Russia Beyond, Russia Within Complications to a History of Russia‘s Territory

This presentation represents a portion of a grand, synthetic territorial history of Russia across some seven centuries.
But whereas the bulk of that work recounts Russia's territorial evolution in a fairly conventional fashion (about which the
author will speak briefly), the two chapters at the foundation of the presentation represent complications to that narrative.
If, on the one hand, Russia's exercise of territorial control sometimes took forms short of direct and exclusive sovereignty
(protectorates, occupations, spheres of influence, etc.), then, on the other, the empire and later the USSR were faced
with the challenge of delineating a "Russia" within those large imperial formations.
The presentation takes up both of those complications, with hopes that they will serve as a foundation for robust discussion
that does not descend into violence.