Pictures at an Exhibition: Science, Patriotism, and Civil Society in Imperial Russia

Pictures at an Exhibition: Science, Patriotism, and Civil Society in Imperial RussiaAuthor(s): Joseph BradleySource: Slavic Review, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Winter, 2008), pp. 934-966Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27653032 .

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Pictures at an Exhibition:

Science, Patriotism, and Civil Society in Imperial Russia

Joseph Bradley

The engines that switched on this major manifestation of private activity were government support, individual initiative, clarity

of vision, and national

pride.

?Viktor Della-Vos, a member of the 1872 Polytechnical Exposition Organizing Committee

30 May 1872 dawned warm and sunny in Moscow. After attending morning mass in the Uspenskii Cathedral in the Kremlin, Grand Dukes Konstantin

and Alexis, along with assorted dignitaries, processed to the Moscow River

to greet the "grandfather of the Russian Navy," the childhood sailboat, or

botik, of Peter the Great. After an overland journey by train from St. Peters

burg, the symbol of one of Peter's greatest legacies, draped with the flags and standards of the time and escorted by the Moscow Sailing Club, sailed

to a dock along the Kremlin embankment for the opening ceremonies of

the Polytechnical Exposition (see figure 1). During that summer, more

than 750,000 visitors put out their cigarettes and entered the no-smoking

exposition grounds through imported turnstiles to view more than 10,000

articles, including 2,000 from foreign countries, displayed in 90 pavilions in and around the Kremlin.1 "For a few months," according to one ob

server, "the gardens around the Kremlin were transformed into a wonder

ful town, with all sorts of houses, galleries, pavilions, all draped in green, and all built in the Russian style_Everything one would need to spend a

day is here: three restaurants, a candy shop, bookstalls, a post office, a tele

graph, stands with cold drinks. There are even cabdrivers dressed in shirts

and jackets in the Russian style, who drive around on special conveyances those who do not wish to, or cannot, go on foot."2 The police, increased

I presented earlier versions of this article to the seminar of Washington area Russian his

torians at Georgetown University and as the Norris lecture at Oklahoma State University and benefited from the comments I received at both venues. I am also grateful to Chris

Ruane for her suggestions on an earlier draft and to the anonymous reviewers of Slavic

Review. Epigraph from Viktor K. Della-Vos, referring to the 1872 Polytechnical Exposition in "Rech' o zadachakh muzeia prikladnykh znaniia, proiznesennaia pri otkrytii muzeia

30 noiabria 1872 g.," in Moskovskii muzei prikladnykh znanii, Materialy, kasaiushchiesia

ustroistva muzeia, rechi, proiznesennye pri ego otkrytii i otchet vysochaishe uchrezhdennogo komiteta

muzeia, i otchet Vysochaishe uchrezhdennogo Komiteta muzeia za pervyi god ego sushchestvovaniia

po 30 noiabria 1873 g., 3 vols., in Izvestiia OLEAE (Moscow, 1874-76), 1:61.

1. "Moskovskaia Politekhnicheskaia vystavka," Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 116 (11 May

1872): 4, and no. 128 (23 May 1872): 4; Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 14,

19, 27, 28, 30, 31, 100, 112, 126 (1872). 2. "Moskovskaia Politekhnicheskaia vystavka

s voennoi tochki zreniia," Oruzheinyi sbornik, nos. 3-4 (1872): 4-5.

Slavic Review 67, no. 4 (Winter 2008)



Science, Patriotism, and Civil Society in Imperial Russia 935

m*tv& ??H?*? *m *>*t**?* *m*m ?wx *? *? **"* <*???* *???* -?**??? n?~" * ?* ***** **???>> *?*??** *?*** a*** ?%*. ?* **?m? ?*. ???. i? *? *f ? <- 8""*???. *??* A *< ?*****?.

Figure 1. Opening ceremony at the navy pavilion. Vsemirnaia illinstratsiia, no. 184

(1872): 29.

to handle the crowds, were instructed "to be nicely dressed; to conduct

themselves soberly and honestly; to be polite, thoughtful, restrained, at

tentive; and not to take gratuities."3 In spite of the growing historiography of modern exhibitions, histo

rians are only now beginning to study the phenomenon in Russia. Two

decades after Russia's modest presence at the Crystal Palace Exhibition

of 1851 in London, the Moscow Society of Friends of Natural History,

Anthropology and Ethnography (OLEAE, in its Russian initials) mobi lized the resources of the imperial family, government ministries, the city council, other voluntary associations, and the business community in or

der to put on a major exposition of science and industry. The exposition

helped promote science and education, civic pride, patriotism, and Rus

sian national identity. Both the tsarist state and private science societies

promoted the study of science and, more important, its application and

diffusion for the betterment of Russia. Moreover, the exposition, held in an economically and culturally assertive Moscow, juxtaposed the modern

and the foreign with the traditional and the Russian in order to dem onstrate that Russia could have the former without abandoning the lat ter. This large-scale event was an example of a rapidly developing public

3. From the papers of Moscow's gradonachal'nik's office in Tsentral'nyi istoricheskii

arkhiv Moskvy (TsIAM), f. 46, op. 2, d. 189 (O Politekhnicheskoi vystavke), 1.105; and from the papers of the Third Section in Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi federatsii (GARF), f.

