Garden of the empire: Catherine's appropriation of the Crimea

Slavic Review

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 1-23

  Schönle, Andreas ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BOTANY; CULTURAL FACTOR; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; GARDENING; GOVERNMENT; HISTORY; LEISURE; LIFESTYLE; POLITICAL SYSTEM; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; RUSSIAN FEDERATION; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIOECONOMICS; SYMBOLISM;

BOTANY; COLONIALISM; CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS; GARDENING; GOVERNMENT; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; LEISURE ACTIVITIES; LIFE STYLE; RUSSIA; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; SYMBOLISM;

EID: 33845896726     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2697641     Document Type: Article

References (150)

1. V. S. Lopatin, ed., Ekaterina II i G. A. Potemkin: Lichnaia perepiska 1769-1791 (Moscow, 1997), 155.
2. On the rationale behind Catherine's imperialist designs, see Marc Raeff, "In the Imperial Manner," Political Ideas and Institutions in Imperial Russia (Boulder, Colo., 1994), 156-58,
3. and William C. Fuller, Jr., "Russian Imperialism and Military Power in the Eighteenth Century: Why and How," Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914 (New York, 1992), 125-76. My study concerns itself less with causality than with the cultural and ideological meanings historical actors and writers ascribed to official policies.
4. The emphasis in this paper will be on the Crimean peninsula, but occasionally I will also draw upon evidence from the refashioning of New Russia, the province north of the Crimea, which was also under Potemkin's stewardship and faced similar challenges.
5. Lopatin, ed., Ekaterina II i G. A. Potemkin, 180.
6. In 1770 Catherine had argued that the Tatars' "inborn intransigence" would doom any annexation of the Crimea, "Vysochaishie reskripty Ekateriny II i ministerskaia perepiska po delam krymskim," Chtenia v imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom Universitete 4, no. 4 (October-December 1871).
7. Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossiiskoi imperii s 1649 goda: Sobranie pervoe (hereafter cited as PSZ), vol. 21 (St. Petersburg, 1830), 15.708.
8. See Stephen Lessing Baehr, The Paradise Myth in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Utopian Patterns in Early Secular Russian Literature and Culture (Stanford, 1991), 1-3, 171-74.
9. See Baehr's chapter "The Happy Garden State," in his Paradise Myth, 65-89.
10. See, also, E. A. Pogosian, "Sad kak politicheskii simvol u Lomonosova," Trudy po znakovym sistemam, vol. 24,
11. Uchenye zapiski tarluskogo universiteta, vol. 882 (Tartu, 1992), 44-57. Pogosian discusses the semiotic equivalence among the state, the garden, and paradise in Lomonosov's odes to Elizabeth.
12. Baehr, Paradise Myth, 65-68.
13. Andrei Zorin, "Krym v istorii russkogo samosoznania," Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1998, no. 31:135-37.
14. "Pis'mo Imp. k d-ru Tsimmermanu o dvukh napisannykh eiu komediiakh i s prilozheniem svedenii o Kryme," Sbornik imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva (SIRIO), vol. 27 (St. Petersburg, 1880), 361.
15. Quoted by Zorin, "Krym," 135.
16. See Dmitrii O. Shvidkovskii, The Empress and the Architect: British Architecture and Gardens at the Court of Catherine the Great (New Haven, 1996), 41-42, 102-5, and
17. Andreas Schonle, "Prostranstvennaia poetika Tsarskogo Sela v ekaterininskoi prezentatsii imperil," Tynianovskii sbornik, vol. 11 (forthcoming).
18. Norbert Elias, The Court Society (New York, 1983), 227-28.
19. D. S. Likhachev strongly de-emphasizes the political function of gardens in his stylistic periodization of landscape design: Poeziia sadov: K semantike sadovo-parkovykh stilei. Sad kak tekst, 2d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1991).
20. For a survey specifically of Russian gardens, see V. P. Vergunov and V. A. Gorokhov, Russkie sady i parki (Moscow, 1988).
21. For a discussion of Catherine's involvement in designing estates, see Shvidkovskii, Empress and the Architect.
22. Zhil'ber Romm, Puteshestvie v Krym v 1786 g. (Leningrad, 1941), 29.
23. Lopatin, ed., Ekaterina II i G. A. Potemkin, 221.
