Visual Texts, Ceremonial Texts, Texts of Exploration

Front matter

Visual Texts, CEREMONIAL TEXTS, TEXTS or EXPLORATION am o oS Ser oe

COLLECTED ARTICLES

Imperial Encounters in Russian History

Part II THE IMPERIAL MYTH IN ARTISTIC TEXTS

5. Alexei Olenin, Fedor Solntsev, and the Development of a Russian National

Esthetic e a eme a ee S658 wr Oe E He ee Oe a o 101 6. Cultural Metamorphoses of Imperial Myth under Catherine the Great

and Nicholas a e i 49 a a a l ae a cat eB ee he Ge 122 7. Myth and Memory—Imperial Evocations of I8 IZ. Alexander l and the Russian People o eiere soe te a Ea a a s EM Re ee A 145

8. Glas naroda : Visuat Representations of Russian Monarchy in th ie Era ofEmancipation .. se er a r o wer eer ee noore daur 180 9. The “Russian Style” in Church Architecture as Imperial Symbol after 1881 . . 208 10. St. Petersburg the Imperial City and Peter Tchaikovsky . . . o nonoa 238 Part Ill EXPLORATIONS AND EMPIRE

12. Russian Noble Officers and the Ethos of Exploration... . ooo 274

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part IV INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

13. Koshelev, Samarin, and Cherkasskii and the Fate of Liberal Slavophilism . . . 297 Tolstoy and the Perception of Poverty: lolstoy’s at Ihen Must We Do? 15. Property Rights, Populism, and Russian Political Culture... 2... 0... 333

Part V AFTERTHOUGHTS AND REMEMBRANCES

16. Thought, Culture, and Power: Reflections ofa Russianist . . . . 1... 355 17. The Moscow-Tartu School: Review of S. Iu. Nekliudoy, ed.,

Moskovsko-tartuskaia semioticheskaia shkola. Istoriia, vospominaniia,

razmyshleniia (Moscow: Shkola “Iazyki russkoi kuPtury”, 1998)... 2... 377

18. Brief Recollection of Vladimir Nabokov . . ooo a 387 3 arc Raeft: Memoria OUENS a hes, ee PE RG ane Be RES 20. Leopold Haimson: Remembrance on the Occasion of his Memorial Service, Mare 25.2001: ont 4 hs ke BE Kalk ok BE Kae ee ee 393 Indera ae ee en ae Be a hee Be is ey Beep hr ac pe tae ar dh ek S 397

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Figure 1—Empress Anna Ioannovna. Opisanie koronatsii e. v. imp. i samoderzhitsy vserossiiskoi Anny Ioannovny (Moscow, 1730). Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 2—Empress Elizaveta Petrovna. Obstoiatel’noe opisanie torzhestvennykh poriadkov blagopoluchnogo vshestviia v tsarstvuiushchii grad Moskvu i sviashchenneishago koronovaniia imp. Elizavety Petrovny (St. Petersburg, 1744). Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 3—The Crowning Ceremony of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna. Obstoiatel’noe opisanie... Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 4—Empress Catherine II at the “Tsar’s Place.” Engraving after a drawing by Louis de Veilly, Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 5—The Crowning of Emperor Nicholas I. Henry Graf, Vues des cérémonies les plus intéressantes du couronnement de leurs majesties imperials l’empereur Nicholas Ier et Vimpératrice Alexandra a Moscou (Paris, 1928). Library of Congress.

Figure 6—Emperor Alexander II Crowns Empress Maria Aleksandrovna. Opisanie sviashchenneishago koronovaniia... imperatora Aleksandra Vtorago i imperatritsy Marii Aleksandrovny vsei Rossii (n.p., 1856). Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 7—The Crowning of Emperor Alexander III. Opisanie sviashchennago koronovaniia... imperatora Aleksandra Tret’ego i gosudaryni imperatritsy Marii Fedorovny vsei Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1883). Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

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Figure 8—Emperor Nicholas II Crowns Empress Aleksandra Fedorovna. V. S. Krivenko, ed., Koronatsionnyi sbornik: Koronovanie v Moskve, 14 maia 1896 (St. Petersburg, 1899). Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 1—Muslim Delegates from the Caucasus. Vues des cérémonies les plus intéressantes du couronnement de leurs majesties imperials l'empereur Nicholas Ier et Vimpératrice Alexandra a Moscou. Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 2—Triumphal Coronation Entry to Moscow of Alexander II and Maria Aleksandrovna. Russkii khudozhestvennyi listok, 1856.