109,1 eks., d. 32 (1870), 11. 20, 72-76ob.



936 Slavic Review

sphere and of the partnership between state and society. Since the exposi tion borrowed much from European practice, a brief survey of the world's

fairs of the age will help to place the Moscow Polytechnical Exposition in a broader context.

The Grand Exhibitions of Science and Industry

Russia's Polytechnical Exposition was part of European and North Ameri can efforts to popularize science and technology. During the course of the nineteenth century, more and more societies of science and natural his

tory regarded their mission as involving the dissemination of knowledge of the natural world in order to achieve scientific literacy or what may be called "scientific capital." The leaders of science societies wanted the edu cated population to have a direct experience of the natural world through observation and experiment, the twin pillars of the scientific method, and to reduce access costs to useful knowledge. Broadening the appeal of science and demonstrating that natural knowledge could make a better

world validated the scientific enterprise, and the scientists themselves, in the court of public opinion. Thus, the argument ran, popularizing science

was good for science. In order to accomplish these objectives, science societies engaged in education and outreach projects designed to create civic institutions and other meeting places where scientists and amateurs could interact and where the public could not only satisfy its curiosity about the natural world but also develop its capacity for self-instruction and the rational use of leisure. Indeed, by emphasizing that anyone could be a naturalist, the societies of naturalists attempted to draw in the public and to popularize science. Naturalist societies frequently had ties with the local community and often existed to record observations, collect arti

facts, and engage in experiments with local natural phenomena. Collec tions of scientific instruments allowed the nonscientist to watch, and even

conduct, experiments, to learn by doing. Mechanics institutes and similar

organizations held periodic competitions, planned exhibitions, organized lectures on subjects from art to physics, and commissioned designs. Thus, the demonstrations and displays of science, sometimes called the "perfor

mance of science," that combined utility and entertainment created a new "audience" for science.4

4. I have been informed by a rich historiography of science societies and their public

projects that includes: Ian Inkster and Jack Morrell, eds., Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture, 1780-1850 (Philadelphia, 1983); Richard van D?lmen, The Society of the Enlightenment: The Rise of the Middle Class and Enlightenment Culture in Germany, trans.

Anthony Williams (New York, 1992); James E. McClelland, Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1985); Arnold Thackray, "Natural Knowledge in Cultural Context: The Manchester Mode," American Historical Review 79, no. 3 (June 1974): 672-709; Robert Fox, "Learning, Politics and Polite Culture in Provincial France:

The Societies Savantes in the Nineteenth Century," Historical Reflections/R?flexions Histo

riques!, no. 2-3 (1980): 554. On the "performance of science," see Jan Golinski, Science as

Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820 (Cambridge, Eng., 1992); Steven Shapin, "The Audience for Science in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh," History of Science 12 (1974) : 95-121 ; Larry R. Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology and




The Polytechnical Exposition of 1872 had its antecedents in Euro

pean trade fairs and various agricultural and manufacturing exhibitions.

Among the many methods of popularizing science, industrial exhibi

tions and museums, often called "temples of science," "encyclopedias," or "books of nature" were among the most visible means for transmitting useful knowledge and demonstrating the fruits of the modern world to

an urban mass audience. The first national exhibition of manufactured

goods took place on the Champs de Mars in Paris in 1798, to commemo

rate the impending tenth anniversary of the French Revolution as well as

to boost the prestige of French manufactures. Although the French had

been toying with the idea of an international exposition, the first world's

fair was, of course, the famous Great Exhibition in London, better known

as the Crystal Palace, visited by six million in the summer of 1851. In the

nineteenth century, publics all over Europe strove to improve industrial

design and celebrate national achievements, and governments initiated,

patronized, sponsored, and funded many of the grand exhibitions. Expos

ing manufacturer and mechanic alike to objects of beauty and exquisite

design, the argument ran, would inspire the production of higher quality articles. Recently, scholars have regarded exhibitions, together with mu

seums of natural history, science, and industry, as central features of the

bourgeois nation-state, as well as sites of modernity, where the modern

ideas of progress and "mastery over nature" are staged and where identi

ties are "manifested and experienced in public." In an age of patriotism, nationalism, and imperialism, exhibitions compelled nations to drama

tize, even create, "conventionalized versions of their national images."5

Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750 (Cambridge, Eng., 1992); Jan Golinski

and Simon SchafFer, eds., The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago, 1999); Simon Schaf

fer, "Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle in the Eighteenth Century," History of Science

21, no. 1 (March 1983): 1-43; C. C. Rupp, "The New Science and the Public Sphere in the

Premodern Era," Science in Contexts, no. 3 (1995) : 487-507, esp. 487,491,496; and Carol E.

Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France: Gender, Sociability and the Uses of Emulation (Oxford, 1999).

