Download the full version of the ebook at

https://ebookgate.com

Imperial Russia New Histories for the Empire

Burbank Jane

https://ebookgate.com/product/imperial-russia-new-
histories-for-the-empire-burbank-jane/

Explore and download more ebook at https://ebookgate.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

The Ottoman Empire 1326 1699 Essential Histories Turnbull

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-ottoman-empire-1326-1699-essential-
histories-turnbull/

ebookgate.com

Russia as Empire Past and Present Kees Boterbloem

https://ebookgate.com/product/russia-as-empire-past-and-present-kees-
boterbloem/

ebookgate.com

The crisis of religious toleration in Imperial Russia

Bibikov s system for the Old Believers 1841 1855 1st
Edition Marsden
https://ebookgate.com/product/the-crisis-of-religious-toleration-in-
imperial-russia-bibikov-s-system-for-the-old-believers-1841-1855-1st-
edition-marsden/
ebookgate.com

Russia and Britain in Persia Imperial Ambitions in Qajar

Iran Firuz Kazemzadeh

https://ebookgate.com/product/russia-and-britain-in-persia-imperial-
ambitions-in-qajar-iran-firuz-kazemzadeh/

ebookgate.com
Colonial Frames Nationalist Histories Imperial Legacies
Architecture and Modernity 1st Edition Mrinalini
Rajagopalan
https://ebookgate.com/product/colonial-frames-nationalist-histories-
imperial-legacies-architecture-and-modernity-1st-edition-mrinalini-
rajagopalan/
ebookgate.com

Theatre and Identity in Imperial Russia Studies Theatre

Hist Culture 1st Edition Schuler

https://ebookgate.com/product/theatre-and-identity-in-imperial-russia-
studies-theatre-hist-culture-1st-edition-schuler/

ebookgate.com

The Ruthless First Edition L. G. Burbank

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-ruthless-first-edition-l-g-burbank/

ebookgate.com

Russia s Rome Imperial Visions Messianic Dreams 1890 1940

1st Edition Judith E. Kalb

https://ebookgate.com/product/russia-s-rome-imperial-visions-
messianic-dreams-1890-1940-1st-edition-judith-e-kalb/

ebookgate.com

Confessions of the Shtetl Converts from Judaism in

Imperial Russia 1817 1906 1st Edition Ellie R. Schainker

https://ebookgate.com/product/confessions-of-the-shtetl-converts-from-
judaism-in-imperial-russia-1817-1906-1st-edition-ellie-r-schainker/

ebookgate.com
σ
IMPERIAL RUSSIA

σ
 σ
Sponsored by the Joint Committee on the Soviet Union
and Its Successor States
of the Social Science Research Council
and the
American Council of Learned Societies.

σ
 indiana-michigan series in
russian and east european studies

Alexander Rabinowitch
and
William G. Rosenberg,
general editors

advisory board
Deming Brown
Jane Burbank
Robert W. Campbell
Henry R. Cooper, Jr.
Herbert Eagle
Ben Eklof
Zvi Gitelman
Hiroaki Kuromiya
David L. Ransel
William Zimmerman
 σ
IMPERIAL RUSSIA
NEW HISTORIES FOR THE EMPIRE

σ EDITED BY

Jane Burbank
AND
David L. Ransel

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Bloomington and Indianapolis
 This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA

www.indiana.edu/~iupress

Telephone orders 800-842-6796

Fax orders 812-855-7931
Orders by e-mail [email protected]

© 1998 by Indiana University Press

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by

any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American
University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only
exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Imperial Russia : new histories for the Empire / edited by Jane

Burbank and David L. Ransel.
p. cm. — (Indiana-Michigan series in Russian and East
European studies)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-253-33462-4 (cloth : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-253-21241-3
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Russia—History—18th century. 2. Russia—History—19th
century. I. Burbank, Jane. II. Ransel, David L. III. Series.
DK127.I475 1998
947′.06—dc21 98-17132

1 2 3 4 5 03 02 01 00 99 98
 Contents
σ
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction
Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel xiii

Part i
Autocracy: Politics, Ideology, Symbol
1

1
Kinship Politics/Autocratic Politics: A Reconsideration of
Early-Eighteenth-Century Political Culture
Valerie A. Kivelson 5

2
The Idea of Autocracy among Eighteenth-Century
Russian Historians
Cynthia Hyla Whittaker 32

3
The Russian Imperial Family as Symbol
Richard Wortman 60

Part ii
Imperial Imagination
87

4
Collecting the Fatherland: Early-Nineteenth-Century
Proposals for a Russian National Museum
Kevin Tyner Thomas 91

5
Science, Empire, and Nationality: Ethnography in the
Russian Geographical Society, 1845–1855
Nathaniel Knight 108
 Part iii
Practices of Empire
143

6
Lines of Uncertainty: The Frontiers of the Northern Caucasus
Thomas M. Barrett 148

7
An Empire of Peasants: Empire-Building, Interethnic
Interaction, and Ethnic Stereotyping in the Rural
World of the Russian Empire, 1800–1850s
Willard Sunderland 174

8
The Serf Economy, the Peasant Family, and the Social Order
Steven L. Hoch 199

9
Institutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular
Religion, 1750–1850
Gregory L. Freeze 210

Part iv
Individuals and Publics
251

10
An Eighteenth-Century Russian Merchant Family in
Prosperity and Decline
David L. Ransel 256

11
Freemasonry and the Public in Eighteenth-Century Russia
Douglas Smith 281

12
Constructing the Meaning of Suicide: The Russian
Press in the Age of the Great Reforms
Irina Paperno 305
In Place of a Conclusion
Jane Burbank 333
Contributors 347
Index 349
 Acknowledgments