24. Semen Bobrov, Tavrida, ili moi letnii den' v tavricheskom khersonise: Liriko-Epicheskoe pesnotvorenie (Nikolaev, 1798), 157.
25. Ivan III had put a crowned, double-headed eagle on the imperial seal, emulating the seal of the Holy Roman Empire. Catherine had eagles embroidered on one of her robes, and the double-headed eagle figured on the coat of arms that was given to the Tauric region by law in 1784. Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1,
26. From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton, 1995), 115;
27. PSZ, vol. 22, 15.953. In the early parts of Catherine's reign, the eagle often served as a metaphor for Aleksei and Grigorii Orlov, who played crucial roles in the Russo-Turkish war of 1768-1774 (see Petrov's 1769 ode "On the Taking of Khotin"), but after the Orlovs lost their influence, the metaphor began to stand more broadly for the empire.
28. P. S. Pallas, Bemerkungen auf einer Reise in die südlichen Statthalterschaften des russischen Reichs in den Jahren 1793 und 1794 (Leipzig, 1801), 2:382.
29. Zorin, "Krym," 125-26.
30. Alan W. Fisher, The Russian Annexation of the Crimea, 1772-1783 (Cambridge, Eng., 1970), 100-105,
31. and Roger P. Bartlett, Human Capital: The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia, 1762-1804 (Cambridge, Eng., 1979), 130-31.
32. See also Raeff, "In the Imperial Manner," 162-64.
33. Vasilii Petrov, Sochineniia, vols. 1 and 2 (St. Petersburg, 1811), 1:181.
34. P. Ia. Chernykh, Istoriko-etimologicheskii slovar' sovremennogo russkogo iazyka (Moscow, 1993), 1:566-67;
35. Maks Fasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar' russkogo iazyka (Moscow, 1987), 3:58.
36. Petrov, Sochineniia, 1:182.
37. Petrov, Sochineniia, Ibid., 1:183.
38. PSZ, vol. 20, 14.943;
39. V. B. Barkhudarian, Istoriia novo-nakhichevanskoi armianskoi kolonii (1779-1861 gg.) (Erevan, 1967), 456-58.
40. Vladimir Bronevskii, Obozrenie iuzhnogo berega Tavridy v 1815 godu (Tula, 1822), 157-58.
41. Vladimir Bronevskii, Obozrenie iuzhnogo berega Tavridy v 1815 godu Ibid., 140.
42. Karl Gablits, Fizicheskoe opisanie tavricheskoi oblasti, po ee mestopolozheniiu, i po vsem trem tsarstvam prirody (St. Petersburg, 1785), 76 and 86.
43. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Kyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London, 1992), 25.
44. "Pis'mo Imp. k d-ru Tsimmermanu," 361.
45. Arsenii Markevich, "Materialy arkhiva kantseliarii Tavricheskogo gubernatora, otnosiashchiesia k puteshestviiu Imperatritsy Ekateriny II v Krym v 1787 godu," Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii, 1891, no. 11:98.
46. "Mirnye prednachertaniia Kniazia Potemkina," Russkii arkhiv, 1874, no. 2:294.
47. Ivan Dolgorukii, Slavny bubni za gorami ili puteshestvie moe v koe-kuda 1810 goda (Moscow, 1870), 186.
48. Romm, Puteshestvie v Krym, 27.
49. Bobrov, Tavrida, 2.
50. Bobrov, Tavrida, Ibid., 163.
51. Bobrov, Tavrida, Ibid., 57.
52. Bobrov, Tavrida, Ibid., 44.
53. Bronevskii, Obozrenie iuzhnogo berega, 1-2.
54. Bronevskii, Obozrenie iuzhnogo berega, Ibid., 184; Gen. 2:8-9.
55. "Pis'ma kniaziu G. A. Potemkinu-Tavricheskomu," Zapiski odesskogo obshchestva istorii i drevnostei (ZOOID), vol. 9 (1875): 257.
56. Adolf Beer and Joseph Ritter von Fidler, eds., Joseph II. und Graf Cobenzl: Ihr Briefwechsel, Oesterreichische Geschichtsquellen. Diplomataria et Acta, vol. 54 (Vienna, 1901), 2:162.
57. See also "Pis'ma kniazia Bezborodko," Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova: Bumagi grafov Aleksandra i Semena Romanovichei Vorontsovykh (Moscow, 1879), 13:59.
58. "Pis'ma Imperatritsy Ekateriny II k Iakovu Aleksandrovichu Briusovu 1787 goda," Prilozhenie k kamer-fur'erskomu zhurnalu 1787 goda (St. Petersburg, 1889), 21,
59. and Memoirs and Recollections of Count Segur, Ambassador from France to the Courts of Russia and Prussia, etc. etc. (London, 1825), 3:107.
60. Lopatin, ed., Ekaterina II i G. A. Potemkin, 209.
61. Taurische Reise der Kaiserin von Russland Katharina II (Coblenz, 1799), 142, 170.
62. M. Longinov, "Zametki na stat'i russkogo arkhiva," Russkii arkhiv, 1865, no. 7:868.
63. Dolgorukii, Slavny bubny, 113.
64. Beer and Ritter von Fidler, eds., Joseph II. und Graf Cobenzl: Ihr Briefwechsel, 148.
65. Lopatin, ed., Ekaterina II i G. A. Potemkin, 216.