Figure 3— Caucasian Deputies at the Coronation of Alexander II. Opisanie sviashchenneishago koronovaniia... imperatora Aleksandra Vtorago i imperatritsy Marii Aleksandrovny vsei Rossii. Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 4—Kirgiz Huntsman—Coronation Album of Alexander II. Opisanie sviashchenneishago koronovaniia... imperatora Aleksandra Vtorago i imperatritsy Marii Aleksandrovny vsei Rossii. Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 5—Deputies of “Asiatic peoples under the power of Russia.” Koronatsionnyi sbornik: Koronovanie v Moskve, 14 maia 1896. Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 6—Deputies from Khiva—Coronation Album of Nicholas II. Koronatsionnyi sbornik: Koronovanie v Moskve, 14 maia 1896. Slavic and Baltic Collection, New York Public Library.

Figure 1—Tercentenary Coin. Collection of author.

Figure 2—Nicholas II as Huntsman. A. Elchaninov, The Tsar and His People (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1914).

Figure 3—Nicholas II in Soldiers’ Uniform holding Tsarevich Alexei. A. Elchaninov, The Tsar and His People.

Figure 4—Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich among the Poteshnye (third from left). A. Elchaninov, The Tsar and His People.

Figure 5—Nicholas II Tastes Sailors’ Ration on the Yacht, The Standard. A. Elchaninov, The Tsar and His People.

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Figure 1—Fedor Solntsev—Meeting of Prince Sviatoslav Igorevich with Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimisces. Copyright © 2013, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Figure 2—Fedor Solntsey—Window Frame from the Terem Palace. Drevnosti rossiiskago gosudarstva (Moscow: Tipografiia Aleksandra Semena, 1849).

Figure 3—Fedor Solntsev—The “Monomakh Cap.” Drevnosti rossiiskago gosudarstva.

Figure 4—Fedor Solntsev—Orb from the “Grand Regalia” of Tsar Michael. Drevnosti rossiiskago gosudarstva.

Figure 5—Fedor Solntsev—“Helmet of Alexander Nevskii” Drevnosti rossiiskago gosudarstva.

Figure 1—Ivan Terebenev—The Russian Hercules. 1812 v karikature (Moscow: Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War, 1999).

Figure 2—Russkaia Azbuka-Letter “B”—The French Eat Crow. http://www. museum.ru/museum/1812/English/Library/Azbuka/index.html

Figure 3—Russkaia Azbuka-Letter “F’—The French like Mice are Caught in a Trap. http://www.museum.ru/museum/1812/English/Library/ Azbuka/index.html

Figure 4—Alexander I’s triumphal entry into Paris. Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda v khudozhestvennykh i istoricheskikh pamiatnikakh iz sobranii Ermitazha (Leningrad: Gos. Ermitazh, 1963).

Figure 5—Prayer Service on La Place de la Concorde, March 29, 1814. N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr Pervyi, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg: A. S. Suvorin, 1899), 289.

Figure 6—Alexander Vitberg—Project for Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, Moscow. Zhivopisnoe obozrenie, Vol. 4, 1838.

Figure 7—Dedication of Alexandrine Column, August 30, 1834. A. Ricard de Montferrand, Plans et détails du monument consacré a la mémoire de l’Empereur Alexandre (Paris: Thierry, 1838).

Figure 8—“Veterans of 1812” at the Borodino Centennial. L'Illustration.

Figure 9—Nicholas II following Procession of the Cross at the Borodino Centennial, August 25, 1912. L'Illustration.

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Figure 1— Nicholas I Crossing the Danube. Stoletie Voennogo Ministerstva: Imperatorskaia glavnaia kvartira; istoriia gosudarevoi svity; tsarstvovanie Imperatora Nikolaia I (St. Petersburg: Voennoe Ministerstvo, 1908).

Figure 2— Alexander II followed by Grand Dukes Nicholas Aleksandrovich and Alexander Aleksandrovich. RNB, Print Division.

Figure 3— Alexander I, Maria Aleksandrovna, and Grand Duke Nicholas Aleksandrovich. GARF.

