Tales from Imperial Russia

Between 1905 and 1912, the monk Iliodor (Trufanov) set Russia ablaze with his inflammatory right-wing rhetoric, causing scandal after scandal. In this episode, we follow Iliodor's remarkable life from humble beginnings to would-be assassin of Grigorii Rasputin.

Sources

S. Dixon, ‘The “Mad Monk” Iliodor in Tsaritsyn’ in S. Dixon, ed., Personality and Place in Russian Culture: Essays in Memory of Lindsey Hughes (London: Modern Humanities Research Association for the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 2010), pp. 377-415.

D. Smith, Rasputin (London: Pan Macmillan, 2017).

M. Iu. Krapivin, ‘Deiatel’nost’ S. M. Trufanova (byshego ieromonakha Iliodora) v Sovetskoi Rossii (1918-1922) v sviazi s formirovaniem gosudarstvennoi politiki v otnoshenii pravoslavnoi tserkvi’, Vestnik tserkovnoi istorii, no. 1/2 (21/22), 2011, pp. 137-149.

In 1796, the merchant Ivan Tolchenov was secreted in his magnificent mansion in Dmitrov, hiding from his creditors. This episode seeks to understand how Ivan lost his enormous fortune, along the way shedding light into the lives of Russian merchants in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Source

David L. Ransel, A Russian Merchant’s Tale. The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tolchenov, Based on His Diary (Bloomington and Indianopolis: Indiana University Press, 2009)

The colour photographs of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii fascinated the imperial public of the early 20th century, persuading Emperor Nicholas II to sponsor expeditions across the empire to chronicle in glorious colour daily life in his realm. In this episode, we follow the life of Prokudin-Gorskii, while also considering the development of photography in the Russian Empire.

Photographs

For the Library of Congress' digitalisation of Prokudin-Gorskii's pictures, please see: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=prok

A good selection of Karl Bulla's photographs can be found on his Wikipedia page: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D1%83%D0%BB%D0%BB%D0%B0,_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87

Sources

Rossiiskaia imperiia v tsvetnykh fotografiiakh S.M. Prokudina-Gorskogo / The Russian Empire in S. M. Prokudin-Gorsky’s Color Photographs, 1906-1916 (Moscow: Al’pina Pablisher/Krasivaia kniga, 2021).

W. C. Brumfield, Journeys through the Russian Empire: The Photographic Legacy of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2020).

I. Tchmyreva and E. Berezner, ‘History of Russian Photography, 1900-1938’ in Vaclav Macek, ed., The History of European Photography. 1900-2000. Vol. 1: 1900-1939 (Bratislava: Central European House of Photography, 2010), 510-553.

L. A. Gerd and K. A. Vakh, ‘Odin maloizveztnyi russkii fotograf XIX veka: Gavriil Vasil’evich Riumin’, Novoe iskusstvoznanie, no. 4 (2019), pp. 32-41.

M. Hughes, ‘Every Picture Tells Some Stories: Photographic Illustrations in British Travel Accounts of Russia in the Eve of World War One’, The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 92, no. 4 (2014), pp. 674-703.

C. Evtuhov, ‘A. O. Karelin and Provincial Bourgeois Photography,’ in V. A. Kivelson and J. Neuberger, eds., Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2008), pp. 113-119.

J. E. Bowlt, ‘Life Painting and Light Painting: Photography and the Early Russian Avant-Garde’, History of Photography, vol. 24, no. 4 (2000), 273-282.

N. Raab, ‘Visualising Civil Society: The Fireman and the Photographer in Late Imperial Russia, 1900-1914’, History of Photography, vol. 31, no. 2 (2007), pp. 151-164.

N. A. Stanulevich, ‘K istorii sudebnoi ekspertizy dokumentov v Rossii na rubezhe XIX-XX vekov’, Fotografiia. Izobrazhenie. Dokument, no. 4 (2013), pp. 4-6.

T. A. Titova, E. G. Guschina, and M. V. Vyatchina, ‘Look into the Camera: Scientists and Photographers in the Kazan Province in the End of the XIX Century’, Man in India, 96(3), (2016), pp. 821-828.

M. Dikovitskaya, ‘Central Asia in Early Photographs: Russian Colonial Attitudes and Visual Culture’ in U. Tomohiko, ed., Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia (Sapporo, 2007), pp. 99-133.

Tsvetnye oskolki imperii: Diapozitivy Karla Elofa Berggrena. 1900 – nachalo 1910-kh / Colour Fragments of an Empire: Carl Elof Berggren’s Photographic Lantern Slides. 1900 – Early 1910s (Moscow: Kuchkovo Pole Muzeon, 2020).