σ
T he editors thank several institutions and many scholars for the support,
research, and stimulating discussions that made this project possible. We
begin with our sponsors. The Joint Committee on the Soviet Union and Its Suc-
cessor States of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council
of Learned Societies provided the material, logistical, and personal support for
three workshops for the project as well as seed money for the volume itself. We
are particularly grateful to Susan Bronson, historian of imperial Russia and for-
mer Program Of¤cer at the SSRC, who has seen this project through from be-
ginning to completion; to Robert Huber, former Program Director of the Joint
Committee, who gave superb advice on both intellectual and ¤nancial matters;
and to Jill Finger, Program Assistant, who directed everyone to the right place
at the right time. The organizers of the SSRC-ACLS project were Jane Burbank,
Nancy Shields Kollmann, Richard Stites, and Reginald Zelnik, members of the
Joint Committee.
A planning meeting was held at the University of Iowa in November 1991,
supported in part by the Center for International and Comparative Studies there.
We thank the Center and in particular Steven Hoch, our host on the steppe in
a snowstorm, for the warm reception and gracious adjustments to weather wor-
thy of Russia.
The papers in the volume were produced for two workshops, entitled
“Visions, Institutions, and Experiences of Imperial Russia.” The ¤rst workshop
was held at the Kennan Institute of Advanced Russian Studies in Washington,
D.C., in September 1993. We thank the Institute and above all its director, Blair
Ruble, for hosting us and especially for our splendid meeting place in the
Smithsonian castle.
The second workshop was cosponsored by Portland State University at its
lovely urban campus. Our historian host, Louise Becker, made this an ideal lo-
cation.
The discussions at all three meetings focused on the issues of interpreta-
tion, analysis, and categorization that inform this volume. We are grateful to all
the participants in the meetings, including the authors of the chapters presented
here, for their many contributions to the project. A big thank you, then, to
Thomas Barrett, Sarah Berry, Jeffrey Brooks, Daniel Brower, Michael Con¤no,

ix
x Acknowledgments

James Cracraft, Laura Engelstein, Lee Farrow, Gregory Freeze, Manfred Hilde-
meier, Steven L. Hoch, Isabel Hull, Austin Jersild, Colin Jones, Andrew Kahn,
Andreas Kappeler, Allison Katsev, Michael Khodarkovsky, Valerie Kivelson,
Nathaniel Knight, Nancy Shields Kollmann, Gary Marker, Louise McReynolds,
Harriet Murav, Daniel Orlovsky, Irina Paperno, Priscilla Roosevelt, David
Schimmelpeninck, Yuri Slezkine, Douglas Smith, Michael Stanislawski, Rich-
ard Stites, Willard Sunderland, Frank Sysyn, Kevin Thomas, Donald Thumin,
William Wagner, Cynthia Whittaker, Richard Wortman, and Reginald E. Zelnik.
The editors are especially grateful to Michael Con¤no for his supportive
engagement with this project, which was inspired in the ¤rst place by his splen-
did and provocative studies of imperial Russia.

Jane Burbank
David L. Ransel
 Introduction

σ
T he goal of this volume is to raise questions and to encourage scholars to re-
envision imperial Russian history liberated from schools, parties, and single
story lines. The essays incorporate new research and new topics, results of a
revitalized attention to Russia’s past that has engaged historians and others in
recent years. The volume has a speci¤c genealogy: it is based upon a series of
three workshops at which scholars from different universities, disciplines, and
generations discussed new research and encouraged each other to imagine how
imperial history might be reconceptualized. This introduction will sketch the
intellectual and social context of this project and highlight the themes, ques-
tions, and methods represented in the book’s separate subsections and chapters.
With an eye toward future projects, Jane Burbank’s “In Place of a Conclusion”
takes a critical look at the blank spots, open questions, and un¤lled plans that
are likely to shape histories of imperial Russia still to come.
Reconceptualization of imperial Russian history was inspired by two recent
changes: the collapse of Soviet power and with it the conventional framework
for narratives of Russian history, and a new turn in historical writing about
other places and times. The sudden appearance in 1917 of Soviet Russia with its
claim to be the ¤rst socialist society had oriented much of the historical study
of Russia in the twentieth century toward the problems and possibilities of
Soviet-style organization, and, of particular relevance to this volume, toward
the origins of the Russian revolution. This emphasis upon the Bolshevik revo-
lution relegated Russian history before 1917 if not to the dustbin, then to the
morgue. Many studies of the imperial era were scholarly autopsies, performed
in con¤dent awareness of the body’s chronic ailments; the overriding ques-
tion concerned the disease or combination of illnesses that had caused the or-
ganism’s long-overdue demise. This perspective was a matter of form, if not
faith, for most Soviet historians, but it ¤gured, too, in many other interpreta-
tions. Nicholas Riasanovsky placed the blame for the revolution of 1917 on the
rigidity of the system created by Nicholas I in the ¤rst half of the nineteenth
century; Richard Pipes, following Petr Struve, pushed the beginnings of the em-
pire’s illnesses back into the early eighteenth century.1
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was accompanied by a reversal of
evaluations of imperial Russia. In Russia, challenges to of¤cial history became

xi
xii Introduction

weapons in the political offensives of perestroika and the subsequent struggles

for control over the new polities emerging after 1991. Much of the history pub-
lished in the popular press in the last years of the Soviet Union and the early
years of the new Russian Federation described the whole Soviet period as a per-
version of “normal” development. From this partisan perspective, imperial Rus-
sian history was re¤gured to represent the natural order. The corpse was ex-
humed and the autopsy performed again, this time to reveal the body’s robust
growth and strength before an untimely, tragic, perhaps criminal death.
For historians eager to move out from the long shadow cast over the tsar-
ist period by the Soviet project and, at the same time, willing to investigate
revisionist narratives before proclaiming them, the 1990s offered a chance to re-
excavate the historic site of imperial Russia with new imagination and atten-
tiveness. If the “road to revolution” and “crisis of the old regime” could be jet-
tisoned as blueprints for research, and if metaphors of normalcy and organicism
could also be challenged, historians could then ask a variety of new questions,
and produce fresh, even if explicitly tentative, interpretations of the imperial
past. The late perestroika years and the ¤rst years of post-Soviet experiments
were exhilarating for scholars who were beginning new projects. The archives,
libraries, and other repositories of the Soviet Union became accessible beyond
the wildest dreams of even the most dedicated researchers. For a time, histori-
ans could see almost any ¤le.
New politics in Russia meant not only generous access to materials, but also
radical shifts in the way that history was produced. Russian historians could
drop their ¤ve-year plans for scholarly research, break with the institutional-
ized and interpretive boundaries of “feudalism,” “capitalism,” and “socialism,”
and work on topics of their own choosing. Equally important, a different kind
of international collegiality ®ourished. New opportunities arose to organize
joint projects, to invite faculty to teach courses abroad, and to move historical
debates out of the protected privacy of Soviet apartments and into public and
professional arenas in Russia and abroad. These transnational discussions be-
tween “native” scholars and their foreign friends and colleagues have acceler-
ated and enriched the reconceptualization of the imperial past.
A different kind of inspiration for the new Russian history of the 1990s has
been the ferment in historical studies generally. The most evident change, and
one whose impact can be registered in this volume, has been a gradual turn
toward cultural studies and a move away from social history as it had been de-
¤ned and revised in the 1970s and 1980s.2 Two approaches have been particu-
larly productive for historians of imperial Russia: interdisciplinary inquiry and
cultural analysis.
The arts, and especially literature, have long had a place in Russian history
 Introduction xiii