5. Cited passages in Liudmillajordanova, "Objects of Knowledge: Historical Perspec tive on Museums," in Peter Vergo, ed., The New Museology (London, 1989), 32-33; Ivan

Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine, eds., Museums and Communities:

The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, D.C., 1992), 15; and Brian Wallis, "Selling Na tions: International Exhibitions and Cultural Diplomacy," in Daniel J. Sherman and Irit

Rogoff, eds., Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles (Minneapolis, 1994), 272. On

museums and exhibitions, the extensive work includes Silvio A. Bedini, "The Evolution

of Science Museums," Technology and Cultured, no. 1 (Winter 1965): 1-31; Eugene Fergu

son, "Technical Museums and International Exhibitions," Technology and Culture 6, no. 1

(Winter 1965): 30-47; Michael R. Lynn, "The Enlightenment in the Public Sphere: The

Mus?e de Monsieur and Scientific Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century Paris," Eighteenth

Century Studies 32, no. 4 (Summer 1999): 463-76; Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum:

History, Theory, Politics (London, 1995); and Tony Bennett, "The Exhibitionary Complex," in Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner, eds., Culture/Power/History: A Reader

in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton, 1994), 123-54; John E. Findling and Kimberly D.

Pelle, A Historical Dictionary of World s Fairs and Expositions, 1851-1988 (New York, 1990);

Robert Rydell, All the Worlds a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916 (Chicago, 1984); Burton Benedict, ed., The Anthropology of World's Fairs (Berke

ley, 1983); Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions



938 Slavic Review

Private Initiative under the Russian Autocracy

Although we are accustomed to think of the Russian government as the

initiator of grand projects, the 1872 Polytechnical Exposition owed its ex

istence to the initiative of a private association. But where did the capac

ity for the public realization of private initiative come from under the

autocracy? In the historiography of the era of the Great Reforms, the role

of the reforming state and enlightened bureaucrats under Alexander II

has overshadowed a dramatic rise in government-sanctioned private ini

tiative. After Russia's defeat in the Crimean War, the government sought to improve state administration and to enlist public commitment to proj ects of national renewal through the use of state-sanctioned "publicity" and "public discussion" {glasnost'). The press began to carry an unprec edented discussion of government policy, local conditions, and ideas for

further betterment of the realm. Many of the ideas for further betterment

concerned the promotion of technological development and economic

growth, the expansion of Russia's scientific infrastructure, and the spread of education. In its efforts at national improvement, the state had an ea

ger 'junior partner" in a growing number of associations dedicated to the

dissemination of science and learning and to the more productive use of

human and material resources. Because the promotion of science and

education was couched in the rhetoric of patriotic service to Russia, the

government gave the green light to relatively autonomous organizations and their projects. As one government official recalled, at the beginning of the era of the Great Reforms, "all at once there appeared a striving toward private initiative [samodeiatel'nost'] ."6

Though visually prominent, the 1872 Polytechnical Exposition was

hardly the only example of private initiative in the reform era. Beginning in 1861, newly formed literacy committees of the empire's two oldest ag ricultural societies, the Free Economic Society in St. Petersburg and the

Moscow Agricultural Society, became the chief vehicles for the mobiliza

tion and coordination of private initiative in popular education. Working with Russia's new organs of local administration, the zemstvos, the literacy committees distributed and published books, stocked rural libraries, and

provided information and expertise to educators across the empire.7 In

and World s Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester, Eng., 1988); Keith Waiden, Becoming Modern in

Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture (Toronto, 1997); Paul Greenhalgh, "Education, Entertainment and Politics: Lessons from the Great Indus

trial Exhibitions," in Vergo, ed., The New Museology, 74-98; Jeffrey A. Auerbach, The Great

Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven, 1999), 9-31; Wendy M. K. Shaw, Pos

sessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman

Empire (Berkeley, 2003), 149-50.

6. E. I. Lamanskii, quoted in Reginald Zelnik, Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: The

Factory Workers of St. Petersburg, 1855-1870 (Stanford, 1963), 84. See also Alexander Vu

cinich, Science in Russian Culture, 1861-1917 (Stanford, 1970), 77.

7. On the literacy committees, see A. I. Khodnev, Istoriia Imperatorskogo vol'nogo

ekonomicheskogo obshchestva s 1765 do 1865 goda (St. Petersburg, 1865), 358-59; A. P.

Perepelkin, comp., Istoricheskaia zapiska o tridtsatiletnei deiatel'nosti Imperatorskogo Mos

kovskogo obshchestva set skogo khoziaistva (Moscow, 1890), 45-50; D. D. Protopopov, IstoriiaS.

Peterburgskogo komiteta gramotnosti (St. Petersburg, 1898).




1866 a group of engineers founded the Russian Technical Society (RTO) in order to facilitate the development of technology and industry. To ac

complish its goals, RTO gathered and disseminated useful knowledge for

industrial purposes; studied factory materials, products, and work pro cesses in Russia and abroad; provided technical consultation to business

and industry; ran vocational schools and classes for factory workers and

their children; and staged exhibitions of new technologies, such as elec

tricity.8 One of the most powerful ways to disseminate practical education

and scientific knowledge among the population were public readings and

lectures. Among the many societies sponsoring public lectures in the re

form era were the Society to Disseminate Useful Books, the Society to Or

ganize Educational Public Amusements, the Moscow Agricultural Society, the Free Economic Society, and the Society for the Diffusion of Techni

cal Knowledge.9 Beginning in 1867 university science societies organized

periodic congresses of scientists and medical doctors that became a new

form of education, representation, and advocacy. Using charters that em

powered nongovernmental organizations to manage their own affairs, select members and officers, publish their proceedings, and determine

their goals and projects, Russia's science societies provided an example of

what private initiative could do even under autocracy to study problems, facilitate solutions, and mobilize talent.

