From Lubok to Libel: Nineteenth-Century Russian Historiography and Popular Memory in The Jester Wedding of Prince-Pope Nikita Zotov

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Russian Literature LXXV (2014) I/II/III/IV www.elsevier.com/locate/ruslit

FROM LUBOK TO LIBEL: NINETEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND POPULAR MEMORY IN THE JESTER WEDDING OF PRINCE-POPE NIKITA ZOTOV

ERNEST A. ZITSER

Abstract This article discusses the origins and political significance of an anonymous Old Believer wall-poster depicting, in image and text, one of the most infamous public spectacles ever staged at the court of Peter the Great. Tracing its transition from the visual medium to the verbal, and back again, by way of nineteenth-century Petrine historiography, the article offers a new dating of this piece of Old Believer folk art, disputes its supposed debt to the “spirit of medieval laughter”, and, in the process, demonstrates the permeability of late Imperial Russian “elite” and “popular” cultures. Keywords: 18th-Century Russian Literature; “Lubok”; Old Believers; Petrine Historiography; Nikita Zotov

The present article is based on a paper that I delivered on 5 December 2004, in Boston, Massachusetts, at a panel of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies devoted to “Monuments of Russian Visual Culture”. My conference presentation focused on a little-known example of Old Believer folk art: an undated, anonymous watercolor from the V.I. Malyšev Repository of Ancient Acts (“Ⱦɪɟɜɧɟɯɪɚɧɢɥɢɳɟ”) of the Institute for Russian Literature (Puškin House) in St. Petersburg, depicting one of the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ruslit.2014.05.026 0304-3479/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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most infamous public spectacles ever staged at the court of Peter the Great – the “Jester Wedding of Prince-Pope Nikita Zotov”. 1 I chose to discuss this “Petrine monument” 2 at this particular moment in time at least in part as a way to mark(et) the publication of my then-recent monograph, which discussed this infamous parody of the sacrament of marriage and used this very watercolor as the book jacket illustration. 3 This personal act of commemoration, however, was also motivated by a more serious, scholarly agenda. It signaled my intention to approach the theme of the panel from a slightly different (but etymologically identical) definition of “ɩɚɦɹɬɧɢɤ”: a monument not as a public sculpture or as a painting by a famous Russian artist but, rather, as a repository of memory and a site of political and ideological contestation. That is the methodological stance that I also propose to adopt in this article. By tracing the transition of the abovementioned piece of Old Believer folk art from the visual medium to the verbal, and back again, by way of nineteenth-century Petrine historiography, I hope not only to demonstrate the permeability of late Imperial “elite” and “popular” cultures, but also to make a case for the historical significance of a humble objet d’art that, on first inspection, could very easily be disqualified from the canon of great “Monuments of Russian Visual Culture”. 4

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The monument under discussion is a pen-and-ink drawing, handcolored with a diluted, egg-based tempera (“aɤɜɚɪɟɥɶ ɫ ɪɚɡɦɵɜɤɨɣ” or “ɩɟɪɨɜɵɣ ɪɢɫɭɧɨɤ ɫ ɪɚɫɤɪɚɫɤɨɣ”), sketched by an amateur artist on the back of an early nineteenth-century surveyors’ map (about 14 x 20 in.) from the Kadnikovskij district of Vologda province. 5 It appears that this “ɪɢɫɨɜɚɧɧɵɣ ɥɭɛɨɤ” was intended to serve as a wall-poster (“ɧɚɫɬɟɧɧɵɣ ɥɢɫɬ”), a type of everyday, household decoration popular among Russian Old Believer communities in the far north. It is just one of about fifty individual drawings collected by V.I. Malyšev and his colleagues in the first half of the twentieth century, during their ethnographic expeditions in Siberia, but it stands out in the Institute of Literature’s collection because of its explicitly “historical”, as opposed to the primarily confessional and didactic (“ɞɭɯoɜɧɨ-ɧɪɚɜɫɬɜɟɧɧɨɝɨ”) content. This work was introduced to the broader scholarly community by Ol’ga Belobrova (b. 1925), a professionally trained art historian and literary scholar whose brief survey of the wall-poster collection at Puškinskij Dom not only identified the wall-poster in question as being “about the abolition of the patriarchate and about the jester wedding of Nikita Zotov and the Old Nun of Rževsk” (“ɪɠɟɜɫɤɚɹ ɫɬɚɪɢɰɚ”) but also offered compelling evidence (both internal and external) for dating this item to the late nineteenth century. 6 Almost immediately, however, Belobrova’s dating was challenged (albeit implicitly) by two of her senior male colleagues from the Institute of Literature. 7 Dmitrij /LFKDþHY (1906-1999) and Aleksandr 3DQþenko (19372002) included the wall-poster described by Belobrova as one of the illustrations in their pioneering collection of essays about the “laughter culture of Old Russia” (“ɫɦɟɯɨɜɨɣ ɦɢɪ ɞɪɟɜɧɟɣ Ɋɭɫɢ”), 8 a book that was explicitly dedicated to Michail Bachtin and that was committed to extending his analysis of “medieval popular humor” to early Russian literary texts and, to a much lesser extent, also to images such as marginalia and Russian popular prints (“ɥɭɛɨɱɧɵɟ ɤɚɪɬɢɧɤɢ”, or “ɥɭɛɤɢ”). 9 Although the authors must have surely known about Belobrova’s discussion of the piece in question, 10 both the first and second editions of their book claimed that this “Old Believer wall-poster (watercolor)” dated from the “end of the eighteenth century”.11 The reason for moving the ostensible date of creation back by almost one hundred years was not explained anywhere, but it appears to have derived from their overall conception of the relationship between visual and literary monuments. In their introduction, for example, the authors asserted that the medieval Russian “culture of laughter” was “reflected not only in literature”, but also in “popular prints and wall-posters. And although as a rule this artistic production belongs to the eighteenth century, it had not broken with the Old Russian tradition” of laughter. In fact, eighteenth-century “popular prints” merely “served as illustrations to literary monuments that arose in prePetrine times”, such as Povest’ o Erše EršoYLþe, Kaljazinskaja þelobitnaja,

