. Hartley gir i The Volga: a History of Russia's Greatest River en översikt över Volgas kulturhistoria. Geir Pollens Volga: en russisk reise är en vindlande flodresa med många exkurser i tid och rum. Lena Jonsons Volga och det inre Ryssland är en statsvetares resa längs samma flod med skarpa analyser av den osäkra geopolitiska situationen i den multinationella Ryska federationen av år 2022.