The Moscow Society of Friends of Natural History,

Anthropology, and Ethnography

The founding of nineteenth-century European science societies was often

depicted as an act of spontaneous generation, as if by nature itself?a

gradual germination from an informal group of persons linked by fellow

ship into a formal organization.10 This was also the case in Russia. One

of the articles of the new charter of 1863 gave universities permission to

organize their own learned societies, under the supervision of the uni

versity rectors and trustees. The new learned societies were granted the

right to assemble to discuss the latest developments in various disciplines and to undertake projects on their own initiative: publishing, organizing

8. On RTO, see Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (PSZ), 2d ser., vol. 41 (1866), no. 43219; N. N. Gritsenko, Nauchno-tekhnicheskie obshchestva SSSR: Istoricheskie ocherki (Mos

cow, 1968), 11; N. G. Filippov, Nauchno-tekhnicheskie obshchestva Rossii (1866-1917 gg.)

(Moscow, 1976), 24. For background concerning industry, labor, and technical education,

see Zelnik, Labor and Society; Alfred J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia

(Chapel Hill, 1982); and Harley David Balzer, "Educating Engineers: Economic Politics

and Technical Training in Tsarist Russia" (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980).

9. "Pravila dlia ustroistva narodnykh chtenii v guberskikh gorodakh," PSZ, 2d ser.,

vol. 51 (1876), no. 56762. The files of the central and local authorities are filled with re

quests for permission for public lectures. See, for example, "O dozvolenii raznym litsam

chteniia publichnykh lektsii," GARF, f. 109, 3 eks., op. 156 (1871), d. 9. See also A. E. Gru

zinskii, Tridtsat' let zhizni Uchebnogo otdela Obshchestva rasprostraneniia tekhnicheskikh znanii

(Moscow, 1902), 5, 14, 19-20, 37, 69-76.

10. Jean-Pierre Chaline, Sociabilit? et Erudition: Les soci?t?s savantes en France XIXe-XXe

si?cles (Paris, 1995), 70-71.



940 Slavic Review

research expeditions, soliciting private donations, running laboratories,

building science collections, and even organizing national congresses, "because the written word does not fully supplant the spoken word, and

books and journals do not generate the same competition and animation

[odushevlenie] as speech."11 In 1862, a group of scientists affiliated with

Moscow University began meeting regularly to share discoveries, results of

experiments, and news from Europe. From these private gatherings came

the idea of the usefulness of an association of specialists and amateurs that

would mobilize resources for the study of science. In an age of greater and

greater specialization and in a vast country that isolated scientists, the new

society would fill a perceived need to be accessible to nonspecialists, to

hold meetings open to the general public, and to publish in Russian. In

1863 the Academic Council of Moscow University approved the charter of the Society of Friends of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnog raphy and sent its recommendation to the Ministry of Education, which

approved the creation of the new society in 1864.12 In their tireless devotion to the popularization of science, OLEAE's

two founders and guiding spirits in its early years, the naturalists Anatolii Petrovich Bogdanov and Grigorii Efimovich Shchurovskii, embodied the

opportunities for private initiative.13 In frequent addresses, Bogdanov and Shchurovskii publicized a patriotic and public mission. Russian science

was still in its infancy, Bogdanov and Shchurovskii maintained, and sei

11. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), f. 735, op. 6, d. 181 ("Ob uchrezhdenii periodicheskikh s"ezdov naturalistov i vrachei"), 11. 5-8; f. 735, op. 6, d. 52

("Ob uchrezhdenii periodicheskikh s"ezdov"), 11. 2-2ob. The university statute is "Obshchii ustav Imperatorskikh Rossiiskikh universit?tov," PSZ, 2d ser., vol. 38 (1863), no. 39752. In

1862 a censorship decree allowed the officers of learned societies to serve as censors for

their publications, a privilege previously enjoyed only by the Academy of Sciences and

the Free Economic Society. This increased the rapidity and quantity of scholarly work that could be published. See Charles Ruud, Fighting Words: Imperial Censorship and the Rus sian Press, 1804-1906 (Toronto, 1982), 126. On scientific congresses, see A. V Pogozhev,

Dvadtsatipiatiletie estestvenno-nauchnykh i'ezdov v Rossii, 1861-1886 (Moscow, 1887), 6, 57.

12. The details of the society's founding may be found in RGIA, f. 733, op. 142, d. 92

("Ob uchrezhdenii OLEAE"), 11. 1-10; and in Arkhiv Rossiiskoi akademii nauk (Arkhiv RAN), f. 446, op. la, d. 59 ("Materialy po OLEAE"), 1. 9, 11-12. The society's charter and bylaws (ustav) may be found in Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 3, no. 1 (1866): col. 1-2. See also the society's jubilee history, V V Bogdanov, Piatidesiatiletie

Imperatorskogo Obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii, 1863-1913 (Mos cow, 1914), 25.

