Dr. Alexa von Winning

The dissertation offers a case study of the role played by mobile elite families in Russia’s international involvement in the age of empire. A contribution to the histories of family, empire, and religion, it opens a new perspective on the interplay of the noble family and the imperial state in nineteenth century Russia. It takes into account a crucial feature in the lives of many Russian noblemen and women: their extraordinary mobility, both empire-wide and beyond Russia’s borders. Extensive travels or permanent relocation often left families scattered widely. Many even lacked what scholars consider a crucial constituent of family: the home. While it is to date primarily understood as a domestic institution, the family also served as an important link that connected both individuals and the imperial state to the globalizing modern world.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intimate-empire-9780192844415?prevSortField=8&resultsPerPage=60&sortField=8&lang=en&cc=us

The project examines neoliberal discourses and practices that spread widelythroughout the former socialist countries in the 1990s, tracing theirorigins and outcomes in a wider chronological perspective. The transformation into market democracies after 1989/1991 demanded fundamental reforms of political and economic institutions from the Eastern European countries – but not only that: Academic observers, international political and economic elites, as well as regional decision-makers were convinced that the population also needed adaptation and renewal. With the help of coachings, trainings, and self-help literature, managers and employees were to shed their socialist imprints and prepare themselves for the new capitalist world. They were called to transform themselves from supposedly passive “Soviet people” into self-confident, entrepreneurial participants of the market economy. Picking up these widespread imaginations of “adapting the people”, the project traces the practices and experiences of “becoming capitalist” in Russia and Belarus in late socialism and the first post-socialist decade. While both contemporary elites and the wider population understood “becoming capitalist” as a westernizing endeavor, it included Soviet experiences and imaginations.

• Biografieforschung, insbesondere Familienbiografik
• Religionsgeschichte im 19. und 20.Jh.
• historische Familienforschung

• Intimate Empire. The Mansurov Family in Russia and the Orthodox East, 1855-1936. Oxford 2022 (Oxford Studies in Modern European History). (Dissertation) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intimate-empire-9780192844415?prevSortField=8&resultsPerPage=60&sortField=8&lang=en&cc=us

• gem. mit Klaus Gestwa (Hg.): Themenheft "Aufbruch ins Ungewisse. 30 Jahre nach dem Zerfall der Sowjetunion", Religion und Gesellschaft in Ost und West 12/2021.
• gem. mit Krill A. Vach (Hg.): Pis’ma B.P. Mansurova iz putešestvija po Pravoslavnomu Vostoku, 1857. [Berichte aus dem orthodoxen Osten: Reisebriefe von B.P. Mansurov, 1857]. Moskva 2014.

• Schnittstellen: Familien, Biographien und Empires, in: BIOS. Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufanalysen 35, 1 (2022 [tatsächlich erschienen 02/2024]), S. 7-30.
• Lasst die Schwäne tanzen! Russische Musik für und gegen Krieg, Lügen und Diktatur, in: Osteuropa 73 (2023), S. 189-211.
• Endloser Februar! Russische Musik gegen Krieg, Lügen und Diktatur, in: Zeitgeschichte-online, Februar 2023. (Link)
• Väter und Töchter. Frauen als imperiale Akteurinnen zwischen Religion und Familie im Russländischen Imperium, in: L'Homme. Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 34. Jg., Heft 1, 2023, S. 97-112.
• Fragen zum Krieg: Muss Putin ins Gefängnis?, in: Stuttgarter Kinderzeitung, 04.03.2022, S. 10-11, <https://www.stuttgarter-kinderzeitung.de/inhalt.fragen-zum-krieg-muss-putin-ins-gefaengnis.246c12ca-9065-45ee-81f3-4909057c9161.html> [auch erschienen in: Stuttgarter Zeitung (05.03.2022), Waiblinger Kreiszeitung (05.03.2022)]

• Proseminar: Orthodoxie in Politik und Gesellschaft: Religion während der russischen Modernisierung, 1861-1917 (Wintersemester 2018/19)
• Übung: "Adel verpflichtet – aber wozu? Der russische Adel und die gesellschaftliche Modernisierung des Zarenreichs im 19. Jahrhundert" (Sommersemester 2013)
• Übung: "Russische Orthodoxie als ‚gelebte Religion‘: Glaubenserfahrungen und praktiken während der gesellschaftlichen Modernisierung im Zarenreich, 1861-1917" (Wintersemester 2011/12)
• zusammen mit Boris Belge und Martin Deuerlein, Repetitorium: "Geschichte des russischen Reiches und der Sowjetunion, 18611991" (Wintersemester 2011/12)