State Internal Sovereignty as Performative: The Bolshevik Uprising in the CER Alienation Zone in 1917

Jun Cui, University of Wisconsin-Madison

How does the symbolic power of an imperial metropole persist across revolutionary rupture? This paper examines how newly established state agents in the metropole maintain internal sovereignty over imperial peripheries in moments of political upheaval. Sociological accounts have argued that performative recognition constitutes a key mechanism through which revolutionary states establish external sovereignty. Building on this insight, I argue that performative recognition by international audiences of central state agents can also secure internal sovereignty, that is, symbolic power over imperial peripheries in the absence of effective military or administrative control. I develop this argument through an analysis of political competition among Russian factions over the administration of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) and its associated alienation zone during the 1917 Russian Revolution. Revolutionary turmoil disrupted both the imperial center and its peripheries. While central agents of the emerging Bolshevik regime enacted claims to external sovereignty—albeit contested by foreign intervention—their communications with peripheral actors simultaneously performed internal sovereignty. In this context, processes of performative representation and recognition persisted among local actors who sought to position themselves as legitimate state agents. The CER’s ambiguous legal status compelled international actors to reinterpret claims to authority in a setting where imperial symbolic power endured despite institutional collapse. Although Bolshevik efforts to assert control over the CER failed in 1917, these struggles reproduced a metropole–periphery relationship that later facilitated Sino-Soviet diplomatic negotiations.

See paper

 Presented in Session 196. Revolutionary Writing, Identity, and Social Discourse