taught in American universities. But this attention to culture, with its roots in
the practices of Russians both in the emigration and at home, seldom reached
beyond the obligatory, and immensely valuable, readings of Russian novels
as historical sources.3 A strong disciplinary divide marked most published re-
search on Russia. Slavic departments fostered the domain of belles lettres, while
historians produced books that adhered to conventional typologies of intellec-
tual, political, or social history. The mainstream of historical study was further
bifurcated in the 1970s and 1980s into investigations either of political thought
(the intelligentsia and the cultural elite) or of society (social structure and class
mobilization). By the 1990s, however, a major shift was perceptible. The growing
enthusiasm for interdisciplinary and cultural studies produced a reintegration
of literature into historical studies of Russia as well as innovative projects join-
ing history with anthropology, art history, and history of science.4
This surge of transdisciplinary scholarship is in many instances an out-
growth of the social history of Russia developed in the 1970s and 1980s. In those
decades, the most visible interdisciplinary interaction in Russian and Soviet his-
tory was between sociology and history, as a generation of social historians
trained in the 1960s moved into faculties at American universities and chal-
lenged the then dominant approaches of political and diplomatic history.5 At-
tracted to the generalizing power of quantitative methods popular in American
social science, as well as by the dynamism of working-class history after E. P.
Thompson, these scholars concentrated on labor, class, and revolution as pre-
ferred subjects of Soviet or late imperial history. The new social history of the
Soviet Union was nourished by a series of seminars sponsored by the Joint Com-
mittee on Slavic Studies of the Social Science Research Council and American
Council of Learned Societies. In the perestroika and post-Soviet years these
seminars underwent signi¤cant intellectual restructuring, as social historians
of Russia, attuned to the shifts in research focus in other ¤elds, incorporated
investigations of gender, ethnicity, and culture into their projects.6
The history of imperial Russia as a whole was not the subject of similar col-
lective analysis or synthetic interpretation, even as excellent monographs were
available on speci¤c topics and eras. For example, a number of pathbreaking
studies appeared on issues or institutions in the reigns of Peter I and Catherine
II.7 Substantial attention was also given to the era of the Great Reforms, includ-
ing its prelude and aftermath.8 But apart from Marc Raeff’s essays, which cov-
ered only about half of the imperial period, and Pipes’s provocative Russia under
the Old Regime, no large-scale efforts were made to describe the structures, trans-
formations, and continuities of the imperial period.9 Historians continued, in
their few syntheses and many research monographs, to examine imperial Rus-
sian history for clues to the great con®agrations of the early twentieth century.
xiv Introduction

The study of imperial Russia on different terms was the aim of the Imperial
Russian History Initiative that led to this book. The Initiative consisted of three
meetings sponsored by the Social Science Research Council and held at the Uni-
versity of Iowa in 1991, the Kennan Institute in 1993, and Portland State Uni-
versity in 1994. Participants in the ¤rst meeting engaged in wide-ranging and
speculative discussions of how imperial Russian history might be reimagined;
the two subsequent workshops focused on a series of research papers based on
less-studied periods and topics.10 The goal of these meetings, in contrast to some
post-Soviet retrospectives, was not to ¤nd a usable past, but to explore and craft
new narratives and interpretations. Although only twelve of the twenty-nine
research papers and none of the fourteen speculative essays discussed at these
meetings are reproduced in this volume—many will appear elsewhere—the vol-
ume as a whole re®ects the collective explorations of these workshops.

Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire is pluralist in methods, interpre-
tations, and topics. Contributors to the volume and participants in discussions
of this project did not seek to recast the ¤eld by ¤xing its elements in a particu-
lar mold, but rather to extend new thinking on problems big and small. The
collection does not privilege a particular kind of history—cultural, social, insti-
tutional, economic, political, or intellectual—but instead juxtaposes essays that
either adhere to one or another of these approaches, purposefully blend them,
or refuse some compartments altogether. Nor do the contributors promote a par-
ticular method. Demography, micro-history, discourse analysis, semiotics, new
institutionalism, and history of ideas all ¤nd a place here. This intentional het-
erogeneity is true of topics, too. The main characters of these essays are a var-
ied and mostly understudied lot: lesser nobles of the provinces and the capitals,
reform-minded clerics, peasant resettlers in the process of migration, soldiers on
the frontier, scholar-founders of the Russian Geographic Society, amateur eth-
nographers, a luxury-loving merchant and his extended family, among others.
The histories of these people of imperial Russia and their institutional, ma-
terial, and informational cultures, are arranged in roughly chronological order
within each of the four sections of the volume. Part One, “Autocracy: Politics,
Ideology, Symbol,” devotes attention to conceptions—both historiographical and
historical—of autocratic rule. We begin with Valerie Kivelson’s reconsideration
of political agency after the death of Peter I, move on to Cynthia Whittaker’s
exploration of absolutist ideologies penned by eighteenth-century historians,
and conclude with Richard Wortman’s analysis of the tsarist regime’s appro-
priation of familial symbolism in the early nineteenth century. Part Two focuses
on two stretches of imperial imagination in the ¤rst half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Kevin Thomas analyzes two pioneering projects for a national museum,
 Introduction xv