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Povest’ o Fome i Ereme. 12 According to /LFKDþHY and 3DQþHQNR, “[e]ven in cases where the texts accompanying popular prints did not appear to derive from a seventeenth-century manuscript, they carried on the ancient tradition of comical joking” (“ɫɬɚɪɢɧɧɚɹ ɬɪɚɞɢɰɢɹ ɫɤɨɦɨɪɨɲɶɟɝɨ ɛɚɥɚɝɭɪɫɬɜɚ”). The fact that /LFKDþHY and 3DQþHQNR included The Jester Wedding of Prince-Pope Zotov in a collection of essays on the “laughter culture of Old Russia” suggests that they saw both this watercolor and the accompanying text as “hold-overs” (“ɨɫɬɚɬɨɱɧɵɟ ɹɜɥɟɧɢɹ”) of the carnivalesque, comical sensibility of pre-Petrine Russia. 13 Indeed, judging by their brief reference to Peter’s All-Drunken Council as a “manifestation of the spirit of old Russian laughter” (“ɩɪɨɹɜɥɟɧɢɟ ɞɪɟɜɧɟɪɭɫɫɤɨɣ ɫɦɟɯɨɜɨɣ ɫɬɢɯɢɢ”) and to the royally-scripted “wedding of the jester Zotov” as an embodiment of “medieval ‘state laughter’” (“ɫɪɟɞɧɟɜɟɤɨɜɨɝɨ ‘ɝɨɫɭɞɚɪɫɬɜɟɧɧɨɝɨ ɫɦɟɯɚ’”), 14 this is precisely how /LFKDþHY and 3DQþHQko would have interpreted the wall-poster had they actually went about doing so. 15 But such an interpretation would have been as problematic as the one that had formerly been used to explain the topsy-turvy funeral procession depicted in a popular print called How the Mice Buried the Cat, arguably the most famous image of carnivalesque inversion in all of Russian visual culture, and the one to which the wall-poster bears an unmistakable similarity. This likeness is most apparent when we compare the anonymous Old Believer wall-poster to the later, nineteenthcentury, engraved version of the original woodcut:

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As we can see, both are two-dimensional representations, containing a manyfigured composition, arranged in several rows, and prominently featuring a winter sleigh. Both include a humorous explanatory text that comments on the action. And both have been (or, in the case of the wall-poster, might have been) interpreted as a manifestation of popular humor directed specifically against Peter the Great. Until quite recently, for example, the lubok was commonly seen as a sly commentary on the public joy with which the oppressed Russian people in general, and the Old Believers in particular, greeted the death of the tyrannical tsar, who was identified with the “Great Cat of Kazan” (“Ʉɨɬ Ʉɚɡɚɧɫɤɢɣ”). However, as M.A. Alekseeva has demonstrated, this interpretation, which was popularized in the late 1850s-early 1860s by the art critic Vladimir Stasov and enshrined in Dmitrij Rovinskij’s monumental catalogue of “Russian popular pictures”, is more than spurious. 16 It is, in fact, an anachronistic, politicized misreading of a lateseventeenth century (i.e. pre-Petrine) version of a rather common, panEuropean, medieval carnivalesque theme; 17 and an example, if one needs yet another example, of how easily “medieval popular humor” can be taken out of context by later scholars. 18 If we turn to an analysis of the wall-poster depicting the carnivalesque wedding of the Prince-Pope, on the other hand, we will see that the true meaning of this piece is in fact closer to the critical spirit of a nineteenthcentury political libel than to the inoffensive, self-parodying humor of a medieval popular print. As the following analysis of the possible sources of the text accompanying the Old Believer watercolor will demonstrate, The Jester Wedding of Prince-Pope Zotov actually dates not from the late eighteenth, but the second half of the nineteenth century, just as Belobrova had pointed out; and it evinces not an appreciation of the liberating potential of medieval carnival, but rather an acute engagement with nineteenth-century debates about the “emancipation” (“ɪɚɫɤɪɟɩɨɳɟɧɢɟ”) of Russian society during the so-called Great Reforms of the 1860s – debates that used the image of Peter the Great to stake out their participants’ respective claims to the reformist legacy of Russia’s first emperor. In translation, the text that accompanies the depiction of the jester wedding procession reads as follows: When Peter I [decided to] abolish the patriarchate, he saw that there was great talk among the common people, so in order to ridicule the patriarchate, he dressed up his old courtier Nikita Zotov in patriarchal vestments, made him a mock patriarch, and got him an elderly woman [named] Rževskaja as a bride and called her abbess; and with all of his courtiers, rode to Moscow, where the patriarch and the abbess were publicly wed; [and during which spectacle], all the courtiers were dressed in the clothes of jesters and minstrels and foreigners; many 19 soroki (barrels) of spirits were hauled out for the [common] people, and when this wedding train processed through Moscow, he ordered the