13. On Bogdanov, see B. E. Raikov, Russkie biologi-evoliutsionnisty do Dar vina: Mate

rialy k istorii evoliutsionnoi idei v Rossii, 4 vols. (Moscow, 1951-1959), 4:203-467. For bio

graphical information on Shchurovskii, see B. E. Raikov, Grigorii Efimovich Shchurovskii:

Uchenyi, naturalist i prosvetitel' (Leningrad, 1965), 7-8, 17, 34, 58-65; "Grigorii Efimov ich Shchurovskii," Liudi russkoi nauki: Geologiia, geografiia (Moscow, 1962), 16-22; and

A. A. Polovtsov and B. L. Modzalevskii, eds., Russkii biograficheskii slovar', 25 vols. (Moscow -

St. Petersburg, 1896-1918), 24:159-62. See also Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE, in Izvestiia

OLEAE, vol. 3, no. 2 (1886): col. 109-10; and Iubilei G. E. Shchurovskogo, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 33 (1885). In addition to his research and teaching duties, Shchurovskii delivered

many public lectures in an effort to popularize the study of science in Russia, including an

address before the First Congress of Naturalists in 1867 in St. Petersburg. G. Shchurovskii, "Ob obshchedostupnosti ili populiarizatsii estestvennykh nauk," Zhurnal Ministerstva nar

odnogo prosveshcheniia (January 1868): 39-52.




ence was still considered the domain of Europeans. "We all know that not

so long ago the Russian people were almost entirely limited to the study of

western Europe. ... It was a rare Russian who believed that Russia offered

as much scientific interest as, let alone more than, western countries."

Unlike learned societies founded to advance science, the goal of OLEAE, like that of the Russian Geographical Society, the Russian Technical So

ciety, and other science societies of the reform era, was to promote Rus

sia. Although its mission was "not to separate Russia from western sci

ence," it stressed the development of an independent (samostoiatel'naia) science in Russia. "In recent years we have seen a welcome turn from

the west to the east, we have seen that enthusiasm [zhivoi inter?s] that has

begun to appear in everything concerning Russia. Even better, we have

begun to realize that the study of foreign lands can only be a supplement to the study of our own. What a welcome phenomenon!"14 As in other

European countries, the perceived way to develop native scientific infra

structure in Russia was to popularize applied science, to "keep up with the

times" and be accessible to the general public. Russia was deficient not in

theoretical knowledge but, Shchurovskii boldly stated, "in the number of

people who can use that knowledge." In the striking terminology of the

charter members, OLEAE could make its greatest mark by spreading the

"democratization of knowledge."15

OLEAE and the Genesis of the 1872 Exposition

At the time of OLEAE's founding, the premier means to popularize ap

plied science and display the wonders of modern industry were the mu

seum and the exhibition. Since 1829, the Manufacturing Council of the

Ministry of Finance had organized periodic exhibitions to promote native

industry. Nevertheless, native industry was still in its infancy and Russia's

modest participation at the first few world's fairs had been clustered at the

high and low ends of the exhibitionary hierarchy?luxury items and raw

materials. Moreover, the grand industrial exhibitions were not without

their critics in Russia. Fedor Dostoevskii's scorn of the materialism epito mized by the Crystal Palace is well known. Some dismissed the expositions as "foreign concoctions" or were embarrassed by the modesty of Russian

displays at the Crystal Palace. Others doubted whether a private associa

tion was capable of such a grand undertaking. Although the government did not dominate the public debate over Russia's participation in inter

national exhibitions, conservative officials were suspicious of such pub lic activity and skeptical about the motives of its organizers. In addition,

14. These passages are from Shchurovskii's address to the society's 22nd meeting

(23 April 1867), just before the opening of the 1867 Ethnographic Exposition. Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 3, no. 2 (1886): col. 65-66. On the Ethnographic

Exposition, see Nathaniel Knight, "The Empire

on Display: Science, Nationalism and the

Challenge of Human Diversity in the All-Russian Ethnographic Exposition of 1867" (pa

per presented at the AAASS annual meeting, Washington, D.C., 2001).

15. Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE,in Izvestiia OLEAE,vol 3,no. 1 (1866): col. 2-3,109-10;

Bogdanov, Piatidesiatiletie, 33



942 Slavic Review

D. A. Naumov, chair of the Moscow Zemstvo Executive Board and vice

president of the Moscow Agriculture Society, as well as Viktor Butkovskii, director of the Stroganov School of Design, argued in the daily press that

exhibitions and museums did not aid industry, that money could be better

spent in upgrading existing facilities and in improving industrial educa

tion in the schools.16

Vek, a short-lived magazine founded in 1861, expressed the opposite view in an editorial most likely written by the liberal economist and pub licist, V. P. Bezobrazov, the head of its economics section. Along with Ivan

Vernadskii, Bezobrazov was a prominent member of the two committees of political economy of the Free Economic Society and the Russian Geo

graphical Society that had sponsored lively colloquia in St. Petersburg on

economic issues at the beginning of the reform era. International exposi tions no longer showed the exceptional and the "freaks of nature," the

editorial claimed, but tried to present an accurate appraisal of the cur

rent productive capacities of all nations. Therefore, Russian participation at world's fairs was valuable for business and commerce. Perhaps even

more important, expositions could help Russian merchants and industri alists become acquainted with their counterparts in foreign countries. Vek evoked the vision of a bourgeois civil society marked by the differentiation and interdependence of the market. Expositions "bring together busi ness people in order that they may realize their mutual advantage and, on this basis, combine their capital, enterprise, and knowledge for the

accomplishment of the great task of trade?to supply society with a given product in the greatest number at the least cost."17

In stepped OLEAE. Bogdanov and Shchurovskii decided that Moscow needed a museum as a means of educating the public and stimulating an

interest in applied science and in Russian natural history. Russia's mu seum grade collections were too meager for the intended purposes, how ever. Bogdanov headed a commission of OLEAE to investigate the vari ous techniques of demonstration and display?public lectures, university science collections, museums, and exhibitions. At a meeting of OLEAE on 13 August 1868, the Bogdanov commission proposed an exhibition of

applied science that would stimulate public interest in science, technol

ogy, and industry as well as provide the basis for a permanent collection.

