Political practice in a Polizeistaat mode became less patrimoniaclass="underline" prohibitions from petitioning the ruler directly, issued since 1649, were heightened to allow it only for information of the highest crimes. The rhetoric used in court cases and government documents changed from the self-deprecating formulae of Muscovite petitions to more straightforward forms of address. The elite's self-consciousness was bolstered with the invention of ceremonial "Orders" (of Saints Andrew, Catherine, and others) and European titles. Their new identities were to be shaped in new physical spaces: Peter I mandated that his elite construct urban homes in European style, with rooms for sociability (dancing, cards, reading, hobbies) and self-development (studies, libraries) to create engaged partners of empire.
Peter and his men, as James Cracraft has described, also projected their new image of power by creating St. Petersburg as the new "symbolic center" of the realm (Figure 13.4). Here, instead of the Kremlin's tightly packed, wall-enclosed ensemble of cathedrals and palaces, St. Petersburg opened up from an expansive riverbank studded with classical buildings into a city rationally planned around radial streets and connecting canals. Its first structures announced the values of Petrine ideology:
Figure 13.2 Peter I filled the garden alongside his Summer Palace with statuary symbolic of classical virtues and skills; here Architecture and Navigation are embodied, while the owl denoting wisdom peeks out from "Night." Photos: Jack Kollmann.
Figure 13.3 This modern engraving of a 1672 portrait of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich from the "Tituliarnik" (a collection of portraits of contemporary rulers) shows the tsar arrayed in religious symbols of legitimacy, in sharp contrast to the anonymous contemporary portrait of his son, the young Peter I, beardless and dashing in cuirass, blue sash, and Order of St. Andrew. The juxtaposition nevertheless underplays the degree of cultural and political change that Aleksei Mikhailovich himself initiated and that paved the way for Peter's reforms. General Research Division, The New York Public Library; with permission of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Figure 13.4 Peter I planned St. Petersburg as his new capital and a new symbolic center for his realm, celebrating its European culture and geopolitical power by arranging it around a spectacular ensemble of eighteenth-century classical buildings on the banks of the Neva River. Here, the Academy of Sciences and Kunstkammer, housing Peter I's ethnographical collection. Photo: Jack Kollmann.
military power (Peter-Paul Fortress), naval power and shipbuilding (Admiralty), orderly government (Twelve Colleges), practical learning (Academy of Sciences, Cabinet of Curiosities, and Ethnographic Museum), God's blessing on his realm (fortress Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul, Alexander-Nevskii monastery). Peter commissioned two (summer and winter) modest palaces in restrained baroque style, and a sumptuous Versailles-style suburban palace and garden ensemble to impress and to entertain. Palace interiors were filled with European portraits and paintings (Peter was fond of seascapes); his nobles followed suit. St. Petersburg was a military, political, and economic center on the European model.
After Peter I died, the frenetic energy of Petrine ideology was reined in somewhat, for several reasons. In ideological terms, as Wortman analyzed it, Petrine theory required each ruler to totally transform his realm, thus posing huge problems ofinstability. Furthermore, as noted below, the path ofsuccession proved turbulent across the century and resulted in primarily female rulers, making an ideology that stressed Minerva over Mars all the more expedient. For the first half of the century, rulers and their official panegyricists shaped their rhetoric of rulership around three themes: God's approval of the ruler, allegories to classical antiquity stressing wisdom and military might, and dedication to the Petrine reforms. Continuity, rather than change, became the hallmark of accession odes by Aleksandr Sumar- okov, Mikhail Lomonosov, and others.
Official odists celebrating accessions, name days, and military victories clothed Empresses Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine in a rhetoric of social harmony and benevolence regardless of how turbulent the historical reality was. They found the world of pagan mythology particularly fertile ground for positive images of female rulers. Minerva, Astraea, and Dido, for their strong rulership, military feats, and Edenic harmony, were all invoked as allegories for the three female empresses.
Importing European architects and landscapers as had Peter I, Empresses Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine adorned the realm with museums (Kunstkammer 1727), Academies (Sciences 1789, Art 1788), and palace ensembles (Peterhof, the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe selo, Pavlovsk) that showcased not only the wealth of the realm, but also its culture and refinement. Here they harked back to the paradise image imbedded in religious thought and contemporary Enlightenment thinking, creating extensive grounds, gardens, and parks for display and personal reflection. Wealthy nobles similarly used their estates as planned gardens where orderly perfection and cultivation of nature's abundance depicted Eden on earth. The Enlightenment specifics of this imagery of garden, abundance, and Eden might have been lost on the laboring populace, but as an imperial imaginary it was a skillful step. It provided continuity with Muscovite ideology (the realm was blessed by God, the tsar's power Christianized imperial space, the dynasty was continuous) and identification with an Enlightenment cultural package that laid claim to parity with the dominant powers of the day.
Legitimacy was a particular concern in this century when political succession was not fixed (as we discuss in this chapter), and Russia's rulers based claims to legitimacy on touchstones of Muscovite ideology. Upon coming to power, they issued manifestos (a novel step) justifying their succession in generally traditional terms: kinship link to Peter the Great, the expectation of the people's participation expressed through oaths and acclamation, the assertion of the ruler as benevolent, and fealty to his vision (which embraced change). Zhivov notes how the Church, chafing under Petrine reforms, nevertheless readily assumed its role of defending the ruler as godly and sacred.
Like Peter I, Catherine II was particularly attentive to self-presentation. Not particularly religious herself, she played out the role of a traditional godly, Muscovite monarch: she patronized churches, visited monasteries, bestowed alms and amnesties, and staged a central legitimizing ceremony, her coronation, in Moscow in the Dormition Cathedral as required by Muscovite tradition. She also donned other images: emulating Minerva, she fashioned herself as a giver of justice, issuing a lawcode (the Instruction of 1767) that, as Viktor Zhivov rightly notes, was a sweeping statement of Enlightenment values that bore no resemblance to Russian reality and had no realistic chance of being implemented.
At the same time, she also cultivated her image as warrior and conqueror, depicting herself in military uniform, staging recreations of her naval victories, commissioning paintings that linked her victories over the Turks with Peter I's feats. She particularly celebrated her victories over the Turks, laying claim to the classical heritage of Greece and Byzantium as well as reveling in defeating the formidable Ottoman empire. Heinrich Buchholtz's 1780s painting of Russia's naval victory at Chesme in 1770, for example, shows Peter I admiring from the clouds while Turkish captives place flags at the foot of the celebrated equestrian statue of him erected by Catherine. Catherine commemorated the Chesme victory in a church and palace in faux-Turkish style, and like Sofiia Alekseevna and Peter I before her, distributed over 150,000 medals in honor of her victorious generals (Aleksei Orlov at Chesme and Grigorii Potemkin at Ochakov) and herself, often with inscriptions lauding her benevolence rather than her power.