empire, ‘would mark ‘‘a parting of ways’’ among the nobility between frustrated Europeanized reformers and the unreconstructed conservative majority’ (281). Matters would come to a head with the death of Alexander and the Decembrist uprisings. In this regard O’Meara’s discussion of Decembrism is a particularly welcome attempt to contextualize the scope, scale, and nature of a phenomenon – he is reluctant to call it a movement – that has achieved near mythic status in Russian history. In this fine study O’Meara concludes that the ‘low political culture’ and essential conservatism of much of the nobility ultimately thwarted any fundamental reform of the Russian empire, either by an ambivalent tsar or progressive noble servitors. A slightly more charitable interpretation would be that the majority of Russia’s nobles, as O’Meara himself admits, recognized that any serious reform of the state would threaten their current privileges, status, and power over their serfs. Appeals to morality, Enlightenment principles, and/or the danger of peasant rebellion were in the end no match for sheer self-interest, while the shock of Decembrism ensured that no comprehensive projects of reform from above would be attempted for another thirty years.

中文翻译：

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Jorun Poettering，移民商人：17 世纪汉堡和葡萄牙的贸易、民族和宗教

帝国，“将标志着沮丧的欧洲化改革者和未重建的保守多数之间的贵族之间的“分道扬镳”（281）。随着亚历山大的死和十二月党人的起义，事情会变得一团糟。在这方面，奥米拉 (O'Meara) 对十二月运动的讨论是将一种现象的范围、规模和性质置于语境中的特别受欢迎的尝试——他不愿称其为运动——这种现象在俄罗斯历史上已达到近乎神话般的地位。在这项精美的研究中，奥米拉得出结论，许多贵族的“低级政治文化”和基本的保守主义最终阻碍了俄罗斯帝国的任何根本性改革，无论是矛盾的沙皇还是进步的贵族仆从。一个稍微更慈善的解释是，正如奥米拉本人所承认的那样，俄罗斯的大多数贵族，承认任何严肃的国家改革都会威胁到他们目前对农奴的特权、地位和权力。诉诸道德、启蒙原则和/或农民造反的危险最终都无法与纯粹的自身利益相提并论，而十二月主义的冲击确保了再过三十年不会尝试自上而下的全面改革计划。