"Experience has shown," Bogdanov noted, "that neither public lectures

16. D. A. Naumov, "Po povodu predpolagaemoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki v Moskve v 1872 g.," Otechestvennye zapiski 194, no. 2 (1871): 151-76, esp. 161. Viktor Butovskii's ar

ticles: "Pis'mo k izdateliam," Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 176 (14 August 1871): 3; "Zametka o muzeiakh Parizha i Londona," Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 186 (26 August 1871): 3-4; "Muzeum i shkola," Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 191 (3 September 1871): 3-4. See also Bog

danov, Piatidesiatiletie, 45-47. For background on Russia's manufacturing exhibitions, see A. I. Mikhailovskaia, "Iz istorii promyshlennykh vystavok v Rossii pervoi poloviny XIX

veka," Ocherki istorii muzeinogo del? v Rossii, vol. 5 ( 1961 ) : 79-154; and V G. Petelin, "Pervaia

vystavka manufakturnykh izdelii Rossii," Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (1981): 178-81. On Russia at the world's fairs, see David C. Fisher, "Russia and the Crystal Palace in 1851" (unpublished

paper delivered at the Midwest Russian History Workshop, Madison, Wisconsin, 20-21

April 2001). 17. Vek, no. 50 (1861): 1405-6.




nor popular compositions" can inform the public as well as collections on

display.18 But the thrust of the grand exhibitions posed a dilemma to the

patriotic officers of OLEAE: displays of the latest advancements in indus

try would betray Russian backwardness. Showing the Russian public what

applied science could achieve would mean privileging foreign manufac turers and products. The leaders of OLEAE framed the display of mod ern industry, not in terms of what the advanced industrial nations had

already achieved, but in terms of what Russia could achieve in the future.

By framing an industrial exhibition in terms of universal principles and

processes accessible to all, OLEAE emphasized process over product and

focused on education and technology transfer. Although the exposition remained a means to establish a museum, staging an exposition quickly became an end in itself. Its planning ran parallel to, and often ahead of, that of the museum, and the most prominent proponents of the one were

also proponents of the other. In both cases, OLEAE led the way. The gov ernment endorsed the idea of using an exhibition as the foundation for a

permanent industrial museum, scheduled to open in 1871.19

Although the relationship between Russian government and society is

often portrayed in terms of conflict, cooperation was more typically the

rule. The tsarist state sanctioned and patronized Russia's science societ

ies and many of their projects such as the 1872 Polytechnical Exposition. For their part, most Russian science societies saw their role as collabo

rating with the authorities and assisting the state in the mutual pursuit of national betterment and prestige. The interests of state and society

appeared to be shared interests, and state and society were willing to col

laborate. Government officials and scientists alike articulated the need for more Russian scientists and for a native science infrastructure. Thus, the

members of associations realized that public discussion, especially on pa triotic projects such as the dissemination of learning for the greater good of Russia, was imaginable, even under autocracy, that nonstatist solutions

to problems were feasible in a country with a long statist tradition.

In order to gain stature and subsidies, as well as assistance in facili

tating the exposition, OLEAE actively sought government support and

18. Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 3, no. 2 (1886): col. 65-66, 90,

229-30; and in Izvestiia vol. 9, no. 1 (Moscow, 1871): 35; two statements concerning the

goals of the exposition by Bogdanov and Della-Vos as well as a draft plan of the exposition can be found in Politekhnicheskaia vystavka Imperatorskogo obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia,

antropologii i etnografii (Moscow, 1870); A. P. Bogdanov, "Pervyi kamen' osnovaniia Poli

tekhnicheskoi vystavki," Arkhiv RAN, f. 446, op. la, d. 41a, 11. 30-30ob.; OLEAE, Vseros

siiskaia etnograficheskaia vystavka (Moscow, 1867), 3.

19. The imperial decree authorizing OLEAE to organize the exposition can be found

in PSZ, 2d ser., vol. 45 (1870), no. 48367. This followed the approval of the Ministry of

Education. Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 8, no. 1 (1871): col. 123

35. See also "Doklad Komissii ob ustroistve v Moskve obshche-obrazovatel'nogo muzeia

prikladnykh znanii," in Moskovskaia gorodskaia duma, Doklady (25 August 1870): 2, 6. On

the Polytechnical Museum, see A. P. Bogdanov, "Obrazovatel'nyi Politekhnicheskii muzei

v Moskve," and G. E. Shchurovskii, "Sposob osnovaniia muzeev posredstvom vystavok," in Moskovskii muzei prikladnykh znanii, Materialy, 1:13-21, 53-54; and Joseph Bradley, "Nauka v gorode: Osnovanie Moskovskogo politekhnicheskogo muzeia," in Rossiia XXI,

no. 2 (2005): 96-127.