and Nathaniel Knight explores the emergence of pluralistic and incorporating

conceptions of ethnic identity.
Part Three, “Practices of Empire,” includes both the center and the periph-
ery. Thomas Barrett’s essay presents the Caucasian frontier as a place of cultural
interactions; Willard Sunderland foregrounds peasant agency in expanding the
empire and stirring ethnic competition on the periphery. Steven Hoch analyzes
the land distribution practices of serfs as constitutive of both economic survival
and an enduring type of noncapitalist agrarian production. Gregory Freeze dis-
cusses the Orthodox Church and its relationship to popular religious activities
from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. The chapters in Part
Four explore different sites of “culture” and question the stereotype of a “weak”
Russian society. David Ransel’s essay focuses on the social and family life of a
late-eighteenth-century grain merchant. Douglas Smith reconsiders the mean-
ing of Masonic secrecy in Russia through an analysis of late-eighteenth-century
debates. Irina Paperno relates this engagement with public discourse to the
reform-era press and its preoccupation with suicide.
The period covered by this volume is the early eighteenth century to the
1880s. The framers of the project sought to devote attention to eras underrepre-
sented in historiography, particularly the early nineteenth century. The decision
not to go beyond the 1880s was deliberate: many excellent scholarly studies of
the last decades of imperial Russia are available. In addition, our chronology
re®ects a desire to examine the empire’s history before a period that is conven-
tionally interpreted through the thick lens of revolutionary hindsight.11 As for
geographic space, we deliberately rejected the strategy of isolating subjects as-
sociated with colonial aspects of the empire in a special section, a practice that
tends to exoticize non-Russians as “others” and normalize Russianness. The vol-
ume instead treats the institutions and practices of central Russia as part of im-
perial history and explores their relationship to the aspirations and opportuni-
ties that shaped life in the frontier regions.12
While the essays offer a variety of approaches and produce different glimpses
of the past, several shared concerns and themes are evident. Common to almost
all the essays is the choice to examine speci¤c episodes or situations, rather than
long-term processes. None of the contributors tell their particular stories with
the aim of illuminating the centuries-long trajectory of the empire or pre¤gur-
ing imperial Russia’s “fate” as a political project. They try instead to escape the
established frame of imperial decline that so often structured research projects
and ¤nal paragraphs. This shift constitutes an important step toward more
open-ended historical investigation. The focus is on the past as past and not on
the future of the past.
The disconnection of mini-stories of politics, culture, or family life from the
xvi Introduction

long story of the historical development of imperial Russia has signi¤cant ad-
vantages. Much Russian history produced in the twentieth century was in®u-
enced by the harshly critical attitudes of Russian scholars who wrote during the
late imperial and early Soviet periods, in the bitterness of opposition and later
defeat. Their animus against both the tsarist autocracy and its successor cast a
long shadow over the history of the empire. This anti-Whiggish tendency was
especially marked in historical accounts of the revolution of 1917, which, in
both heroic and tragic variants, was attributed to the intractabilities of imperial
Russia. Whether the topic was high politics, bureaucratic culture, or economic
development, historians emphasized Russia’s failures, usually to live up to some
kind of European model. In contrast, our contributors have tried to assess im-
perial Russian government and society as going concerns.
Many essays in this volume investigate the people and institutions that kept
imperial Russia functioning over a long period of time. Our contributors make
clear that elites often cooperated effectively to defend and advance their inter-
ests; peasants practiced a form of production well suited to the risk-prone envi-
ronment in which they lived; intellectuals organized clubs and salons condu-
cive to lively discussion; publishers produced a wide array of newspapers for
engaged readers; the autocracy changed its public face to ¤nd favor with society.
At least through the early decades of the nineteenth century, Russian govern-
ment and society functioned in concert and constituted a strong polity; this self-
correcting absolutism emerged victorious from an era of revolution and war that
overturned other European social and state orders. Despite government surveil-
lance and periodic repression, Russian society continued through the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries to foster a vigorous intellectual, business,
and civic life.13
Two sets of oppositions have long dominated Russian historiography: state
and society, and Russia and the West. The essays in this book move away from
these analytical categories, recon¤gure them, and, in some cases, challenge their
accepted meanings.
Common to most of the essays is a reconceptualization of agency. Rather
than ¤tting the activities of “society” into a dialectic with the “state,” most of the
contributors attempt to analyze society as composed of distinct groups and in-
dividuals acting on their own behalf and not necessarily working for or against
the state. This shift is particularly clear in Part Two, on practices of empire. Of
interest to Barrett and Sunderland in the borderlands and Hoch in the central
regions is how rural people made their lives within constraints established by
ecological conditions and by local social institutions rather than how they re-
sponded to state power. Freeze, who in earlier studies has looked at unexpected
points of con®ict between church and state in Russia, here extends his analysis
 Introduction xvii

to con®ict between church and society. He examines the activism of hierarchs,

expressed in their efforts to establish institutional control over religious prac-
tice, but also assesses the ability of ordinary people to resist church interference
in their localized versions of Orthodoxy.
Another new emphasis is the contributors’ focus on institutions at the in-
tersection of state and society rather than on central government ministries.
Knight looks into the founding debates of the Russian Geographical Society and
describes the different perspectives on Russian science and nationalism de-
fended by individuals within this one organization. Thomas addresses the di-
verse and contested designs for displaying the empire through artifacts in pro-
posed national museum collections. Freeze’s study tells of the church’s con®ict
with the ¤nancial and political claims of central ministries, but this time the
story is told from the point of view of the church. In other words, not the central
administration itself but institutions that functioned on its generous margins
are the concern of our contributors, as they explore the interconnectedness of
social practice and governance.14
Two categories that relate to social organization take the place of “society”
as a location of inquiry in this volume. These are the public and the family. De-
spite a number of pathbreaking recent studies on the Russian public,15 this con-
cept is making only slow inroads into the conventional and highly politicized
category of “society.” The historiography on the prerevolutionary and revolu-
tionary periods elides the public with the professional or middle classes and,
usually, with liberalism. In addition, while most treatments of modern Russian
history rightly place the rapid expansion of education and economic opportu-
nity in the late nineteenth century, this emphasis has obscured the lively, if em-
bryonic, public culture of the early imperial period. The intellectual circles of
the 1830s and 1840s have received adequate attention, but not the larger public
sphere that lent their exclusiveness signi¤cance.16
Smith’s essay describes shifts in conceptions of “the public” in the eight-
eenth century as well as the appearance of a wide range of institutions that
nurtured sociability and discussion. His reassessment of the controversy over
Freemasonry allows us to see that, to many Russians, the Masonic lodges rep-
resented a threat to public activism, not a defense of it. Paperno takes on a dif-
ferent aspect of public life in her analysis of journalism in the reform period.
By revising assumptions about a secularized, rationalist culture in this era, she
deciphers a metaphoric and organic way of thinking, widely shared by educated
people. Many of the other essays likewise imply that the concept of a “public”
may have a brighter future than the generalizing notion of “society.”
Family constitutes a second category that makes multiple appearances in
this book. Primary units of social organization everywhere, families had excep-
xviii Introduction

