Tales from Imperial Russia

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.

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)

As is well known, Grigorii Rasputin wielded a considerable and scandalous level of influence over Tsar Nicholas II. What is less well known is that this was not the first time that a holy man managed to worm his way into the good graces of an emperor and create destructive consequences. This episode follows the life and career of Fotii (Spasskii), a monk who was able to persuade Tsar Alexander I to turn against one of his oldest and closest friends. Sources: J. L. Wieczynski, ‘Apostle of Obscurantism: the Archimandrite Photius of Russia (1792-1838)’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. XXII, no.4 (1971), pp. 319-331. A. V. Ivanov, A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia, 1700-1825 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020).

In August 1702, the serving girl Marta came into the possession of a Russian general following a siege. Some twenty-two years later, she was crowned Empress Catherine I of all Russia. In this episode, we follow the remarkable story of this woman and the men who fell in love with her, especially Peter the Great. Source: I. Pavlenko, Ekaterina I (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 2004)

In the 1890s, the tiny village of Ashchepkovo in western Russia was struck by an epidemic of demonic possession. This episode attempts to understand this and other cases of malign spells by entering the mystical and magical world of the Russian peasantry. Sources: C. Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Illinois University Press, 2003) V. Kivelson, Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013)

In 1889, a small band of unlikely Russian colonists seized the abandoned fortress of Sagallo in today's Djibouti. Led by the would-be Cossack Nikolai Ashinov, they triggered an international incident. But how did all this come to pass? The answer lies in Ashinov's career of skullduggery, deceipt, and falsehood. Sources: A. V. Lunochkin, “Ataman vol’nykh kazakov” Nikolai Ashinov i ego deiatel’nost’ (Volgograd: Izdatel’stvo Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 1999) C. Jesman, The Russians in Ethiopia: An Essay in Futility (London: Chatto and Windus, 1958) P. J. Rollins, "Imperial Russia's African Colony", The Russian Review, vol. 27, no. 4 (1968): 432-451 R. F. Byrnes, Pobedonostsev: His Life and Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968)

From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the First World War's eastern front massacred men by the thousand. Father Dimitrii Smirnov, along with hundreds of other religious officials, tried to offer spiritual solace to the fighting and the dying, all while suffering hardships himself and witnessing the horrors of modern warfare. Father Dimitrii's experiences were made all the more arduous by the fact that he was an Old Believer, a religious group that had only recently been granted full legal standing. Further reading: James M. White: ‘Battling for Legitimacy: Russian Old Believer Priests in the First World War,’ First World War Studies, vol. 7, no. 2-3 (2017), 93-113. E. M. Iukhimenko, “Pis’ma staroobriadcheskogo sviashchennika Dimitriia Smirnova s Russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904-1905 gg.” in Starobriadchestvo Sibiri i Dal’nego Vostoka. Materialy chetvertoi mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii 14-17 sentiabria 2004 goda g. Vladivostok (Vladivostok, 2004), 46-59.