944 Slavic Review

participation. The Naval Ministry was the first government body to re

spond positively to the idea of the exposition; it prodded other government

departments to support and participate in the enterprise, and Admiral

Konstantin Nikolaevich Pos'et, Grand Duke Aleksei AJeksandrovich's tu

tor, interceded to get imperial support.20 One of the exposition's greatest

supporters was Dmitrii Miliutin, minister of war, and one of his aides, Ad

jutant General Nikolai Vasil'evich Isakov, was appointed chairman of the

exposition organizing committee. In his youth, Miliutin strove to hitch

patriotism to science in the Russian Geographical Society. A staunch mon

archist and one of the masterminds behind the Great Reforms, Miliutin

wanted to eradicate Russia's backwardness, educate the population, and

modernize the army. On the eve of Russia's adoption of universal military service, Miliutin believed that "the public must be more closely linked to the army . . . and better acquainted with military matters."21 After the

humiliating defeat in the Crimean War, the demonstration that Russia was

prepared for modern warfare would bolster national pride. To critics who

grumbled that Miliutin's projects were too costly, the participation of the

Ministry of War was in large part a public relations' effort to demonstrate

that large expenditures had been spent wisely and to "dispel false opin ions and inaccurate information."22

It was still not clear whether an exhibition of the kind proposed by OLEAE should be held in St. Petersburg or Moscow. The project got

caught up in the Moscow-St. Petersburg rivalry at a time of the old capi tal's growing cultural assertiveness. At the same time that interest had been

generated in Moscow for a museum of applied science and the affiliated

exposition, government officials and the new Russian Technical Society in St. Petersburg began discussing an industrial museum in the imperial

capital. The Ministry of Finance, in whose "domain" the development of Russian industry lay, appointed a commission to discuss the feasibility of

founding a museum of industry and the arts. The commission decided not to recommend a monumental, central, "national" museum in St. Peters

burg, however, believing that the public was ill prepared to support such

20. Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 48 (1872): 2; Golos, no. 158 (9 June

1871): 2; Politekhnicheskaia vystavka Imperatorskogo OLEAE, 5-6. Pos'et was a member of

numerous associations, including OLEAE, the Russian Geographical Society, the Russian

Technical Society, and the SOS Society. See Entsiklopedicheskii slovar' Brokgauza i Efrona:

Biografii (Moscow, 1991), 601-6; Al'manakh sovremennykh russkikh gosudarstvennykh deiatelei

(St. Petersburg, 1897), 59-61.

21. "Moskovskaia Politekhnicheskaia vystavka s voennoi tochki zreniia," 1-2, 14. For

Miliutin in the Geographical Society, a good place to start is P. P. Semenov, Istoriia poluvek ovoi deiatel'nosti Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, 1845-1895, 3 vols. (St.

Petersburg, 1896). See also Joseph Bradley, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia: Science, Patriotism and Civil Society (Cambridge, Mass., forthcoming).

22. Vestnik Moskovskoi politekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 12 (1872): 1. The major military

journals?Voennyi sbornik, Morskoi sbornik, Artilleriiskii zhurnal, Oruzheinyi sbornik, and the

newspaper Russkii invalid, assiduously reported on displays of military technology in Eu

rope and Russia. For a discussion of some of these projects, especially the modernization

of small arms, see Joseph Bradley, Guns for the Tsar: American Technology and the Small Arms

Industry in Nineteenth-Century Russia (DeKalb, 1990).




a museum.23 In stepped OLEAE again. Realizing that times had changed and that the support of the local community was an important ingredient in the success of such an enterprise, OLEAE shrewdly turned to Moscow's

newly constituted representatives, the City Council and the mayor, Prince

Vladimir Cherkasskii. A wealthy Tula landlord with ties to the Moscow

Slavophiles, as well as a member of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna's salon, Cherkasskii was a prominent member of the editing commissions that

had drafted the emancipation act of 1861. And, as mayor of Moscow since

1868, he was a member of the commission that had drafted the Municipal Statute of 1870. He was also an admirer of Tocqueville and a champion of

local authority vis-?-vis central officialdom; in November 1870, he signed Ivan Aksakov's address to Alexander II calling for greater civil liberties.

Neither his admiration of Tocqueville nor the reprimand he received from

Alexander II in 1870 prevented him from lobbying the central authori

ties, however. Not surprisingly, Cherkasskii supported the Moscow project and suggested that Bogdanov, who managed to find time to be a member

of the City Council, bring up the matter with Moscow's elected repre sentatives. On 7 May 1870 Bogdanov informed the City Council of the

proposals and of the discussion in government to found a new museum

of industry and to hold an exhibition. Believing that both were important for Russian pride and that Moscow, not St. Petersburg, was the center of

Russian industry, Bogdanov suggested that the City Council join the ef

forts of Moscow's learned societies and business community to bring such

an enterprise to the old capital. Although some councilmen demurred,

the City Council endorsed Bogdanov's proposal and capitalized on the

reluctance in St. Petersburg to "think big."24 Thus, arguments in favor

of an exhibition in Moscow are further evidence of the compatibility of

economic development, scientific infrastructure, and patriotism observed

by several scholars. The "merchant Slavophiles," as Thomas Owen calls

23. TsIAM, f. 227, op. 1, d. 4 ("Zapiski Komiteta dlia ustroistva muzeia prikladnykh

znanii"), 11. 1-20; "Uchrezhdenie Komiteta dlia ustroistva v Sankt-Peterburge obshchego

muzeia prikladnykh znanii," PSZ, 2d ser., vol. 46 (1871), no. 49623; N. Kh. Vessel', "Kak

voznik pervyi v Rossii Muzei prikladnykh znanii v Peterburge, v Solianom gorodke: Iz

moego dnevnika," Russkaia shkola, no. 1 (January 1894): 9-30.

