Intimate Empire: The Mansurov Family in Russia and the Orthodox East, 1855–1936 By AlexaVon Winning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, 240 pp. $100.00. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐284441‐5
Journal: The Russian Review
Year: 2023

Despite the awesomeness of the Russian autocrat, it has long been argued that an elite class of state servitors was the cement holding the tsarist empire together. Central to this paradigm are the serf-owning dvorianstvo families who played pivotal roles across all levels of government, both on the periphery and within the center. Alexa von Winning’s Intimate Empire probes three generations of the Mansurov family (dubbed the “founders,” the “followers,” and the “fighters”) to illustrate the tens