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Judging by the obvious, if unspoken references, the anonymous Old Believer who wrote the text for this wall-drawing was as conversant with the latest developments in Petrine historiography as he was with the visual language of popular prints. Indeed, despite the archaic-sounding Russian of this text, it is quite clear that the textual sources of The Jester Wedding of Prince-Pope Zotov included two quite contemporary examples of Petrine historiography: first, Ivan Golikov’s Dejanija Petra Velikogo, mudrogo preobrazovatelja Rossii, a multi-volume history of Peter’s reign, which was originally published at the end of the eighteenth century and then reprinted (by popular demand) in the first quarter of the nineteenth century; 21 and second, Michail Semevskij’s 1861 article in Svetoþ – a short-lived, thick journal of “nativist” (“ɩɨɱɜɟɧɧɢɱɟɫɤɢɣ”) leanings that was edited by friends of the Dostoevskij brothers 22 – and republished twice, in expanded form, on the pages of the historical journal Russkaja starina in 1872 and then in the second, revised edition of Semevskij’s own 1884 collection of essays, Slovo i delo! 17001725. Oþerki i razskazy iz russkoj istorii XVIII v. 23 The artist’s choice of these two historiographical sources is not coincidental. In the nineteenth century, Golikov and Semevskij were the only historians to offer detailed analyses of the crude and blasphemous spectacles associated with the so-called “Drunken Council” of the “Prince-Pope”, spectacles that most respectable, academic historians refused to take seriously.24 According to Golikov (1734-1801), an amateur historian whose “multi-volume panegyric” was one of the chief sources of the text in the wall-poster, all of Peter’s actions, including his “amusements and jokes” (“ɡɚɛɚɜɵ ɢ ɲɭɬɤɢ”), always had some kind of “utility and purpose” (“ɩɨɥɶɡɭ ɢ ɧɚɦɟɪɟɧɢɟ”). In the case of the wedding of “Privy Counsellor Nikita MoiseeYLþ Zotov”, for example, Peter’s parodies constituted an example of Enlightenment anticlericalism. Golikov argued that for the spiritual benefit of his subjects, the great tsar had from the very beginning of his reign intended to replace the Russian patriarchate with a well-ordered college of ecclesiastical affairs; but out of respect for the gradual process of education, he had allowed an interim period for “popular prejudices” (“ɩɪɟɞɪɚɫɫɭɞɤɢ ɧɚɪɨɞɧɵɟ”) to weaken. Seeing that the people, including Russian nobles, and even some members of the political elite, continued to harbor hopes that the patriarch would be restored, the tsar decided to act more decisively – and derisively. To that end, Peter dressed one of his courtiers in patriarchal vestments and, to the general delight of the assembled multitude, had him take part in carnivalesque ceremonies mocking the Popish pretensions of Russia’s top ecclesiastical official. At this point in the narrative, Golikov inserted the

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vignette about the drunk, cheering crowd – an apocryphal story for which there is no corroborating evidence whatsoever: On the first day of the wedding, all of the common folk [ɜɟɫɶ ɧɚɪɨɞ], who had gathered in droves [ɫɬɟɱɟɧɢɟ ɤɨɬoɪɨɝɨ ɛɵɥɨ ɛɟɫɱɢɫɥɟɧɧɨ], were also provided with refreshments [ɭɝɨɳɟɧ]. Many tubs of spirits and ale [ɛɚɞɶɢ ɫ ɜɢɧɨɦ ɢ ɩɢɜɨɦ] and all kinds of victuals [ɹɫɬɜɚ] were set out for it. This folk [ɫɟɣ ɧɚɪɨɞ], which had previously shown such respect for the dignity of the Patriarch, at this time laughed heartily at its expense. [Footnote]: With great laughter, the common people at the time chanted [ɧɚɪɨɞ ɝɨɜɨɪɢɥ ɬɨɝɞɚ ɫ ɜɟɥɢɤɢɦ ɫɦɟɯɨɦ]: “The Patriarch has taken a bride [ɉɚɬɪɢɚɪɯ ɠɟɧɢɥɫɹ], the Patriarch has taken a bride!” Some others, holding a little ladle filled with spirits [ɫ ɤɨɜɲɢɤɨɦ ɜɢɧɚ] or ale cheered [ɤɪɢɱɚɥɢ]: “Long live the Patriarch and 25 his Patriarchess”.

By this enlightening story, Golikov intended to show how the tsar was able, at one and the same time, to attack popular superstitions and to “prepare [people’s] minds” (“ɩɪɢɝɨɬɨɜɢɬɶ ɭɦɵ”) for the reform yet to come. 26 However, in an explicit rejoinder to the above-cited description, 27 Semevskij (1837-1892) 28 pointed out that Zotov was ordained “Prince-Pope” at the end of the seventeenth century, well before Peter had any intention to abolish the patriarchate and continued to make fun of Orthodox rituals long after he inaugurated the Synodal period of Russian church history by instituting a government-controlled Ecclesiastical College. Consequently, there was no straight line between the masquerade-wedding of 1714-1715 and Peter’s decision to get rid of the patriarch. More importantly, the nineteenthcentury historian averred, Peter was hardly a monarch to take popular opinion into account, let alone bother to prepare people’s minds. Why Peter would choose “mockery” (“ɧɚɫɦɟɲɤɚ”) to “prepare [people’s] minds” for the abolition of the patriarchate, Semevskij asked, “when he never deigned to prepare people for any of the other, no less important things that he did”. In fact, “things were much simpler” than in Golikov’s complicated rationalization: “after the promulgation of a royal decree, those who disobeyed [the tsar’s will] would face the knout, the torture-chamber, the fire-brand, and the hardlabor [camp] – and then work would be in full swing”. “From whence”, Semevskij asked rhetorically, does such respect towards “popular prejudices”, as Golikov calls it, such circumspection [ɨɫɬɨɪɨɠɧɨɫɬɶ] towards ancient traditions and national beliefs [ɜɟɪɨɜɚɧɢɹ ɧɚɪɨɞɚ] [come from]? From Peter, a person who, almost always and everywhere, trampled upon the voice of the people [ɩɨɩɢɪɚɜɲɟɝɨ ɝɥɚɫ ɧɚɪɨɞɚ]? Was he ever afraid, could he ever imagine that this downtrodden people [ɡɚɛɢɬɵɣ ɧɚɪɨɞ] would

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Ernest A. Zitser declare its dissatisfaction [ɧɟɞɨɜɨɥɶɫɬɜɨ] to such an extent that it would be hard to suppress it, and [is that really] why he took up the gradual preparation of minds?