Andrei and Natalia Chikhachev, middling nobles, spent their lives running their small estate of Dorozhaevo in Vladimir province and raising their family. In this episode, we use their copious notes and diaries to understand what it meant to be a 'normal' provincial noble in the Russian Empire in the mid-nineteenth century, considering their work lives, their past-times, and their relationship with the world around them.

Source

Kate Pickering-Antonova, An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Abandoned in 1852 when scarcely two weeks old, Vasilii Gerasimov ultimately became a child worker at the Kreenholm cotton factory, where he worked for 8 years. In 1872, he was a participant in a labour strike at this plant. After leaving, he became a revolutionary propagandist in St Petersburg before being sentenced to exile and hard labour in Siberia. In this episode, we chart Gerasimov's life, paying particular attention to the Kreenholm strike of 1872.

Source

R. E. Zelnik, Law and Disorder on the Narova River: The Kreenholm Strike of 1872 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)

The 1804/1818 song collection of Kirsha Danilov introduced the Russian reading public, in many ways for the first time, to the people's immensely rich tradition of fairy tales, historical legends, and bawdy satires: these stories and their motifs have gone not only to influence great writers, poets, painters, and composers, but generation after generation of children. But who was Kirsha Danilov? In this episode, we follow the biography of this great bard to the Ural factories of the mid-eighteenth century and place him within the ancient tradition of Russian minstrels.

Sources

V. Baidin, Kirsha Danilov v Sibiri i na Urale. Istoriko-biographificheskie etiudy (Ekaterinburg: Izdatel’stvo Ural’skogo universiteta, 2015).

Drevnie rossiiskie stikhotvoreniia, sobrannye Kirsheiu Danilovym (Moscow, 1818).

R. Zguta, Russian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978).

N. K. Chadwick, Russian Heroic Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

S. N. Kopyrina, ‘Zavodskie poselki kazennykh predpriiatii Urala v 20-50-e gody XVIII v.’, Genesis: istoricheskie issledovanie, no. 1 (2023), pp. 11-25.

S. Smirnov, ‘Gosudarstvennoe regulirovanie truda pripisnykh krest’ian na gornykh zavodakh Urala v XVIII – nachale XIX vv.’, Magistra Vitae: elektronnyi zhurnal po istoricheskim naukam i arkheologii, no. 2 (4) (1992), pp. 3-11.

J. L. Rice, ‘A Russian Bawdy Song of the Eighteenth Century’, Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 20, no. 4 (1976), pp. 353-370.

J. L. Rice, ‘Kirsha Danilov and the Wrath of Ivan the Terrible’, Russian History, vol. 24, no. 4 (1997), pp. 395-408.

R. Portal’, Ural v XVIII veke (Ufa: Gilem, 2003). Originally: R. Portal, ĽOural au XVIIIе siècle: Étude d’histoire économique et sociale (Paris, 1950).

T. Esper, ‘The Condition of the Serf Workers in Russia’s Metallurgical Industry, 1800-1861’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 50, no. 4 (1978), pp. 660-679.

On 1 December 1911, the priest's wife Zinaida Troitskaia was found murdered in the backwoods village of Alajõe in eastern Estland province. This episode charts the scandalous details found by the investigation and asks what they tell us about the private lives of the rural Russian Orthodox clergy.

This episode is based on my article for the website Deep Baltic. This can be found at: https://deepbaltic.com/2023/01/27/murder-most-orthodox-in-estonia-the-death-of-zinaida-troitskaia/

Sources

EAA.1898.1.64

EAA.105.1.11294

EAA.1655.2.2590

EAA.1655.2.2738

EAA.1655.2.2739

EAA.1655.2.161

EAA.1655.2.172

EAA.1898.1.70

EAA.1898.1.11

EAA.1898.1.60

EAA.1898.1.58

EAA.1898.1.11

J. M. White, “Russian Orthodox Monasticism in Riga Diocese, 1881-1917”, Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 62, no. 3-4 (2020), 377-379

Andrei Sõtšov, “Eesti õigeusu piiskopkonna halduskorraldus ja vaimulikkond aastail 1945–1953” (MA thesis: University of Tartu, 2004)

K. Weber, “Religion and Law in the Russian Empire: Lutheran Pastors on Trial, 1860-1917” (PhD dissertation: New York University, 2013)

