Deconstructing the Classicist Ways to Imagine Empire

• In Event: The Image of Catherine II in Russia’s War against Ukraine

Abstract

In my presentation, I intend to focus on the analysis of a series of stable forms of imperial historical imagination, utilized as the basis and justification for political expansion both in the end of the 18th century and in our days. These forms, figures, and tropes are presented in Catherine II’s correspondence with Voltaire during the war of 1768-1774 with the Ottoman Empire and in contemporary pro-Kremlin military rhetoric. Primarily, these include: 1) the classicist trope, legitimizing claims to “being Europe” by possessing “ancient heritage” (including territories once within the cultural sphere of Greco-Roman civilization); 2) the trope of “Russia as the last guardian of genuine European tradition”, as well as two closely related yet distinct tropes actively employed by both Voltaire and contemporary Russian official propaganda: 3) “Moscow/Saint Petersburg as the Third Rome” (a variation of the widespread historical imagination figure, translatio imperii), and 4) Russia as the heir of Byzantium. I reserve the right to hope that the deconstruction of classicist modes of imperial imagination itself may have an effect of liberation.

Author

• Aleksey Kamenskikh, U of Bremen (Germany)