Since “opposition” to Peter – unlike to Nicholas I – “confined itself to individual personalities and hid in schismatic schetes [of Old Believers]”, Semevskij argued that the first Russian emperor could not have been worried about “public opinion” enough to prepare it for the upcoming abolition of the patriarchate. 29 Although Semevskij suggested that such calculating political motives may have played a role in motivating the tsar “to institute [ɭɱɪɟɞɢɬɶ@ the title of Prince-Pope and his conclave” in the first place, he went on to propose another explanation for the longevity and ubiquity of Peter’s religious burlesques. Combining the moralistic tone of a nineteenth-century Orthodox reformer 30 with the populist critique of foreign “rationalism”, Semevskij conceded that [i]n many cases, despite the crude, cynical, and vulgar form in which Peter’s sarcasm is invested, [the tsar’s] satire is a merciless protest against that ancient Russian ritualism […], formalism, [and] superficiality, which his totally practical mind could not understand, [and for which] he could see no use or purpose. And so the drunken protodeacon [i.e. Peter] sought to fracture and to destroy this edifice [of custom] by any means which came to hand. To what degree this demolition was well-timed; whether the tools were appropriate [for the job]; to what extent the goal for this destructive act was clear to the demolition [team] itself; and what was the ideal which they tried to attain [by this means]; these are the questions which still await 31 impartial answers.

Turning the Enlightenment monarch of Golikov’s paradigm into Russia’s first nihilist – someone who rejects the tradition of his fathers simply because he does not understand it, or is too influenced by foreign traditions to care about his own – Semevskij thus reduced the tsar’s “satire [ɫɚɬɢɪɚ], or, if that is too fancy a word, his mockery [ɧɚɫɦɟɲɤɚ]” to what, “in common parlance [ɜ ɩɪɨɫɬɨɪɟɱɢɢ]”, is called empty “scoffing [ɡɭɛɨɫɤɚɥɶɫɬɜɨ, lit. teethbaring]”. 32 The fact that, according to Semevskij, the only people to oppose the tsar’s so-called educational mission were “a few select individuals and those who hid in the schismatic schetes” – that is, members of the proto-intelligentsia and religious dissidents who fled to the far north – suggests that he identified Old Believers as some kind of repository of anti-absolutist, native Russian values. This proposition echoed the anti-Petrine position of the editors of Svetoþ 33 and may have been especially appealing to the anonymous

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creator of the Jester Wedding of the Prince-Pope. Semevskij’s article not only went on to coin the term “The Most Comical All-Drunken Council” (“ɜɫɟɲɭɬɟɣɲɢɣ ɢ ɜɫɟɩɶɹɧɟɣɲɢɣ ɫɨɛɨɪ”) to describe the sacred parodies staged at Peter’s court, but also to offer the first discussion of the identity of several members of the Prince-Pope’s mock ecclesiastical council, including “Arch-Abbess” (“ɚɪɯɢ-ɢɝɭɦɟɧɶɹ”) Dar’ja Gavrilovna Rževskaja. 34 Indeed, Semevskij’s prosopographical discussion may explain why the anonymous painter mistakenly took “Rževskaja” to be the bride of the “Prince-Pope”. In reality, Zotov’s bride was Anna Eremeevna Paškova, the daughter of a Muscovite nobleman who had been converted to Old Belief by none other than Archpriest Avvakum (Petrov), the seventeenth-century founder of the movement. 35 However, Semevskij only mentioned the name of Zotov’s actual bride in a footnote to his 1872 Russkaja starina article, which was later reprinted in Slovo i delo! It did not appear at all in Svetoþ. So the fact that the text of the wall-poster mistakenly refers to the “Old Nun Rževskaja” instead of to Paškova suggests that its author had either read the 1861 Svetoþ article or misinterpreted the 1872 piece published in Russkaja starina. Consequently, I think it is fair to propose that the date of the first appearance of Semevskij’s mention of Rževskaja can be used as a terminus post quem from which we can date the anonymous Old Believer wall-poster depicting “The Jester Wedding of Prince-Pope Zotov”. For understanding the polemical charge of Semevskij’s article about Peter’s dark “sense of humor”, and why it would appeal to the creator of the wall-poster, it is important to remember the outraged response that “Peter the Great As Humorist” elicited from none other than Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) of Moscow, arguably one of the most “patriarchal” of all Orthodox hierarchs during the Synodal period inaugurated by Peter’s church reforms. In a letter of complaint addressed to the governor-general of Moscow, Filaret expressed concern about the effect that Semevskij’s extracts from Peter’s crude, obscene, and even blasphemous parodies of the hierarchical vow would have on the morals and political loyalties of ordinary Russian Orthodox subjects. Semevskij’s publication, he argued, was nothing less than an insult to “religion, morality, and royal patrimony [ɰɚɪɫɤɢɣ ɪɨɞ]”. Only someone “lacking all common sense or all sense of decorum” would dare to air such dirty linen “in the street, in front of the common people”. 36 As this letter suggests, the Moscow metropolitan believed that especially in the troubled times of the original period of glasnost’, liberal restructuring, and relative freedom from censorship, Russians needed to hold on, more than ever, to the panegyrical image of Peter the Great – the Enlightened, reformist monarch, who boldly, but with a firm hand, guided Muscovy out of its final crisis. Anything else would constitute a “slight against the memory of Peter the Great” and a legally-punishable act of “defacement”. 37