66. "Rasporiazheniia svetleishego kniazia Grigoriia Aleksandrovicha Potemkina-Tavricheskogo kasatel'no ustroeniia Tavricheskoi Oblasti v 1781 po 1786 god," ZOOID, vol. 12 (1881): 285 and 303.
67. Romm, Puteshestvie v Krym, 51 and 53.
68. Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii, 1889, no. 8:1-11.
69. Dolgorukii, Slavny bubny, 114.
70. Gen. 2:9.
71. Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne, Coup d'Oeil at Beloeil and a Great Number of European Gardens, trans. and ed. Basil Guy (Berkeley, 1991), 151-52.
72. Bobrov, Tavrida, 169.
73. PSZ, vol. 21, 15.708.
74. Raeff deems this professed respect for cultural and religious differences a temporary measure meant as a transition toward complete absorption and Russification. In keeping with "the cameralist belief in the uniformity of human nature," administrative assimilation was to lead to "institutional and social, and finally cultural" uniformity. Raeff, "Uniformity, Diversity, and the Imperial Administration in the Reign of Catherine II," Political Ideas and Institutions in Imperial Russia, 141-55.
75. For a synthetic treatment of the multiethnic and multicultural situation of premodern Russia, see Andreas Kappeler, Russland als Vielvölkerreich: Entstehung, Geschichte, Zerfall (Munich, 1992), esp. chaps. 2 and 4. Kappeler stresses the continuities between the administrative handling of the Crimea and integration methods used previously with regard to the Khanate of Kazan' (49).
76. Memoirs and Recollections of Count Segur, 3:155-57.
77. W. F. Reddaway, ed., Documents of Catherine the Great: The Correspondence with Voltaire and the Instruction of 1767, in the English Text of 1768 (Cambridge, Eng., 1931), 8.
78. Taurische Reise, 81.
79. E. I. Druzhinina, Severnoe prichernomor'e v 1775-1800 gg. (Moscow, 1959), 92-146;
80. Raeff, "In the Imperial Manner," 164-66;
81. Fisher, Russian Annexation, 139-50;
82. Kappeler, Russland als Vielvölkerreich, 49-50.
83. PSZ, vol. 21, 15.798.
84. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2d. ed. (London, 1991), 54.
85. Potemkin supported the multilinguistic nature of the Crimea by publishing books in various languages (such as a translation of the Al Koran from English into Russian) for the benefit of its inhabitants, ZOOID, vol. 8 (1872): 263-64.
86. Bobrov, Tavrida, 21.
87. Bobrov, Tavrida, Ibid., 118.
88. Bobrov, Tavrida, Ibid., 131-33.
89. Bobrov, Tavrida, Ibid., 155.
90. Bobrov, Tavrida, Ibid., 207.
91. The descriptive poem was written in the early 1790s and published in 1798, duly equipped with the requisite words of praise for the new ruler, Paul I.
92. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 6.
93. Lopatin, ed., Ekaterina II i G. A. Potemkin, 209.
94. Gablits, Fizicheskoe opisanie, 198.
95. Bobrov, Tavrida, 273.
96. Mikhailo Livanov, O zemledelii, skotovodstve i ptichevodstve (Nikolaev, 1799), dedication to Potemkin.
97. Druzhinina, Severnoe prichernomor'e, 120.
98. On the settlement by foreigners, see Bartlett, Human Capital, 125-34.
99. Druzhinina, Severnoe prichernomor'e, 65,
100. and Bartlett, Human Capital, 126.
101. Druzhinina, Severnoe prichernomor'e, 122;
102. PSZ, vol. 22, 16.548.
103. Pallas, Bemerkungen, 368.
104. Bobrov, Tavrida, 75.
105. Gablits, Fizicheskoe opisanie, 68.
106. Druzhinina, Severnoe prichernomor'e, 112.
107. Bronevskii, Obozrenie iuzhnogo berega, 62, 108, 115.
108. Bronevskii, Obozrenie iuzhnogo berega, Ibid., 62.
109. Druzhinina, Severnoe prichernomor'e, 8.
110. PSZ, vol. 22, 16.255.
111. Owing to its sensitive role as port and zone of free trade, Theodosia was to become a purely Christian city. Bakhchisarai, in return, was designated as an area reserved for Tatars, as was Karasu-Bazar. Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii, 1889, no. 8: 10,
112. and Karasu-Bazar. Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii, 1888, no. 6:6.
113. Druzhinina, Severnoe prichernomor'e, 141.
114. Taurische Reise, 134 and 147, respectively.
115. PSZ, vol. 22, 15.935.
116. Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii, 1891, no. 11:58.
117. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 6.
118. The expression "the empire writes back" belongs to Salman Rushdie; quoted by Srinivas Aravamudan, Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804 (Durham, 1999), 5.