Figure 4— Vasilii Demut-Malinovskii—Ivan Susanin Monument, Kostroma. Vsemirnaia illiustratsiia, No. 2, 1883.

Figure 5— M. A. Zichy—Alexander II’s Coronation Entry into Moscow. Alexander II Coronation Album. Opisanie sviashchenneishago koronovaniia... imperatora Aleksandra Vtorago i imperatritsy Marii Aleksandrovny vsei Rossii.

Figure 6— Vasilii Timm—“The Emancipation of the Peasants.” Russkii khudozhestvennyi listok, 1862.

Figure 7— “The Voice of the Russian People.” New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira Wallach Division of Arts, Prints, and Photographs.

Figure 8— “The Unforgettable Day of February 19, 1861.” GARF.

Figure9— “The Presentation of Bread and Salt to the Tsar.” New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira Wallach Division of Arts, Prints, and Photographs.

Figure 10— “The Solemn Presentation (torzhestvennoe podnesenie) of Bread and Salt to the Tsar.” GARF.

Figure 1I— M.O. Mikeshin—Monument to Millennium of Russia, Novgorod. Niva, 1872.

Figure 12—“The Dedication of the Millennium Monument.” New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira Wallach Division of Arts, Prints, and Photographs.

Figure 13—“The Festive Dedication of the Millennium Monument.” New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira Wallach Division of Arts, Prints, and Photographs.

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Figure 1—Constantine Thon—Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, Moscow. Vsemirnaia Illiustratsiia, 1879.

Figure 2—Alfred Parland—The Cathedral of the Resurrection (Christ on the Blood), St. Petersburg. A. A. Parland, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova (St. Petersburg: R. Golike and S. Vil’borg, 1909).

Figure 3—M. Preobrazhenskii—Alexander Nevskii Cathedral, Reval. M. Preobrazhenskii, Revel’skii Pravoslavnyi Aleksandro-Nevskii Sobor (St. Petersburg: A. E. Vineke, 1902).

Figure 4— Church and Bell Tower, Borki. Niva, 1894.

Figure 5—Leontii Benois, Church for 2000 people, Gusev. Zodchii, 1893.

Figure 6—Parish Church, Estland. Al’bom vidov tserkvei Estliandskoi gubernii, sooruzhennykh pod vedeniem Revel’skogo nabliudatel’nogo komiteta po postroike tserkvei, prichtovykh i shkol’nykh zdanii (Reval: n. p., n.d.)

Figure 7—Alexander Gogen—Orthodox Church, Port Arthur. Stroitel’, 1902

Figure 8—Stepan Krichinskii—Tercentenary Church, St. Petersburg. GARF, fond 601.

Figure 1—A. Ricard de Montferrand—The Alexandrine Column on Palace Square, St. Petersburg. Montferrand, Plans et détails du monument consacré a la mémoire de l’Empereur Alexandre (Paris: Thierry, 1838).

Figure 2—Boris Orlovskii—Statue of Alexander I. Author’s photograph.

Figure 3—Chariot with Figure of Winged Victory. Author’s photograph.

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Permissions

1. (with Edward Kasinec) “The Mythology of Empire: Imperial Russian Coronation Albums.” Biblion 1, No. 1 (Fall 1992): 77-100.

2. “Ceremony and Empire in the Evolution of Russian Monarchy.” In Kazan, Moscow, St. Petersburg: Multiple Faces of the Russian Empire; Kazan, Moskva, Peterburg: Rossiiskaia imperiia vzgliadom iz raznykh uglov, edited by Catherine Evtuhov, Boris Gasparov, Aleksandr Ospovat, and Mark Von Hagen (Moscow: O.G.L, 1997), 23-39.

3. “Signs of Empire: Exotic Peoples at Imperial Russian Coronations.” English original of “Simvoly imperii: Ekzoticheskie narody v tseremonii koronatsii rossiiskikh imperatorov.” In Novaia imperskaia istoriia post-sovetskogo prostranstva [Biblioteka zhurnala “Ab Imperio”], edited by I. Gerasimov et al. (Kazan: Tsentr issledovanii natsionalizma i imperii, 2004), 409-426.

4. “Publicizing the Imperial Image in 1913.” In Self and Story in Russian History, edited by Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 94-119. Copyright 2000, Cornell University Press. Used by permission of the publisher.

