Animals without Gardens: Failed Attempts to Establish Zoos in the Romanov Empire, 1860s-1910s

• In Event: Zoological Gardens of the Romanov Empire

Abstract

Zoological gardens started to appear around the Romanov Empire in the 1860s and by the end of the century these institutions operated in Helsinki, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Moscow, Mykolaiv, Petersburg, and Riga. The story of unsuccessful attempts to open zoos in other cities of the empire is less known. By bringing attention to the aborted projects of establishing zoos in Warsaw, Odesa, and Tiflis, this paper not only highlights the history of human-animal relations as a potential new venue of the empire’s history but also argues for a heuristic value of studying the history of failed projects in order to better understand those which succeeded.

Author

• Anton Kotenko, U of Düsseldorf (Germany)