Enduring Russian Imperialism and Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of the Il'in Cartographic Firm in St. Petersburg, 1859-1918 Steven Seegel Professor of History, University of Northern Colorado (USA) The imperial Russian cartographic firm of Il’in, Pol’toratskii & Co., established in 1859, produced exceptionalist Russophone maps by cooperating with prominent state ministries during Tsar Alexander II’s Great Reforms. The firm carried out the production of maps for practically every major organ and society in late Imperial Russia. Established in the spirit of literacy, the aristocratic army Captain Aleksei Afinogenovich Il’in (1832-89) and his colleague Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Pol’toratskii of the Army’s General Staff together set up the firm in the heart of St. Petersburg. The cartographic firm was the first of its kind in Russia, a modern workshop and publishing house. It was similar to those in Habsburg Austria and old Poland-Lithuania in the late 18 th century, and to Italian, German, English, French and Dutch commercial shops centuries earlier. The two founders conceived of the firm as early as January 1858. They wanted to print a military historical atlas of 1812-5, some years before the publication of Leo Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace (1865-69), to use maps to educate the Russian population and commemorate Russia’s historic victory over Napoléon and the Grand Armée as a kind of post-Crimean War national and imperial regeneration. Removed from Amsterdam, London, or Vienna, Il’in and Pol’toratskii did not have successful precedents of commercial cartography to draw from, and the reign of Nicholas I had been one of pre-emptive censorship by the Third Section. Il’in attempted to bridge a wide chasm between the rossiiskii state and an emancipated peasantry, to serve the demands of growing military topography and infrastructural development. The firm profited from European governmentality in sorting racially out imperial lands and peoples, but their usages of historical and ethnic truth claims to territory were enduringly Russian.