5. “Solntsev, Olenin, and the Development of a Russian National Esthetic.” In Visualizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev and Crafting a National Past [Russian history and culture, v. 4], edited by Cynthia Hyla Whittaker (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 17-40. With thanks to Brill Publishers.

6. Paper delivered at conference “After the Storm. The Historical Memory upon 1812 in Russia and Europe” at the German Historical Institute in Moscow, May 28th-30th 2012.

7. "Myth and Memory—Imperial Evocations of 1812." Paper delivered at the conference "After the Storm. The Historical Memory upon 1812 in Russia and Europe“ at the German Historical Institute in Moscow, May 28-30, 2012.

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PERMISSIONS

8. “Glas naroda: vizual’nye representatsii rossiiskoi monarkhii v epokhu emansipatsii.” In Petr Andreevich Zaionchkovskii: Sbornik statei i vospominanii k stoletiiu istorika, edited by L.G. Zakharova, S.V. Mironenko, and T. Emmons (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008), 429-450.

9. “The Russian Style’ in Church Architecture as Imperial Symbol after 1881.” In Architectures of Russian Identity: 1500 to the Present, edited by James Cracraft and Dan Rowland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 101-116. Copyright 2003, Cornell University Press. Used by permission of the publisher.

10. “St. Petersburg the Imperial City and Peter Tchaikovsky.” Keynote Address, Carnegie Hall Tchaikovsky Festival, October 15, 2012.

11. “Texts of Exploration and Russia’s European Identity.” Reprinted by permission from Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825, ed. Cynthia Hyla Whittaker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 90-117. Copyright 2003 by the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

12. “Russian Noble Officers and the Ethos of Exploration.” Russian History/ Histoire russe Vol. 35, Nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 2008): 181-197.

13. “Koshelev, Samarin, and Cherkassky and the Fate of Liberal Slavophilism.” Slavic Review 21, no. 2 (Summer 1962): 261-279. Article based on “Koshelev, Samarin, and Cherkasskii: Three Views of Russia’s Political Future” (A.M. Thesis, University of Chicago, 1960).

14. “Tolstoy and the Perception of Poverty: Tolstoy's “What Then Must We Do?” Rossija=Russia. Studi e Ricerche a Cura di Vittorio Strada Torino 4 (1980): 119-131.

15. “Property Rights, Populism, and Russian Political Culture.” In Civil Rights in Imperial Russia, edited by Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 13-32. By permission of Oxford University Press.

16. “Thought, Culture, and Power: Reflections of a Russianist.” Modern Intellectual History vol. 5, No. 1 (April 2008): 121-140.

17. Review: Moskovsko-tartuskaia semioticheskaia shkola. Istoriia, vospominaniia, vazmyshleniia, edited by Sergei Iur’evich Nekliudov (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 1998); Kritika 1, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 821-829.

18. “Recollection of Vladimir Nabokov”, English version of “Vospominaniia o Vladimire Nabokove,” Zvezda, No. 4 (1999): 156-157.

20. “Leopold Haimson” http://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/haimson/?page_ id=11

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Abbreviations

GARF—Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii RGIA—Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv

Scenarios of Power—Richard Wortman, Volume 1, Scenarios of Power: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Volume 2, Scenarios of Power: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

RNB—Manuscript Division, Rossiiskaia Natsional’naia Biblioteka.

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Introduction Texts of Representation

=> oer samehe first volume of my articles, Russian Monarchy: Representation and

Rule, emphasized the central role of symbolic representation in the political culture of Russian monarchy. In Russia, the presentation of the emperor introduced by Peter the Great as superordinate hero wielding absolute power for the benefit of the state persisted as a precondition of monarchical rule for two subsequent centuries. With Peter, the act of borrowing and displaying forms of western imagery became an attribute of power.! The emulation of foreign models produced what Louis Marin called a “doubling effect” of representation—removing the monarch from his local confines and locating him in a realm of irresistible and efficacious enlightened rule.* The representation of the monarch became paramount, transcending considerations of law, prudence, or rational argument, and shaping the practices and attitudes of governmental officials to accommodate a culture of power.