tional importance in imperial Russia. Essays here describe how noble families
played a key role in political action and negotiation; peasants worked as fami-
lies to sustain production in the serf economy; an eighteenth-century merchant’s
ambitions and his fall-back strategies were directed toward security for his ex-
tended family; the Romanov dynasty revised its public image to highlight its
internal nuclear bonds and turned this model of family loyalty to the service of
state ideology. What do these various manifestations of family suggest?17
First, the in®uence of families represents another dislocation of power from
its unitary position in the autocracy; attention is turned to power located in
groups and individuals with immediate control over much of daily life. For both
the peasant and the privileged, the family was a sustained organizing principle
of politics and economics. Hoch argues that the power of male heads of house-
holds to exploit the labor of their family members was key to the long-term pro-
ductivity of Russian peasant agriculture. Kivelson identi¤es the elite’s concern
for family interests as central to the renegotiation of autocratic authority in 1730.
Ransel’s merchant operated a family ¤rm that built its wealth on marriage
alliances and economic arrangements, within a large network of consanguineal
and af¤nal relations.
Family also provided the symbolic framework for imperial rule. Whittaker
notes that Vasilii Tatishchev and others employed family metaphors to describe
the relation of the monarch (the father, the bridegroom) to the people, analogic
reasoning common to European monarchies of the time and important in rein-
forcing the authority and self-regard of fathers and husbands at all levels of so-
ciety. In the early nineteenth century, however, the monarchy recast this meta-
phor of vertical ties: the eighteenth-century father (or mother) of the fatherland
now became the father of the imperial family. Wortman describes this semiotic
shift from personalized mastery to a different kind of familial ethos, in which
dynastic continuity and national unity were ritually represented through the
domestic harmony of the imperial spouses and the heir’s devotion to his father
and the people.
Wortman’s analysis is exemplary of the ways that essays in this volume re-
vise the conventional oppositions of “Russia and the West.” In Wortman’s de-
scription of Russian imperial culture, Nicholas I adopted the family scenario of
empire under the in®uence of his mother, the dowager empress Maria Fedorovna,
who had come to Russia from Württemberg. Nurtured in the values of German
sentimentalism, Maria Fedorovna tried to inculcate in her children the virtues
of marriage, ¤delity, and family love—no small task in view of the sexual in¤-
delities of her older sons, not to mention the fact that her husband, Paul, was
murdered to put his son on the throne. This story of the adoption of a new im-
perial symbolism based on European middle-class models of affective nuclear
 Introduction xix

family ties suggests the close links between European political culture and de-
velopments in Russia. Wortman does not treat Russia and the West as separate
civilizations.
Most of our other contributors read shifts in Russian political theory and
institutions as examples of cultural intersection rather than borrowings from
an alien source. Our authors play down the assumption of underlying differ-
ences between Russians and Europeans. Kivelson contends that Russian nobles
adapted to their Western contemporaries’ notions of meritocracy and ef¤ciency
and did not ¤nd them out of place. Paperno shows that Russian professionals
and journalists shared the nineteenth-century European fascination with social
statistics, and mounted many independent investigations of their own in which
they compared Russian conditions with the experiences of other European
countries. Suicide, the subject of Paperno’s chapter, was only one of many sub-
jects of transnational discussion and comparison.
“Europe” or “the West” were shorthand descriptors used by Russian elites
in their writings and conversations, but these terms did not necessarily imply
antagonism or inequality. Scholars interacted with European scienti¤c culture
on terms they set themselves. Thomas’s essay on proposals for a Russian Na-
tional Museum and Knight’s on the founding of the Russian Geographic Soci-
ety make this point. Thomas shows that national museums were under discus-
sion across Europe in the early nineteenth century; scholars who proposed a
museum for the Russian empire thought of their task as representing Russia
within the emergent culture of European national displays. Later in the cen-
tury, the founders of the Russian Geographic Society may have disagreed about
which kind of European science—abstract or descriptive—was appropriate for
the study and discovery of the Russian empire, but when they did so, they were
echoing Europe’s own debates and thus giving further evidence of Russia’s in-
tegration into European intellectual and cultural life. The search for a distinc-
tive cultural identity was common to European polities, not unique to Russia.
The contributors to this book regard Russia as a European absolutism yet
reject the imposition of “Western” models (England, France, Germany) as mea-
sures of Russia’s success. This stance, which recognizes particularity, while re-
fusing to see it as alien, is consistent with the ways in which the authors draw
upon a wide range of historiography to inform their research but not to pre-
¤gure their results. Many of the essays ignore or reject interpretive strategies
traditional to Russian historiography, and instead use methods, theories, and
topics introduced in the study of other national settings.
For Ransel, the essential move is from narrations about large groups to
the perspective of a single individual on his life and social networks. Ransel
grounds his merchant’s story in a discussion of microhistory, an approach that
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 CAPITULO II

Como el Gallo da a entender a su

amo Micyllo quel es Pitagoras
y como fue trasformado en
gallo y Mycillo dize vna fabula
de quien fue el gallo.