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Obviously, the anonymous Old Believer who painted the watercolor depiction of the “Jester Wedding of Prince-Pope Zotov” did not agree. As if in answer to Metropolitan Filaret’s hypocritical attempt to consign certain aspects of the Petrine period to oblivion, while retaining others (like its discriminatory policies against those designated as schismatics), the anonymous artist resurrected the image of the antinomian, carnivalesque Peter. His decision to depict Peter’s attack on the Russian Orthodox patriarchate by way of a carnivalesque parody of the seventh sacrament was especially pertinent in the wake of the still recent, mid-nineteenth-century destruction of the oldest and most authoritative Old Believer community in the far north – the Vyg and Leksa River communities, which traced their origins to the reign of Peter the Great himself. 38 In the wake of the suppression of the Vyg community, marriage had become a major point of contention among the offshoots of the priestless Old Believers, some of whose more “liberal” members defended its necessity while others condemned both the institution itself and the Russian authorities’ interference in such mystical matters. 39 The anonymous painter’s depiction of Peter’s parody of the seventh sacrament could thus have been interpreted by some of the more radical Old Believers as an end to the truce brokered by Peter, if not as a sign of the coming reign of the anti-Christ. But regardless of how The Wedding of Prince-Pope Zotov was interpreted among contemporary Old Believers (we simply do not know much about its reception at this point), 40 one thing is certain: this artistic production cannot be attributed to the “spirit of medieval laughter” or simply juxtaposed against developments in elite, urban culture. For the origins of the wall-poster under discussion lie precisely in the intersection between these diverse and seemingly disparate worlds. As we saw, the model for the Old Believer “ɪɢɫɨɜɚɧɧɵɣ ɥɭɛɨɤ” was a popular print depicting a topsy-turvy funeral procession – an image that, thanks to Rovinskij, had come to be seen as an attack against Peter the Great (an example of low, popular culture, as re-interpreted by high, elite culture, and then once again re-assimilated by popular culture). Its historiographical point of departure was the historical publications of Golikov and Semevskij (an example of high culture as filtered through the reading practices of the low). The result was a politically-charged work that not only poked fun at the powers that be, both secular and ecclesiastical, but that also sought to remember what those authorities most desperately tried to suppress. 41 In that sense, I feel justified in concluding that the Jester Wedding of Prince-Pope Zotov was not just an illustrated libel, but a true “monument” of late nineteenth-century Petrine historiography and popular memory. 42

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Šutovskaja svad’ba knjaz’-papy Nikity Zotova, Institut Russkoj Literatury (Puškinskij Dom), Drevnechraniliãþe, op. 23, No. 283. Petrine in the sense of commemorating the reign of Peter the Great (16891725), not of being contemporary with it. Ernest A. Zitser, The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter the Great, Ithaca, 2004. Note that the publisher mistakenly situated the St. Petersburg-based archival repository in Moscow, just like the anonymous creator of the nineteenth-century watercolor did with the jester wedding itself. A similar approach to objects of popular visual culture was adopted by the editors of Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture, edited by Valerie A. Kivelson and Joan Neuberger, New Haven, Conn., 2008. For a discussion of the technique involved in making hand-colored popular drawings and wall-posters, see E.I. Itkina, Russkij risovannyj lubok konca XVIII-naþala XX veka: iz sobranija GosudarstvennogR,VWRULþHVNRJRPX]HMa, Moskva, 1992, pp. 5-46, esp. 6-7. Belobrova’s dating was based on a paleographical analysis of the stamped paper (“ɝɟɪɛɨɜɚɹ ɛɭɦɚɝɚ”) on which the image was drawn, as well as the fact that other late-nineteenth-century hand-colored ink-drawings were executed on the back of early-nineteenth-century maps from the same district of Vologda province. O.A. Belobrova, ‘Nastennye listy (kratkij obzor)’, in: Rukopisnoe nasledie Drevnej Rusi: po materialam Puškinskogo doma, Leningrad, 1972, pp. 322-330, esp. 324-325. Belobrova joined IRLI in 1964 as a junior research scholar (“PODGãLMQDXþQ\M sotrudnik”) in the Section on Old Russian literature. At the time, Lichaþev was head of the Section, while 3DQþHQNR, who had just defended his candidate thesis, was a senior research scholar (“VWDUãLM QDXþQ\M VRWUXGQLN”). Biographical information taken from the IRLI website: http://www.Pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=1961 (Belobrova); http://www.Pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?PageContentID=27&tabid=126 (/LFKDþHY); and http:// www.Pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=2003 (3DQþHQNR). D.S. /LFKDþHY and A.M. 3DQþHQNR, Smechovoj mir Drevnej Rusi [Serija “Iz istorii mirovoj kul’tury”], Leningrad, 1976; expanded edition, see D.S. LiFKDþHY, A.M. 3DQþHQNR, and N.V. Ponyrko, Smech v drevnej Rusi, Leningrad, 1984. An explicit discussion of comical images occurs only in the respective prefaces to Smechovoj mir, p. 6 (popular prints, wall posters, icons); and Smech, p. 5 (marginalia). The artistic nature of Russian popular prints was also discussed at a 1975 conference by Ju.M. Lotman, ‘Chudožestvennaja priroda russkich narodnych kartinok’, in: Narodnaja gravjura i fol’klor v Rossii XVII-XIX vekov: (K 150-letiju so dnja roždenija D.A. Rovinskogo),