Official texts exalted Russian rulers in mythical narratives of heroic conquest and transformation. Articles in this volume focus on such texts as artifacts of a monarchical culture: explicit and unequivocal statements of political truths that set the tone and established the goals of each reign in narratives I have termed “scenarios.” The laws of the realm carried symbolic weight, opening with preambles that set the provisions in the context of myth, justifying the decrees, statutes, and rules in terms of the designs of the current reign. Ceremonial texts—program books, later accounts in newspapers and

1 See Scenarios of Power, 1: 14-15. (See Abbreviations). 2 Louis Marin, Le portrait du roi (Paris: Les éditions de minuit, 1981), 9-13.

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INTRODUCTION illustrated journals—presented the events of the court in accounts that may or may not have corresponded to their actual performance and defined their meanings. Painting and architecture were called upon to evoke an imagined political landscape. For the historian, this complex of texts gives a sense of the verbal and visual universe of Russian monarchy and how its rulers envisioned the potentialities of the Russian state.

The articles in the first two parts of this volume, and to a certain extent in the third, are devoted to the interplay between the mythical narrative of the regime and the texts that gave it visual expression. Visual imagery and presentation over time has nearly vanished from historical accounts of Russian monarchy. My research soon made it clear that Russian monarchy inhabited a multifaceted visual culture. In the 1980s, when I was unable to visit the Soviet Union, I encountered numerous published visual sources in western repositories that gave vivid evidence of the public face of the monarchy. The Russian collection of the Helsinki Slavonic Library contained a wealth of illustrated journals and books that had not left an imprint on historical accounts. In 1984, after Edward Kasinec assumed the position of Director of the now lamented Slavonic and Baltic Division of the New York Public Library, he set about finding visual sources languishing ignored in the stacks. He brought the Division’s collection of Russian imperial coronation albums to my attention, and we collaborated on the first scholarly analysis of their evolution and significance.

My encounter with these vivid and dramatic scenes opened new insights into the thinking and selfimages of Russian monarchs and the figurative idioms they used to make their scenarios known. The texts disclosed what Steven Lukes has described as cognitive maps of the political order, showing the “particular models or political paradigms of society and how it functions” that distinguish political ritual.’ The illustrations revealed a supernal world of ceremony, demonstrating the emperor’s mastery of the esthetic sphere, suggesting that he was not bound by the limits of the everyday or subject to mundane judgment. Elaborately choreographed parades and dignified processions displayed his powers of control and direction—a simulacrum of a state presumably directed by the ruler’s will. Crowds lining avenues

3 Steven Lukes, Essays in Social Theory (London: MacMillan, 1977), 68.

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TEXTS OF REPRESENTATION and filling squares attested to his capacity to maintain “exemplary order” and to win popular support. Altogether these texts illustrated what Clifford Geertz described as “the power of grandeur to organize the world.”

Art and architecture were mobilized to evoke the transcendence of the monarchy and to make its presence felt throughout Russia. Paintings produced the “doubling” effect that intensified the presence of the subject of monarch. “The device of representation transforms force into might (puissance), force into power (pouvoir),” Louis Marin wrote. “The king is only truly king, that is the monarch, in images.”> Imposing palaces and spacious parks likened his residences to the realm of the gods and classical heroes, whose figures were exalted in commanding statues; churches were constructed that brought a reinvented past into the landscape of contemporary Russia.

The meanings of the illustrations, however, were not self-evident: they had to be defined and explained. Ceremonial texts revealed the intent that the regime sought explicitly to convey—first to the court elite, and then to the broader layers of society subordinated to in the state and participating in its culture—what Christian Jouhaud, in his description of Louis XIII’s triumphal entry into Paris in December 1628, characterized as an “official version of a celebration of power.” We observe what has been called “the publicization” of ceremonies: ceremonial texts made intent explicit, to be honored publically and shared by the governing elite. Comparison with earlier such texts also reveals continuities and changes in the ceremonies and their modes of performance. Imperial ceremonies were not static: texts defined their meanings to suit the goals and imagery of the current ruler, making

4 Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 102.

5 Louis Marin, Le portrait du roi, 11-12.

é Jouhaud writes of “the primacy of discourse, of the written word and of knowledge over the traditional ritual of the entry” (Christian Jouhaud, “Printing the Event: From La Rochelle to Paris,” in The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. Roger Chartier [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989], 301-2). For other examples, see J. LeGoff, “A Coronation Program for the Age of St. Louis: The Ordo of 1250,” in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. Janos M. Bak (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), 46-57; J-C. Bonne, “The Manuscript of the Ordo of 1250 and Its Uluminations,” in Bak, Coronations, 58-71.