Pues oyeme, Micyllo, que tú oyras

de mi vn quento muy nuevo e
incleyble; que te ago saber queste
que agora te parezco gallo no a
mucho tienpo que fue onbre.
Mycillo.—En verdad yo he oydo
ser esto ansi quel gallo fue vn
paje muy privado del dios Mares
que sienpre le aconpannó en los
plazeres y deleytes e que vna
noche le llevó consigo quando
yba a dormir con Venus, y que
porque tenia gran temor del sol y
que no los viese y lo parlase a
Vulcano, dexóle en su guarda,
requeriendole que no se durmiese
porque si el sol salia y los bia que
lo parlarya a Bulcano, y dizen que
tú te dormiste y el sol salio y que
como los vido fuelo a dezir a su
marido de Venus, y asi Bulcano
con gran enojo vino y prendiolos
en vna rez que fabrycó y presos
llevolos ante los dioses, y que
Mares con el gran enojo que hubo
te bolbió en gallo y que agora por
satisfazer a Mares quando no
haces otro provecho alguno
manifiestas la salida del sol con
grandes clamores y cantos.
Gallo.—Es la verdad todo eso
que se cuenta, mas lo que yo
agora quiero dezir otra cosa es;
muy poco tienpo ha que yo fuy
trasformado en gallo.
Mycillo.—¿Deque manera es
eso ansi; porque lo deseo mucho
saber?
Gallo.—Dime, Micyllo, ¿oyste
algun tienpo de vn Pitagoras
sabio?
Mycillo.—¿Acaso dizes por vn
sofista encantador el qual
constituyó que no se comiesen
carnes ny abas, manjar muy
suabe, para la despedida de la
mesa, y aquel que presvadio a los
onbres que no ablasen por cynco
años?
Gallo.—Pues sabes tanbien
como Pitágoras abia sido
Eufurbio?
Mycillo.—Yo no sé mas sino que
dizen queste Pitagoras abia sido
vn honbre enbaydor que azia
prodigios y encantamientos.
Gallo.—Pues yo soy Pitagoras,
por lo qual te ruego que no me
maltrates con esas enjuryas, pues
no conoscyste mis costumbres.
Mycillo.—Por cierto esto es mas
milagroso ver vn gallo filosofo;
pues declaranos, buen yjo de
Menesarca, qué causa fue la que
te mudó de onbre en ave, porque
ny este acontecimiento es
verisimile ni razonable creer, e
ademas por aver visto en ti dos
cosas muy ajenas de Pitagoras.
Gallo.—Dime quales son.
Mycillo.—Lo vno es verte que
eres parlero y bullicyoso,
mandando el que por cynco años
enteros no ablasen los onbres; lo
otro contradize a su ley porque
como yo no tubiese ayer que te
dar de comer te eché vnas abas y
tú las comiste con muy buena
boluntad, por lo qual es muy mas
necesario que mientas tu en dezir
que seas Pitagoras; que si eres
Pitagoras tú le has contradezido
pues mandaste que se abya de
huyr de comer las habas como la
misma cabeça del padre.
Gallo.—¿No has conoscido ¡oh
Micillo! qué sea la causa de
aqueste acaescimiento que
qunple para qualquier género de
bida? entonces quando era
filosofo desechaba las habas;
mas agora que soy gallo no las
desecho, por serme agradable
manjar; mas si no te fuere
molesto, oyeme e dezirte he
cómo de Pitagoras comence a ser
esto que agora soy, anque hasta
agora he sido transformado en
otras muchas diversas figuras de
animales; dezirtelo he lo que me
acaescyo en cada vna por si.
Mycillo.—Yo te ruego me lo
quentes porque a mi me será muy
sabroso oyrte e tanto que si
alguno me preguntare quál queria
mas, oyrte a ti o bolver aquel
dichoso suenno que sonnava
astaqui, juzgarya ser yguales los
tus sabrosos quentos con aquella
sabrosa posesion de riquezas en
que yo me sonnava estar.
Gallo.—Tú tanbien me traes a la
memoria lo que en el suenno
biste como quien guarda vnas
vanas ymajinaciones, tu fantasia
te regozijas de vna vana
felicydad.
Mycillo.—Mas sé cyerto que
m'es tan dulce este suenno que
nunca del me olvydaré ni de otra
cosa más me quiero acordar.
Gallo.—Por cierto que me
muestras ser tan dulce este
suenno que deseo saber qué fue.
 CAPITULO III

Que quenta Mycyllo lo que le

sucedio en el conbite del rico
Everates.

