Stephen Vincent Bittner
California State University (Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609)
FA-251394-17
Fellowships for University Teachers
Research Programs
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[Grant products]
Totals:
$50,400 (approved)
$50,400 (awarded)
Grant period:
9/1/2017 – 8/31/2018
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Wine Production and Culture in Tsarist Russia
A book-length study on the wine economies and cultures of the Black Sea during Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union.
"Whites and Reds: Wine in the Lands of Tsar and Commissar" examines the two centuries of interaction between Russia and the wine economies and cultures of the Black Sea--Bessarabia (Moldova), Crimea, and Georgia. After the Russian Empire annexed these territories in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wine became an increasingly important part of Russian and Soviet culture--as a luxury item, a mark of refinement, and an object of connoisseurship. Consequently, by the mid-1980s the Soviet Union was the world's fourth largest producer of wine, trailing only Spain, France, and Italy. "Whites and Reds" contributes to two of the most active arenas of debate in the historiography of Russia and the Soviet Union: studies of imperialism and consumption. I intend to use an NEH Fellowship to complete the research and writing of this untold and significant history.
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