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INTRODUCTION known his scenario of power. The ceremonies then entered into a ceremonial tradition, clothing change as fidelity to the mythic history of the dynasty.

Commentaries in program books gave forceful statements of the significance of ceremonies. Coronation albums explained the meanings of the rites in the cathedral and the processions and celebrations before and after. Other texts, for example A. Ricard de Montferrand’s explanation of the significance of the dedication of his Alexandrine column in 1834, or the historical introductions to Fedor Solntsev’s illustrations in the Antiquities of the Russian State, followed the same practice. In the nineteenth century, journals, many of them illustrated, and newspapers assumed this role. In a culture ruled by a strict, even often arbitrary censorship, print expressions, not only in official organs, gave pointed indicators to the official meanings of events. On the other hand, the Khodynka field massacre in the midst of celebrations of Nicholas IIs coronation provided the occasion for both statements of public sympathy from the tsar, and candid accounts of what seemed his insensitive attendance at a ball given by the French ambassador, all of this widely available in the Russian as well as the international press. In this setting, the tsar’s scenario began to unfold against conflicting narratives that called into question the image of spiritual and moral supremacy intrinsic to the imperial myth.

My work does not deal with audience response, except to the extent that it was dictated by the scenario itself: in an authoritarian state the response is a necessary element of the performance. The central constitutive element of official representation from the reign of Peter the Great was a myth of conquest. The rule of the monarch found its principal grounds for sovereign power not in divine mandate, or dynastic inheritance, though these principles were also invoked, but performance and representation of his symbolic transcendence, which subsumed the onlookers in the drama. The conquest motif loomed large in tsarist ceremonies and imagery and the emotional force of the presentations was indeed potent, prompting an affect captured by the word torzhestvennost’. Torzhestvennost’ may be translated as solemnity, or festivity, but it really means a combination of the two—the solemn and the festive, or perhaps solemn festivity, evoking the force of grandeur. Torzhestvo also means victory, and it carries the exaltation of triumph. The evocation of torzhestvennost’ exalted the state and its elite by inspiring what has been

TEXTS OF REPRESENTATION described as a “rapture of submission” a powerful emotional bond between the distant ruler and his lowly subjects.” Official accounts describe this vicarious sharing of the rapture of conquest and submission, the onlookers struck dumb, shedding tears of admiration and sympathy (See Articles 7 and 10).

My articles in this volume analyze specific cultural texts that figured significantly in the scenarios of Russian rulers.8 Article One, “The Mythology of Empire: Imperial Russian Coronation Albums,” written with Edward Kasinec, brings Russian coronation albums into a historical narrative that I later elaborated at length in my Scenarios of Power. Article 2, “Ceremony and Empire in the Evolution of Russian Monarch,” draws on similar texts to understand the presentations that elevated the tsar as conqueror and embodiment of empire. Article 3, “Signs of Empire: Exotic Peoples at Imperial Coronations,” published originally in Russian, and slightly modified, focuses on the albums to trace the process of absorption of non- Russian nationalities into the rites and festivities of the coronation, which until the late nineteenth century were presented as events consecrating the Russian monarch in the presence of a westernized, principally Great Russian elite. Article 4, “Publicizing the Imperial Image,” discusses the new forms and media representing Nicholas IIs appeal for mass support, souvenirs, popular biography, postage stamps and commemorative coins and medals, and film—the devices of modern publicity utilized by European monarchies in order to assert his popularity in competition with the Duma—and to display his direct rapport with the people.

Articles in Part II address the role of art and architecture in the creation of a cultural ambience for each scenario that established the esthetic supremacy of the monarchy. The emperor drew on the talents of poets, artists, and architects to set the cultural tone for each reign—the cultural interlocutors of the monarchy. Among of the many artistic texts that Edward Kasinec rescued from the Slavonic Division’s stacks was the six-volume compilation of watercolors by Fedor Solntsev, The Antiquities of the Russian

State, published in 1849. Kasinec and Wendy Salmond then organized

7 The term, “rapture of submission,” (vostorg poddanstva) has roots in religious literature, B. I. Berman, “Chitatel’ zhitiia,” in Khudozhestvennyi iazyk srednevekov ia (Moscow, 1982), 166-7, 179.