Mycillo.—Yo te [lo de]seo contar

porque me es muy sabroso
dezirlo y acordarme dél; mas
dime tú, Pitagoras, ¿quando me
contarás estas tus
transformacyones?
Gallo.—Quando tú, Micyllo,
acabares de contarme lo que te
acontecyo en la cena y me
dixeres tu suenno, porque te lo
deseo saber.
Mycillo.—Bien te acordarás que
no comi ayer ninguna vez en
casa, porque topandome ayer
aquel rico Eberates en la plaça
me dixo que labado y polido me
fuese con él a comer.
Gallo.—Bien me aquerdo,
porque yo en todo el dia no comi,
asta que viniendo tu a la noche
bien arto, me distes vnas cynco
abas, por cyerto esplendida cena
para gallo el qual en otro tiempo
fue rey y poderoso peleador.
Mycillo.—Pues entonces yo me
eché a dormir quando te di las
abas; luego me dormi e comence
a sonnar en la noche vn suenno
mas sabroso quel vyno, netar ny
anbrosia.
Gallo.—Pues antes que me
quentes el suenno ¡oh Mycyllo!
me quenta todo lo que paso en la
cena de Eberates, porque me
plazerá ny tanpoco te pesará a ti
si agora quisieres, contandome
todo lo que comiste, rumiarlo
como entre suennos.
Mycillo.—Yo pienso serte
enojoso si lo que alli pasó te
contase, mas pues tú lo deseas
saber, yo huelgo de te lo dezir
porque nunca asta agora he sido
conbidado de algun ryco, ¡o
Pitagora! e sabras que ayer rejido
con buena fortuna me topé con
Eutratas[291] y saludandole como
yo lo tenia en costunbre,
encobryame quanto podia por
verguença que no byese my capa
despedaçada, y dizeme el:
Mycyllo, oy celebro el nascimiento
de vna hija mia, he conbidado a
muchas personas para comer e
cenar; e porque me dizen que vno
de los conbidados está enfermo e
no puede venir, vente tú en su
lugar y haz de manera que por
ser festibal el conbite vayas polido
e ataviado lo mejor que pudieres
e comeras allá si acaso si aquel
faltare, porque avn lo pone en
duda. E como yo oí a Hencrates
adorele y fume (sic) rogando a
Dios todopoderoso, porque
tubiese hefeto my felicedad, diese
aquel henfermo en quyo lugar yo
habia de oqupar la silla en el
conbite algun frenesi o modorylla
o dolor de costado o gotata (sic)
de tal manera que le yziese
quedar en su casa y no fuese allá.
Pues myentras llegaba la ora de
la cena yo me fui al baño y me
labé y este tienpo se me yzo vn
siglo o vna gran edad, mas
quando fue el tienpo llegado
voyme solycy[to] lo mejor que yo
pude atabiado, puesta mi pobre
capa de la parte más linpia y que
sus agujeros menos se
parescyesen; allegando a las
puertas hallo otros muchos
onbres, entre los quales veo que
cuatro moços traen sentado en
una silla aquel enfermo en quyo
lugar yo era combidado e benia el
mismo manifestando traer gran
enfermedad, porque jemia muy
doloroso y tosia y escopia muy
asquerosamente; venia amaryllo
e ynchado; era viejo de más de
setenta años y dezian ser vn
filosofo que lee en esquelas y aze
cancyones en publyco; traya vnas
vistiduras muy yploclitas, y como
Archebio el medico le vio y qu'era
alli conbidado le dixo: señor,
mejor fuera que os quedarades
en vuestra casa estando tan
enfermo que salir agora acá; el
qual respondio: no es razon que
Daron filosofo quebrante a su
amigo la palabra avnque esté
enfermo de qualquiera
enfermedad. E dixe yo: mas veo,
sennor Tromopol, que ansi se
llamava el filosofo, que olgara
Ancrates que os muryerades en
vuestra casa y cama en el
servicyo de vuestros qryados que
no venirle a ocupar el conbyte con
hambrientos, y que si acierta aqui
a salirseos el anima, que le
paresce segun venis que no
podeys mucho durar. El filosofo,
como su yntencyon era padescer
qualquiera muerte o ynjuria por
comer de fiesta para satisfazer a
su glotonia, disimuló el donayre
que le dyxe con mucha gravedad,
y estando en esto vino a nosotros
Encrates y mirando por el filosofo
podrydo dixo: buen Temospol,
muchas gracias te doy por aver
venido con esta tu enfermedad al
conbite, puesto caso que aunque
no binieras no se te dexara de
enbiar todo el conbite por orden a
tu posada; sientate e comeras; e
como yo oi que los moços le
metian adentro para le asentar a
comer, muy triste comienzo a
maldezir su flaca enfermedad,
pues no le bastó a destruyr, y muy
amarillo de afrenta de mi
desventura, pues pense cenar
mejor, dispuseme para salir de la
sala del conbite para conplir la
condicyon con que Encrates me
abia conbidado, e comenceme a
deleznar con alguna pesadunbre,
mostrandome al vespede cada
vez que bolbia la cara a mi, y casi
con my rostro amaryllo le dezia:
voyme a mi pesar. Tambien me
enojaba más ver que en toda la
mesa no avia sylla vazia para mí,
porque estaban puestas en
derredor en numero ygual con los
conbidados; en fin como Eucrates
me bio tan triste y me yva,
alcançóme casi a la puerta y
dixome: tu, Mycyllo, buelbe acá e
cenarás con nosotros, y mandó a
vn yjo suyo que se entrase a
cenar con las mujeres y me
dexase aquel lugar. Pues como
poco antes me yva triste y
desventurado, buelbo luego muy
alegre con mi prospero suceso;
como ninguno se quiso sentar
junto al hanbriento filosofo por no
le ver toser, viendo aquella sylla
va[cia] que estava enfrente dél
fuime ally asentar de lo qual
mucho me pesó; luego començo
la cena; ¡oh Pitagoras! qué
opulento comer, qué fertylidad de
manjares, qué diversidad de
vinos, qué copiosidad de
guisados, de salsas y especya, e
quién te lo bastase a contar;
quánto vaso de oro; plateles,
copas y jarros eran todos de oro;
los pajes muy dispuestos y muy
bien atabyados; abia cantores
que nunca dexaban de cantar;
abia dibersos ynstrumentos de
musica que azian muy diversos
instrumentos de melodia y
muchos que dançavan y bailavan
muy gracyosamente; en suma
toda la fiesta pasó en mucha
curyosidad, sino que tenia yo vn
contrapeso que me tercyaba el
plazer, y era que aquel maldito
viejo de Tresuropoles el qual con
su tos y esqupir me ynchia tanto
de asco que yo no podia comer si
la anbre no me ayudara, y por
otra parte no me dexaba tener
atencyon a la musica porque me
fatigava con disputar comigo
quistiones de filosofia,
preguntandome qué sentia de
Juan de voto a Dios con que
espantan los ninnos las amas que
los qrian; afirmome con grandes
juramentos que abia sido su
conbidado y que le diera vna
blanca de aquellas cynco que
consygo suele traer, la qual dixo
que tenia en gran veneracyon y
despues quisome matar sobre
presbadirme con mucha
ynstancya que quando era de dia
no era de noche y cuando era
noche no era de dia. En estas y
en otras vanidades me molia,
hasta que llegado el fin de la
cena, que quisiera yo ver antes su
fin de aquel traidor por que el
gozo de tanto bien me estorbaba.
Ya as oido ¡oh Pitágoras! lo que
en la cena pasó.
Gallo.—Mucho me ha parescido
bien tu buena fortuna; mas no
puedo estar en mi, de enojado de
aquel malaventurado filosofo e
con quantas importunaciones
estorbaba placer tan sabroso.
 NOTAS:
[291] En Luciano el nombre del rico es Eucrates. Su imitador lo
escribe con la diversidad que se verá en el texto, si ya esta
variedad de formas no es descuido del copista.
 CAPITULO IV

Que pone lo que soñaba Micillo y

lo que da a entender del
sueño; cosa de gran
sentencia.