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Moskva, 1976, pp. 247-267. Available online at: http://philologos.narod.ru/ lotman/lubok.htm. Belobrova’s survey of the Institute of Literature’s holdings of wall-drawings appeared only four years prior to the publication of Smechovoj mir, in a collection of articles that contained pieces by both /LFKDþHY and 3DQþHQNR, and that was edited by 3DQþHQNR himself. See Rukopisnoe nasledie Drevnej Rusi, obverse of title page (otv. red. A.M. 3DQþHQNR); D.S. /LFKDþHY, ‘Kanon i molitva Angelu Groznomu voevode Parfenija Urodivogo (Ivana Groznogo)’; and A.M. 3DQþHQNR, ‘Deklamacija Sil’vestra Medvedeva na temu strastej Christovych’, ibid., pp. 10-27 and 115-135, respectively. /LFKDþHY¶s article formed the basis of his famous analysis of the “laughter” in the writings of Ivan the Terrible (Smechovoj mir, pp. 32-44). ‘Spisok illjustracij’, Smechovoj mir, [p. 203]; the actual watercolor is reproduced in black-and-white on the verso of a black-and-white foldout between pp. 32-33 in Smechovoj mir; and as the verso of the first black-andwhite plate, also between pp. 32-33 in Smech. Smechovoj mir, p. 6; Smech, p. 5. Smechovoj mir, p. 74; Smech, p. 59. Smechovoj mir, pp. 71-72; Smech, p. 57. Bachtin would have dismissed this hyphenated formulation as an oxymoron, since his definition of “carnival” strictly, and as A. Gureviþ noted, falsely counterposed “popular” and “official” cultures. See A. GureYLþ, ‘Smech v narodnoj kul’ture srednevekov’ja’, Voprosy literatury, 1966, 6, p. 208. The notion of “state laughter”, however, underpins /LFKDþHY¶s treatment of Ivan the Terrible’s “mummery” (“ɥɢɰɟɞɟɣɫɬɜɨ”) and prefigures Živov’s semiotic analysis of the Drunken Council as a key element in Peter¶V SURJUDP RI FXOWXUDO UHIRUP /LFKDþHY, ‘Licedejstvo Groznogo: k voprosu o smechovom stile ego proizvedenij’, Smechovoj mir, pp. 32-44; V.M. Živov, ‘Kul’turnye reformy v sisteme preobrazovanij Petra I’, in: Iz istorii russkoj kul’tury. Tom III (XVII-QDþDlo XVIII veka), Moskva, 1996, pp. 528-583. For an insightful discussion of the historiography on this issue, see V.Ja. Petruchin, ‘“Prazdnik” v srednevekovoj Rusi: k probleme istoriþeskoj specifiki’, Odissej: ýelovek v istorii, 1, 2005, pp. 81-88; and L.A. Trachtenberg, ‘Sumasbrodnejšij, vsešutejšij i vsep’janejšij sobor’, Odissej: ýelovek v istorii, 1, 2005, pp. 89-118. Belobrova served as one of the official reviewers of the revised and expanded second edition, but for some reason chose not to point out the discrepancy in the dating that was revealed by her earlier research. Smech, verso of title page. D.A. Rovinskij, Russkija narodnye kartinki, Sankt-Peterburg, 1881-1893, 1, pp. 291-301 ([Nos. 166-170], editions of ‘Mice Bury the Cat’; [Nos. 172, 172a], ‘The Cat of Kazan’); 4, pp. 256-269; 5, pp. 155-188; second edition, Sankt-Peterburg, 1900, I, pp. 255-272; Podrobnyj slovar’ russkich gravirovannych portretov, Sankt-Peterburg, 1888, 3, pp. 1739-1750; Podrobnyj slovar’ russkich graverov XVI-XIX vv., Sankt-Peterburg, 1895, pp. 519-520. On the basis of linguistic (absence of Petrine vocabulary) and stylistic (the close relationship to 1692-1696 Bible prints of Vasilij Koren) evidence, as