8 — In those articles previously published in English, I have made only editorial changes.

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INTRODUCTION an exhibition in the spring of 2007 and a symposium about Solntsev and his influence, which culminated in a conference volume edited by Cynthia Hyla Whittaker? I argue that The Antiquities represented a major component of Nicholas’s scenario, which is described in Article 5, “Fedor Solntsev, Alexei Olenin, and the Development of a Russian National Esthetic.” Article 6, part of which overlaps with Article 5, compares two examples of the role of poets, musicians, and artists in fashioning a foundation tale that would elevate the monarchy in the esthetic idiom of its time, first by Catherine the Great, the second by Nicholas I. Article 7, “Myth and Memory—Imperial Evocations of 1812,” describes how official representation, invoking artistic, architectural, as well as ceremonial texts defined and redefined the memory of 1812 in terms of the changing settings of the myth.

Article 8, “Glas naroda: Visual Representations of Russian Monarchy in the Emancipation Era,” shows examples of officially inspired lubki, popular prints that were issued after the reform to demonstrate the hoped for the popular devotion and gratitude to Alexander II presumed in his scenario of love. I was introduced to these prints by the work of Professor Larissa Zakharova of Moscow State University and with the help of Sergei Mironenko, the director of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). The strange but striking evocations of meetings, actual and imagined, between tsar and grateful peasants cast in the idiom of the lubki gave expression to the lofty expectations of social concord entertained in official circles during the reforms.

During the nineteenth century, the construction and dedication of revival churches provided emphatic statements of the rulers’ understanding of the meaning of Russia’s religious past in the light of their scenarios. Article 9, “The Russian Style’ in Church Architecture as Imperial Symbol after 1881,” describes the regime’s mobilization of architects to appropriate the principle of Larchitecture parlante to validate the regime’s claims to Russia’s past during the reign of Alexander III. Musical compositions provided the melodies and cadences that elevated the monarchy through the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Article 10, “St. Petersburg the Imperial City and Peter Tchaikovsky,”

? Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, ed., Visualizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev and Crafting a National Past [Russian history and culture, v. 4] (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 17-40.

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TEXTS OF REPRESENTATION my keynote Address for the Carnegie Hall Tchaikovsky Festival, in October, 2012, shows how forcefully Tchaikovsky’s music resonated with spirit of torzhestvennost’ and the ethos of the monarchy he revered.

Part III relates my later encounter with Russian texts of exploration, also occurring in the precincts of the Slavonic division, in conjunction with the splendid exhibition, “Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825,” organized by Kasinec and Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, at the New York Public Library in 2003. Article 11, written for the accompanying exhibition volume, “Texts of Exploration and Russia’s European Identity” explores the role of Catherine the Great and Alexander I in promoting both continental and maritime expeditions to the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, Alaska, and the Pacific, on the basis of diaries of naval officers who captained sea voyages to the Pacific and around the world.!° Article 12, “Russian Noble Officers and the Ethos of Exploration,” continues the story, focusing on explorations by Peter Semenov (Tian-Shanskii) and Michael Veniukov sponsored by the Imperial Geographical Society, which was established and thrived under the patronage of the Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich.

Part IV goes back to my early encounters with texts of the intelligentsia. My first published work, Article 13, “Koshelev, Samarin, and Cherkassky and the Fate of Liberal Slavophilism,” taken from a section of my Master's Thesis, “Koshelev, Samarin, and Cherkasskii: Three Views of Russia’s Political Future” (University of Chicago, 1960), discusses the liberal ideas disclosed in writings of three Russian Slavophiles who were actively involved in the process of emancipation. It reveals my early focus on personal texts to reveal the dilemmas that underpinned their political outlooks. Their failure to find an institutional basis for political progress in Russia prefigured similar quandaries throughout the nineteenth century and indeed resurfacing today. Reflecting my early interest in psychology, Article 14, “Tolstoy and the Perception of Poverty: Tolstoy’s “What Then Must We Do?”” examines the text as an expression of the personal crisis prompted by the author’s frustrated efforts to cope with the painful scenes of poverty that confronted him in Moscow and his inability to find sympathy or support in Russian society.

10 Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825, ed. Cynthia Hyla Whittaker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

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