Micillo.—Pues oye agora, que

no me seria menos gracioso
contartelo. Soñaba yo quel rico
Everates era muerto y sin hijo
alguno que le heredase y que me
dejaba en su testamento como
hijo que le hubiese de heredar; y
asi yo aceté la herencia y fui allá y
comence a tomar de aquella plata
y oro aquellas ollas que se
acababan de sacar debajo de
tierra; tenia alrededor de mí tanto
de tesoro que no pensaba ser yo
el que antes solia coser zapatos;
ya cabalgaba en muy poderosos
caballos y mulas de muy ricos
jaeces y muy acompañado de
gente me iba a pasear; todos me
hacian gran veneracion; hacia
muy esplendidos convites a todos
mis amigos y deleitabame mucho
en ver aquel servicio con vasos
de oro y plata; y estando en estas
prosperidades veniste con tu voz
a mí despertar, que me fue mas
enojoso que si verdaderamente
todo lo perdiera, y deseaba soñar
veinte noches a reo sueño tan
deleitoso para mi.
Gallo.—Deja ya, mi buen Mida,
de más tabular del oro con esa tu
insaciable avaricia; ciego estás,
pues solamente pones tu
bienaventuranza en la posesion
de mucho oro y plata.
Micillo.—¡Oh mi buen Pitagoras!
paréscete que seré yo solo el que
lo suele afirmar; pues aun creo yo
que si verdad es lo que dices que
te has transformado en todos los
estados de los hombres, que
podrias decir quanto más deleite
rescebias cuando del mendigar
descapado, ó cuando poseias
grandes riquezas y andabas
vestido de oro y te preciabas de
hacer grandes prodigalidades
distribuyendo tu posicion y no es
ahora nuevo consentir en el oro
nuestra felicidad, pues abasta la
esperanza de lo haber para dar
animo al cobarde, salud al
enfermo.
 CAPITULO V

Pone á quantos peligros se ponen

las personas por adquirir
riquezas y lo que dello les
sucede y si es lícito o no.

Micillo.—Dime agora quantos

son los que menos preciada su
vida y pospuesta la seguridad de
vivir se disponen a salir de sus
propias tierras donde son nacidos
y criados, y desamparados sus
padres y parientes, no estimando
el sosiego de su anima, se ponen
en el mar de las tempestades
ciertas a mal comer y mal beber,
a peligro de morir cada hora en
manos de sus enemigos, para
pasar a las Indias por adquerir las
inciertas riquezas del oro, por
gozar de la felicidad de lo poseer,
y después de pasados diez años
en las Indias o en otros
semejantes lugares a quántos
peligros se disponen por lo ganar
de aquella gente barbara y sin fe
ni sin ley, quanto animó con arte
uno solo a docientos de aquellos
solo por ver entre las piedras el
oro relucir; y aun despues de
haber pasados todos estos
peligros plugiese a Dios fuese
licita su posesion porque no sé yo
con qué color pueden ellos tomar
aquella gente el oro que poseen;
y a fin si fuesen a lo cavar de las
venas de la tierra y con su propio
trabajo y sudor lo procurasen
adquerir descubriendo las minas
donde está, aun con justo título lo
podrían tomar, no haciendo
cuenta si era nescesario de lo
tomar a su rey por estar en su
territorio y juridicion, porque no
quiero agora dudar si posean los
reinos con razon ni los extraños
se los puedan tomar; bien sé yo
que por vedar ellos que se les
predique el Evangelio de Dios les
podemos hacer guerras y todo lo
demas; en suma todo lo puede el
dinero; las peñas quebranta, los
rios pasan en seco; no hay lugar
tan alto que un asno cargado de
oro no lo suba; ¡oh, qué
bienaventuranza es el tener que
dar; qué miseria es el contino
rescebir!; las riquezas conservan
los amigos, allegan los parientes,
adquieren quien de vos diga bien;
todos le saludan, todos le llaman
al rico señor, y si pobre es, de
todos es desechado y aborrescido
de contino; quel pobre os hable,
ois pensando qué os quiere pedir;
en conclusion siempre oi decir
quel oro mandaba todas las cosas
criadas; mas dime, Gallo, porqué
te ries.
Gallo.—Riome porque tú
tambien, Micillo, estás en la
misma necedad que'stá el
inorante vulgo en la opinion que
tienen los ricos; pues creeme a
mi, que muy más trabajada y
desventurada vida pasan ellos
que vosotros, y hablo esto por
saberlo como lo sé muy bien
porque yo soy inspirimentado en
todas las vidas de los hombres;
en un tiempo fui rico y en otro
pobre como ago agora; si esperas
lo oirás.
Micillo.—Pues, por Dios, que es
razon que tú nos cuentes como
fueste transformado y qué has
pasado en cualquier estado de tu
vida.
Gallo.—Pues oyeme y ten por
prosupuesto que en toda mi vida
nunca yo vi estado de hombre
mas bienaventurado quel tuyo.
Micillo.—Yo te ruego que me
enseñes mi bienaventuranza y
cuenta desde qué fueste nascido
hasta ahora que eres gallo y
como fueste en cada uno
transformado y qué te acaesció
en cada una de tus
transformaciones, porque
necesariamente paresce que han
de ser cosas diversas y notabres.
 CAPITULO VI

Como cuenta que fue Euforbio y

da a entender a su amo quél
habia sido hormiga.

Gallo.—No es necesidad que te

diga agora cómo Apolo trujo mi
ánima á la tierra y la invistio de
cuerpo humano porque seria muy
prolijo al contar, ni debes tú saber
mas de que al prencipio vine á ser
Euforbio y vine á defender los
muros de Troya contra los
griegos.
Micillo.—Dime ¡oh preclaro
varon Pitagoras! qué fuí yo antes
que fuese Micillo y si hubo en mi
la misma conversion?
Gallo.—Sabras que tú fueste
una hormiga de las Indias de las
que cavan oro para comer.
Micillo.—¡Oh, desdichado de mi!
¿por qué no traje yo acá un poco
de lo que me sobraba allá, para