A collection of nine articles written by leading scholars in Britain, Ireland, Italy and the USA on various aspects of the city of St Petersburg during the important first century and a quarter of its existence, from its founding in 1703 to the end of the reign of Alexander I. Cartography, architecture, social history and foreign perceptions are some of the subjects covered in these lively and informed essays.
This book focuses on the city of St Petersburg, the capital of the Russian empire from the early eighteenth century until the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. It uses the Russian court as a prism through which to view the various cultural changes that were introduced in the city during the eighteenth century.
Established in 1703 by the sheer will of its charismatic founder, the homicidal megalomaniac Peter the Great, St. Petersburg's dazzling yet unhinged reputation was quickly cemented by the sadistic dominion of its early rulers. This city, in its successive incarnations—St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad and, once again, St. Petersburg—has always been a place of perpetual contradiction.It was a window to Europe and the Enlightenment, but so much of Russia’s unique glory was also created here: its literature, music, dance, and, for a time, its political vision. It gave birth to the artistic genius of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Pavlova and Nureyev. Yet, for all its glittering palaces, fairytale balls and enchanting gardens, the blood of thousands has been spilt on its snow-filled streets.It has been a hotbed of war and revolution, a place of siege and starvation, and the crucible for Lenin and Stalin’s power-hungry brutality. In St. Petersburg, Jonathan Miles recreates the drama of three hundred years in this paradoxical and brilliant city, bringing us up to the present day, when its fate hangs in the balance once more.
"This book examines a critical phase in the city's history. Founded by Peter the Great a mere sixty years before Catherine II ascended Russia's throne, St. Petersburg became one of the leading economic and political centers of Europe during her reign. Catherine lavished planning on St. Petersburg. Paradoxically, the city's growth, unprecedented in Europe to that date for such a short span of time, stemmed as much from natural factors as from the government's activity, for planning at times ran counter to natural growth. St. Petersburg also presented a challenge to Russia's legal estate order, inadequate for the city's dynamic social and economic nexus. Moscow was proverbially an overgrown village. St. Petersburg was undeniably a city." "Previous books on St. Petersburg have focused on its foundation and earliest years, or on the nineteenth century, when its cultural dominance within Russia was well established, or on the twentieth century, when the city was cradle to revolutions and subsequently lost its role as capital to Moscow. Catherine's reign largely has been overlooked, despite the fact that much of the city's image in Russian culture was established in that epoch. The city assumed its morphological shape primarily during Catherine's reign. Land-use patterns set in that era continue to characterize the city. A city resident of the late eighteenth century would know his or her way around the city today." "The Most Intentional City is based extensively on heretofore unused archival sources from central archives in St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as regional archives and manuscript collections. These are flavored with published accounts by Russians as well as foreign residents and visitors from a number of countries, including Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and various German states. The rich secondary literature, especially that produced by Russian and Soviet scholars, adds to the interpretation." "It is said that the first wife of Peter the Great once placed a curse on Peter's new city: "May Petersburg be empty!" The city's detractors over the centuries have enumerated many reasons why the city never should have been established and why it should not have grown. Yet grow it did. No other city in the world situated so far north (almost on the sixtieth parallel) is more than a fifth its size. In Catherine's reign the city assumed the vitality, the social and economic strength, the identity in myth and legend, that assured that the curse pronounced against it would remain unfulfilled. The Most Intentional City reveals just how it all took place."--BOOK JACKET.
Women in Russian Culture and Society, 1700-1825 is a collection of essays by leading researchers shedding new light on women as writers, actresses, nuns and missionaries. It illuminates the lives of merchant and serf women as well as noblewomen and focuses on women's culture in Russia during this period.
The Four Horsemen narrates the history of revolution in Spain, Naples, Greece, and Russia in the 1820s, connecting the social movements and activities on the ground, in the inimitable voice of a renowned historian.
Over the course of the nineteenth century Siberia developed a fearsome reputation as a place of exile, often imagined as a vast penal colony and seen as a symbol of the iniquities of autocratic and totalitarian Tsarist rule. This book examines how Siberia’s reputation came about and discusses the effects of this reputation in turning opinion, especially in Western countries, against the Tsarist regime and in giving rise to considerable sympathy for Russian radicals and revolutionaries. It considers the writings and propaganda of a large number of different émigré groups, explores American and British journalists’ investigations and exposé press articles and charts the rise of the idea of Russian political prisoners as revolutionary and reformist heroes. Overall, the book demonstrates how important representations of Siberian exile were in shaping Western responses to the Russian Revolution.
When Catherine II died in St Petersburg in 1796 the world sensed the loss of the most celebrated monarch of Europe - something no one would have predicted at the birth sixty-seven years before of an obscure German princess, Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, later married off to the pathetic heir to the Russian throne. There were few greater transformations of fortunes in history. Sophie/Catherine had come to rule in her own right over the largest state in existence since the fall of the Roman Empire. She was branded both a usurper and an assassin when she seized power from her wretched husband in 1762. Yet she survived the initial succession crisis, and went on to occupy the Russian throne for thirty-four years. In the process, she turned her new empire from peripheral pariah to European great power.
When the scientific study of the Black Sea Region began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, initially commissioned by adjacent powers such as the Habsburg and the Russian empires, this terra incognita was not yet considered part of Europe. The eighteen chapters of this volume show a broad range of thematic foci and theoretical approaches - the result of the enormous richness of the European macrocosm and the BSR. The microcosms of the many different case studies under scrutiny, however, demonstrate the historical dimension of exchange between the allegedly opposite poles of `East' and `West' and underscore the importance of mutual influences in the development of Europe and the BSR.
Ice humanities is a pioneering collection of essays that tackles the existential crisis posed by the planet's diminishing ice reserves. By the end of this century, we will likely be facing a world where sea ice no longer reliably forms in large areas of the Arctic Ocean, where glaciers have not just retreated but disappeared, where ice sheets collapse, and where permafrost is far from permanent. The ramifications of such change are not simply geophysical and biochemical. They are societal and cultural, and they are about value and loss. Where does this change leave our inherited ideas, knowledge and experiences of ice, snow, frost and frozen ground? How will human, animal and plant communities superbly adapted to cold and high places cope with less ice, or even none at all? The ecological services provided by ice are breath-taking, providing mobility, water and food security for hundreds of millions of people around the world, often Indigenous and vulnerable communities. The stakes could not be higher. Drawing on sources ranging from oral testimony to technical scientific expertise, this path-breaking collection sets out a highly compelling claim for the emerging field of ice humanities, convincingly demonstrating that the centrality of ice in human and non-human life is now impossible to ignore.