119. Fisher, Russian Annexation, 144.
120. Romm, Puteshestvie v Krym, 39.
121. Beer and Ritter von Fidler, eds., Joseph II. und Graf Cobenzl: Ihr Briefwechsel, 148.
122. Taurische Reise, 145.
123. Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii, 1891, no. 11:64.
124. The governor of the Crimean region, Vasilii Kokhovskii, regarded with much skepticism the possibility of enticing Tatars into allegiance to Russia, claiming that religious differences were insuperable and that the fanaticism and cruelty of their faith prevented them from enjoying the prosperity brought about by lawfulness; "Pis'my [sic] pravitelia tavricheskoi oblasti Vasiliia Vas. Kokhovskogo praviteliu kantseliarii V. S. Popovu, dlia doklada ego Svetlosti kniaziu Grigoriu Al. Potemkinu-Tavricheskomu," ZOOID, vol. 10 (1877): 288.
125. He therefore took every opportunity to persecute and expel Islamic clerics, convinced as he was that only "after we have reduced the number of mullahs and scribes will we get good ploughmen" (294), a policy Potemkin condoned. See G. Kireenko, "Ordera kniazia Potemkina za 1786 g.," Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii, 1888, no. 3:30.
126. Catherine II, Sochineniia Ekateriny II, vol. 7, Antidote (St. Petersburg, 1901), 72-73.
127. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, 1994), 284-331.
128. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment Ibid., 129.
129. For a discussion of the Greek project, see Hugh Ragsdale, "Evaluating the Traditions of Russian Aggression: Catherine II and the Greek Project," Slavonic and East European Review 66, no. 1 (1988): 91-117.
130. Note the curious fact that this desire to claim a connection with Greek antiquity did not translate into a concern for preserving Greek artifacts, which suggests that Catherine saw such claims purely as a matter of discourse, not policy.
131. Andrei Zorin, "Russkaia oda kontsa 1760-kh-nachala 1770-kh godov, Vol'ter i 'grecheskii proekt' Ekateriny II," Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1997, no. 24:9.
132. The classical statement of this view belongs to Charles Duclos: "those who live a hundred miles from the capital, are a century away from it in their modes of thinking and acting." Duclos, Considérations sur les moeurs (1750; reprint, Cambridge, Eng., 1939), 13.
133. On Catherine's somewhat confused attempt to assess the uniqueness and greatness of Russia in comparison with the west, see Hans Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 262-65.
134. Catherine II, Antidote, 55.
135. On the motif of Russia as a multinational empire in Catherine's rhetoric of power, especially during the second half of her rein, see Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 1:137-38.
136. Petrov, Sochinenia, 2:19.
137. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 1:113, 131.
138. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, Ibid., 1:122-23.
139. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, Ibid., 1:132-33.
140. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, Ibid., 1:138-39.
141. On the essentialist roots of the opposition between Greeks and barbarians, see Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), 218-22.
142. For the Enlightenment reinterpretation of this opposition, see Jean Starobinski, Le remède dans le mal: Critique et légitimation de l'artifice à l'âge des Lumières (Paris, 1989), 11-59.
143. Memoirs and Recollections of Count Segur, 3:139.
144. "Zapiska ob amazonskoi rote," Moskvitianin, 1844, no. 1:266-68.
145. On Herodotus's notion of Scythians as the other to the Greeks, see François Hartog, Le miroir d'Hérodote: Essai sur la représentation de l'autre (Paris, 1980).
146. Raeff writes of the element of "play" present in Potemkin's style and activities, "In the Imperial Manner," 174.
147. For a discussion of the "Potemkin villages," see A. M. Panchenko, "Potemkinskie derevni' kak kul'turnyi mif," XVIII vek 14 (1983): 93-104.
148. On the journey itself, see A. Brikner, Istoriia Ekateriny vtoroi (1885; reprint, Moscow, 1991), 406-18.
149. Memoirs and Recollections of Count Segur, 3:130. Joseph traveled to the Crimea incognito, under the guise of the Count of Falkenstein.
150. J. C. Loudon, Encyclopaedia of Gardening, 3d ed. (London, 1835), 255.