NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION, PLACE NAMES, DATES, AND ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS

THIS BOOK USES THE SIMPLIFIED Library of Congress transliteration system when identifying Russian and Ukrainian names, sources, and institutions. However, well-known names or places are spelled in their common English usage, such as Dostoyevsky (not Dostoevskii) or Moscow (not Moskva). All translations are mine if not otherwise noted.

Due to the multiethnicity of the region, contemporaries in central and eastern Europe often used different names for one and the same place. I usually use the place names that were most common at the time. However, this is a matter of perspective—and sometimes of history politics. To remedy this confusion, this book includes a glossary of those place names with different spellings or forms. In the text, I also indicate today’s place names in parentheses upon their first mentioning.

Original documents from imperial Russian times often indicate dates in the Old Style (Julian calendar), which was twelve days (nineteenth century) or thirteen days (twentieth century) behind the New Style (Gregorian calendar). Sometimes, both Old and New Styles are indicated. In the book, I tried to use only the New Style whenever possible.

The Polish administrative unit on the regional level was and still is called województwo (voivodeship). The Prussian administrative unit on the regional level was called Provinz (province). The Russian administrative unit on the regional level was called guberniia (governorate). For the sake of readability, I consistently use province when referring to one of these entities.