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well as dated lists of folk sayings that link the earliest woodcuts to those executed at the end of the seventeenth century, Alekseeva argued that the original print was neither a parody of Peter’s funeral nor a satire of his reign, but an expression of “Old Russian laughter culture”. M.A. Alekseeva, ‘Gravjura na dereve “Myši kota na pogost volokut” – pamjatnik russkogo narodnogo tvorþestva konca XVII-QDþDla XVIII v.’, XVIII vek, 14, 1983, pp. 45-79, available online at: http://lib.Pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid =7205. See also Diane Farrell, ‘Laughter Transformed: The Shift from Medieval to Enlightenment Humour in Russian Popular Prints’, Russia and the World of the Eighteenth Century, R.P. Bartlett, et al., Eds., Columbus, OH, 1986, pp. 157-176, here 167, n. 5; and Farrell, ‘Medieval Popular Humor in Russian Eighteenth Century Lubki’, Slavic Review, 50, 3, Autumn 1991, pp. 551-565, here 560-562. While discussing the “Stasov-Rovinskij thesis”, Alekseeva actually mentioned the Old Believer wall-poster at IRLI. She accepted Belobrova’s dating and even suggested that the interpretation offered by Stasov and Rovinskij “may have reflected the anti-Petrine views” of latenineteenth-century Old Believers (“ɨɬɪɚɡɢɥɚ, ɩɨ-ɜɢɞɢɦɨɦɭ, ɚɧɬɢɩɟɬɪɨɜɫɤɢɟ ɜɡɝɥɹɞɵ ɫɨɜɪɟɦɟɧɧɵɯ ɢɦ ɫɬɚɪɨɨɛɪɹɞɰɟɜ”). But she admits that the dating and reception of the later versions of the print depicting the cat-burial “await further study” (Alekseeva, op. cit., pp. 48-49, 78-79). See, for example, the following critique of Bachtin’s appropriation of the notion of parodia sacra, Mark Burde, ‘The Parodia sacra Problem and Medieval Comic Studies’, in: Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning, and Consequences, edited by Albrecht Classen, Berlin, 2010, pp. 215-242. A regional term for a forty-bucket-sized barrel (sorokovaja boþka) (see V.I. Dal’, Tolkovyj slovar’ živogo velikorusskogo jazyka: v 4 t., Sankt-Peterburg, 1863-1866; available online at: http://slovari.yandex.ru/). Eɝɞaɠe ɉeɬɪ I ɭɩɪaɡɞɧɢ ɩaɬɪɢaɪɲeɫɬɜo, ɢ ɜɢɞɹ ɜ ɧaɪoɞe ɜeɥɢɤɭɸ ɦoɥɜɭ, ɢ ɭɦɵɫɥɢ ɹɤoɛy ɜɫeɧaɪoɞɧo ɩaɬɪɢaɪɲeɫɬɜo oɫɦeɹɬɢ, ɢ ɫɜoeɝo ɩɪeɫɬaɪeɥoɝo ɰaɪeɞɜoɪɰa ɇɢɤɢɬɭ Ɂoɬoɜa, oɞeɥ ɜ ɩaɬɪɢaɪɲɢɹ ɪɢɡy, ɡɞeɥaɥ ɲɭɬoɜɫɤɢɦ ɩaɬɪɢaɪɯoɦ ɢ ɩɪɢɛɪaɥ eɦɭ ɩɪeɫɬaɪeɥɭɸ ɠeɧɳɢɧɭ Ɋɠeɜɫɤɭɸ ɜ ɧeɜeɫɬy ɢ ɧaɡɜaɥ eɹ ɢɝɭɦeɧɢɸ ɢ ɩoeɯaɥ ɜ Ɇoɫɤɜɭ ɫo ɜɫeɦɢ ɰaɪeɞɜoɪɰaɦɢ, ɢ ɜɫeɧaɪoɞɧo ɜeɧɱaɥ ɩaɬɪɢaɪɯa ɫ ɢɝɭɦeɧeɣ, ɜɫe ɰaɪeɞɜoɪɰy ɛɵɥɢ oɞeɬy ɜ ɩɥaɬɶɢe ɲɭɬoɜ ɢ ɫɤoɦoɪoɯoɜ ɢ ɢɧoɫɬɪaɧɰeɜ a ɧaɪoɞɭ ɛyɥo ɜɵɜeɡeɧo ɦɧoɝo ɫoɪoɤ [ɛoɱeɤ] ɜɢɧa ɢ ɤoɝɞa ɬaɤaɹ ɫɜaɞɛa ɩɪoɯoɞɢɥa ɩo Ɇoɫɤɜe, ɩɶɹɧoɦɭ ɧaɪoɞɭ ɩɪɢɤaɡaɥ ɤɪɢɱaɬɶ ɩaɬɪɢaɪɯ ɠeɧɢɥɫɹ, ɩaɬɪɢɯ ɠeɧɢɥɫɹ.

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I.I. Golikov, Dejanija Petra Velikogo, mudrogo preobrazitelja Rossii, sobrannye iz dostovernych istoþnikov i raspoložennye po godam, 12 Vols., Moskva, 1788-1789; Dopolnenija k Dejanijam…, 18 Vols., Moskva, 1790-1797; and Dejanija… and Dopolnenija k Dejanijam…, 15 Vols., Moskva, 1837-1847.

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These “men of the soil” (“ɩɨɱɜɟɧɧɢɤɢ”) attempted to steer a course midway between Slavophilism and Westernism and to achieve a reconciliation between the educated segment of society and the narod. They “agreed with the Westernizers that Peter the Great had done much good by bringing needed reforms to the backward nation of Russia. They criticized the Westernizers, however, for paying blind homage to all things West European and for ignoring the values of pre-Petrine Russia. They admired the Slavophiles for their attention to the positive values indigenous to the Russian soil but disliked their unqualified negative attitude toward all Western importations” (Ellen Chances, ‘Aleksandr Miliukov’s Svetoch and Dostoevskii’s Vremia: A Case of Recycled Ideas?’, Slavic Review, 43, 4, Winter 1984, pp. 588-603, here pp. 588-589. Michail Semevskij, ‘Petr Velikij – kak jumorist (Novye materialy dlja charakteristiki Petra)’, Svetoþ XþHQR-literaturnyj žurnal, izdavaemyj D.I. Kalinovskim, kn. 9, otd. 2, 1861, pp. 1-50 (second pagination); ibid., ‘Šutki i potechi Petra Velikogo. Petr Velikij – kak jumorist’, Russkaja starina, 6, 1872, pp. 855-892, reprinted in his Slovo i delo! 2þHUNLLUDVVND]\iz russkoj istorii XVIII v., Sankt-Peterburg, 1884, pp. 278-334. Corrected proofs for the 1872 article, including the concluding section of the original 1861 that was excised from the later publication, are in RO IRLI, f. 265, op. 1, no. 6, ll. 268275. M.B. Pljuchanova noted that “[u]ntil the second half of the nineteenth century nothing rivaling Golikov’s work in terms of the richness of materials about Peter the Great appeared either in Russia or in Europe. [...] Several generations of Russians were nurtured on Golikov’s Dejanija.” See M.B. Pljuchanova, “Golikov, I. I.’, in: Slovar’ russkich pisatelej XVIII veka, ed. A.M. 3DQþHQNR et al., Leningrad, 1988, I, pp. 207-209. Available online at: http://lib.Pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=705 This description was then followed by an extended quote from an actual Petrine document listing the high-born revelers, their masquerade costumes, and their musical instruments. (The document comes from the file on Zotov’s wedding from RGADA, Ceremonial’nye dela.) Note that Golikov does provide the name of the mock-patriarch’s “bride”, although elsewhere in the text he does refer to the “Arch-Abbess” (“ɚɪɯɢ-ɢɝɭɦɟɧɶɹ”). Also note the reference to the ladle-wielding common folk, who appear in the wall-poster on the bottom row, riding a barrel full of spirits. Golikov, Dejanija…, 15 Vols., Moskva, v Tipografii N. Stepanova, 18371847, 6, pp. 277-290, quotes from pp. 277-279 (Golikov’s explanation) and 289-290 (vignette). Semevskij reproduced Golikov’s description of the wedding of the PrincePope in an appendix to his 1861 article on “Peter the Great as a Humorist”. Consequently, someone who did not have access to Golikov’s multi-volume publication could still have learned of his interpretation from reading Semevskij’s article in Svetoþ.