A. Polunov, “Imperiia, pravoslavie i problema reform v Pribaltike: k istorii religiozno-politicheskii bor’by 1880-kh – pervoi poloviny 1890-kh gg.” In I. Paert, ed., Pravoslavie v Pribaltike: Religiia, politika, obrazovanie, 1840-e – 1930-e gg. (Tartu: Izdatel’stvo Tartuskogo Universiteta, 2018): 207-227

G. Freeze, “Profane Narratives about a Holy Sacrament: Marriage and Divorce in the Late Imperial Russia” in M. D. Steinberg and H. J. Coleman, eds., Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007)

In this episode, we examine the history of lèse-majesté (insulting the honour of the tsar, his family, and his image) in imperial Russia through the story of Vasilii Zverev, an unfortunate factory worker who took the tsar's name in vain during a heated quarrel in 1908. Tracing the history of these crimes back to the early eighteenth century, we ask what these affronts to imperial virtue tell us about the people of the empire, the state that so harshly prosecuted these crimes, and popular conceptions of monarchical government.

Sources

EAA.105.1.11059

EAA.105.1.11269

EAA.105.1.10950

EAA.105.1.10873

E. Anisimov, Derzhava i topor. Tsarskaia vlast’, politicheskii sysk i russkoe obshchestvo v XVIII veke (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2019).

B. Kolonitskii, “Tragicheskaia erotica”: Obrazy imperatorskoi sem’i v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2010)

D. Beer, ‘“To a Dog, a Dog’s Death!”: Naïve Monarchism and Regicide in Imperial Russia, 1878-1884’, Slavic Review, vol. 80, no. 1 (2021), 112-132.

N. A. Konovalova, ‘Ob izuchenii problem oskorbleniia krest’ianami osoby gosudaria imperatora v nachale XX veka’, Vestnik Omskogo Universtiteta, no. 1 (2014), 42-47.

V. B. Bezgin, ‘Za chto i kak krest’iane branili tsaria (po materialam sledstvennykh del kontsa XIX – nachala XX veka)', Manuskript, no. 12 (74), part II (2016), 24-27.

M. N. Korneva, ‘“Oskorblenie ego velichestva derzkimi slovami” kak gosudarstvennoe prestuplenie (na materialakh Sankt-Petersburgskikh arkhivov)’, Nauchnyi Dialog, vol. 11, no. 10 (2022), 388-409.

E. N. Tarnovskii, ‘Staticheskie svedeniie ob osuzhdennykh za gosudarstvennye prestupleniia v 1905-1912 gg.’, Zhurnal Ministerstva Iustitsii, no. 10 (1915), 37-69.

In this episode, we look at the story of the oddly refined peasant wanderer Fedor Kuzmich, who was claimed by many to be the dead tsar Alexander I. The myth and its staying power are rooted in several sources, not least the peculiar circumstances of the emperor's death and popular conceptions of monarchy.

Source

M. P. Rey, Alexander I: The Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon (trans. S. Emanuel. DeKalb: NIU Press, 2016)

On Easter morning 1831, Joseph Major was murdered in his Urals home. A Scottish engineer, he had lived for 26 years in the gateway to Siberia, producing that most modern of devices, the steam engine, for a variety of Russian enterprises. In this episode, I talk about how foreign technology, Russian ingenuity, and massive industrial colonization created the conditions in which Major lived and worked.

Sources:

F. B. Bondarenko, V. P. Mikitiuk, V. A. Shkerin, Britanskie mekhaniki v predprinimateli na Urale v XIX – nachale XX v. (Ekaterinburg: Bank kul’turnoi informatsii, 2009)

E. Tarakanova, ‘Karl Gaskoin i russkie pushki’, Sever, nos. 4, 5, 6 (2001): 96-114; 165—177; 187-201

E. S. Tarakanova, ‘Poiavlenie i rasprostranenie parovykh mashin v Rossii. Osnovye etapy i osobennosti etogo protsessa’, Polzunovskii al’manakh, no. (2004), 178-186

A. Keller, ‘“Raison d’etat” i “chastnyi interes” v Rossii kontsa XVIII v. – nachala XIX v.: na primere A. Knaufa v gornozavodskoi promyshlennosti Urala, 1797-1833 gg’, Bylye gody, vol. 37, no. 3 (2015), 508-518

A. Cross, ‘By the Banks of the Neva’: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

M. R. Hill, ‘Russian Iron Production in the Eighteenth Century’, Icon, vol. 12 (2006), 118-167

P. Dukes, A History of the Urals: Russia’s Crucible from Early Empire to the Post-Soviet Era (London: Bloomsburg Academic, 2015)