ABSTRACT
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in late 1991, provincial historians, no longer pining to investigate the problems of the entire Russian republic or the USSR, have begun to focus on local themes. The names of Russia’s regions appear more and more frequently in the titles of scholarly conferences and on the covers of new historical monographs, essay collections, and memoirs. Such expanded interest in local history has important repercussions for the debates over the structure of the Russian Federation. To understand the present and future relations between the “center” and the provinces that make up the federation, and which may have their own interests, a knowledge of the past is essential.