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On Semevskij, see V.V. Timoãþuk, Michail IvanoYLþ Semevskij, osnovatel’ istoriþeskogo žurnala ‘Russkaja starina’. Ego žizn’ i dejatel’nost’. 1837-1892, Sankt-Peterburg, 1895; K. ChraneYLþ, ‘Semevskij, Michail IvanoYLþ¶ Russkij biografiþeskij slovar’, Sankt-Peterburg, 1904, p. 295; and S.N. Iskjul’, ‘Posleslovie’, in: Russkaja starina: putevoditel’ po XVIII veku, avt.-sost. A.V. Kurgatnikov, Moskva-Sankt-Peterburg, 1996, pp. 360-369. For Semevskij’s critique of Golikov, see Svetoþ, pp. 47-50, here 49-50; and RO IRLI, f. 265, op. 1, no. 6, l. 275. Mid-nineteenth-century religious reformers, including some members of the Russian “educated public”, also criticized the “ritualism” of contemporary Orthodoxy and called for a spiritual revival based on the “people”, through a revival of parish life. See Gregory Freeze, ‘Russian Orthodoxy in Prerevolutionary Historiography: The Case of V.O. Kliuchevskii’, CanadianAmerican Slavic Studies, 20, 3-4, Fall-Winter 1986, pp. 399-426. Semevskij, 6YHWRþ, pp. 47-48; in another place, Semevskij refers to “the crude protest against everything lifeless, ritualistic, formal, of which there was so much in pre-Petrine Russia!” (ibid., p. 50). Semevskij, op. cit., p. 48. This interpretation, including its critique of Orthodox formalism, would be echoed by V.O. .OMXþevskij, a seminarianturned professional historian. See V.O. Kljuþevskij, Soþinenija v devjati tomach, Moskva, 1987-1990, 4, pp. 36-39 (description of Peter’s amusements in Kurs russkoj istorii, 9, pp. 438-439; aphorism on “ɲɭɬɨɜɫɬɜɨ”). For a discussion of the editors’ largely negative views of Peter the Great, see Chances, op. cit., pp. 597-599. Rževskaja’s name did not appear in Golikov’s description of the jester wedding, but it did appear in the body of Semevskij’s 1861 article, as well as in the appendix, which included a few of her letters to Peter (6YHWRþ, pp. 16, 39). In the 1872 Russkaja starina article, Semevskij also added an extended footnote explaining that D.G. Rževskaja was the “daughter of Gavrilo PetroYLþ 6RNRYQLQ WKH XQFOH RI $OHNVHM Prokof’eYLþ Sokovnin, a courtier [ɨɤɨɥɶɧɢɱɢɣ] who was tortured [to death] by Peter [ɡɚɦɭɱɟɧɧɵɣ]” (Semevskij, Russkaja starina, p. 875). Zitser, op. cit., pp. 128-129. Metropolitan Filaret to Moscow Governor-General P.A. TXþkov (20 December 1861), in: Filaret, Sobranie mnenij i otzyvov Filareta, mitropolita Moskovskogo i Kolomenskogo po Xþebnym i cerkovno-gosudarstvennym voprosam, 5 Vols., Moskva, 1885-1888, 5, p. 185 [No. 137], cited in V.M. Živov, ‘O prevratnostjach istorii’, in: Razyskanija v oblasti istorii i predystorii russkoj kul’tury, Moskva, 2002, pp. 705-729, quote on p. 714. “If anyone has insulted the memory of Peter the Great then it is [...] those historians and litterateurs who have defaced his person [ɨɛɟɡɨɛɪɚɡɢɥɢ ɟɝɨ ɥɢɰɨ, lit. “disfigured his face”] by means of tales [ɫɤɚɡɚɧɢɹ] that are not only reprehensible but also corrupting [ɩɪɢɱɢɧɹɸɳɢɦɢ ɫɨɛɥɚɡɧ], and that only deserve to rot in the archives from which they were extracted, and [not]

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published without the prior approval of the censors of secular publications” (Filaret, op. cit., 5, p. 316 [No. 671], cited in Živov, op. cit., p. 715 n.). Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: the Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694-1855, Madison, 1970. G.V. Markelov, ‘Pamjatniki staroobrjadþeskoj istoriografii v fondach Drevnechraniliãþa Puškinskogo Doma’, Trudy otdela drevnerusskoj literatury, LV, 2004, pp. 146-152, here p. 149. Further study of the Kadnikovskij uezd in Vologda Province, and the original owners of the collection in which the wall-poster was found might shed some additional light on this issue. On the “paradigm of forgetting”, see Živov, op. cit. For a discussion of another illustrated libel on eighteenth-century themes, see Ernest A. Zitser, ‘A Full-Frontal History of the Romanov Dynasty: Pictorial “Political Pornography” in Pre-Reform Russia’, The Russian Review, 70, October 2011, pp. 557-583.