Russia’s Enclosure: A History of the World’s Longest Border

In his current project, Russia’s Enclosure (under contract with Oxford), Werth investigates the long and complex history of Russia’s border, spanning three continents from the earliest boundary-making in the medieval period through the present. Based on a growing secondary literature across disciplines and archival research, the project asks both how official Russia conceptualized and sought to reinforce the country’s physical limits, and how sundry historical actors and institutions—from border guards and customs officers to pilgrims and nomads—experienced the border and sometimes defied its injunctions. Werth proposes that borders and border-making implicate a wide range of issues central to both history and the present: geopolitics and diplomacy, sovereignty and citizenship, mobility and migration, violence and coercion, commerce and contraband, technology and intelligence. Russia’s Enclosure will integrate these diverse realms of inquiry into scholarship accessible to a broad readership concerned with Eurasia’s past and present.