24. TsIAM, f. 227, op. 1, d. 5 ("Zhurnaly zasedanii Komiteta dlia ustroistva muzeia

prikladnykh znanii"), 11. 1-11; RGIA, f. 1263, op. 1, st. 475, d. 3598, 11. 14-25 ("Osobyi zhurnal Komiteta ministrov po predstavleniiu Ministra finansov ob uchrezhdenii muzeia

prikladnykh znanii," 1872). The story is also recounted by Shchurovskii: "Rech' proiznesen

naia pri otkrytii Politekhnicheskogo muzeia 30 noiabria 1872 tovarishchem pochtenogo

predsedatelia muzeia G. E. Shchurovskim," in Moskovskii muzei prikladnykh znanii, Mate

rialy, 1:53-58, esp. 56-57. On Cherkasskii, see Kniaz' Vladimir Aleksandrovich Cherkaskii: Ego

stat'i, ego rechi i vospominaniia o nem (Moscow, 1879); Russkii biograficheskii slovar', 22:198

208; S. Frederick Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 1830-1870 (Prince

ton, 1972), 74-79; Thomas C. Owen, Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the

Moscow Merchants, 1855-1905 (Cambridge, Eng., 1981), 75. The address to Alexander II

is discussed in V. A. Nardova, Gorodskoe samoupravlenie v Rossii v 60-kh nachalo 90-kh godov

XIX v.: Pravitel'stvennaiapolitika (Leningrad, 1984), 153-62; and L. F. Pisar'kova, Moskovs

kaia gorodskaia duma, 1863-1917 (Moscow, 1998), 236-38. Bogdanov's report to the City

Council is in "Doklad Komissii ob ustroistve," 2.



946 Slavic Review

Figure 2. Ceremonial army kerchief, made by the Danilov Mill Moscow. A map of the exposition surrounds Peter the Great. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

the Moscow business community and its intellectual allies, promoted na

tive industry and economic self-sufficiency. In their efforts to wrest the

control of Russia's railroads away from foreign companies in the 1860s as

well as in various manifestations of patriotism, the "merchant-Slavophile alliance" demonstrated its public advocacy role. The Slavophiles admired

the technological progress of the west and, like the leaders of OLEAE, in

Alfred Rieber's words, wanted to put "science in service to the nation."25

Moscow, of course, epitomized the happy merger of Russian distinctive ness and economic development.

As they entered the planning stages for the Polytechnical Exposition, Nil Aleksandrovich Popov, historian, Slavicist, and director of the Eth

nographic Division of OLEAE, found a clever way to ensure government

support for OLEAE's project. The exposition, Popov reasoned, would not

only inform the public about current technological improvements but

would also provide an opportunity to take advantage of the impending

25. Owen, Capitalism and Politics, 54-59; Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, 135-37.




bicentennial of the birth, and the birthplace, of Peter the Great. In order

to honor the memory of the "great reformer" in the reign of another great reformer, Popov proposed that OLEAE link its own agenda with Peter's

bicentennial and postpone the exposition until 1872 (figure 2). Hitching the exposition to Peter's horse would have the added benefit, Popov con

cluded, of attracting more foreign displays and thereby honoring Peter's

borrowing of foreign technology to modernize Russia. The lectures and

demonstrations accompanying the exposition and pitched at all Russian

citizens would "summon, enlighten, and elevate the national moral feel

ing as well as the popular love of and devotion to the fatherland."26 Al

though it might seem paradoxical that Moscow would honor the birth of

the monarch who moved his imperial capital to St. Petersburg, in fact the

Slavophiles' anti-Peter rhetoric took a back seat to pragmatism. Assert

ing the centrality of Moscow in the development of Russian industry and

scientific infrastructure was a more effective way to promote civic pride, demonstrate patriotism, and enter the public arena; it also turned out to

be a way to promote Russian cultural identity. Thus, the exposition pro vided an opportunity the government could not suppress to "continue

Peter's work" and to demonstrate Russia's greatness.

Planning

The planning process exemplifies the partnership between state and so

ciety in pursuit of common goals. The honorary chair of the organiz

ing committee was Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich; its two co-chairs

were G. E. Shchurovskii and Adjutant General Nikolai Vasirevich Isakov.27

Isakov played an important role in several education projects in midcen

tury, and his career illustrates the overlapping of government and non

government public service behind state-society cooperation and mutual

ity. While trustee {popechitel') of the Moscow Education District from 1859

to 1863, Isakov studied foreign educational systems, organized teachers'

courses, and initiated the relocation of the Rumiantsev Museum from

St. Petersburg to Moscow. As superintendent of military schools begin

ning in 1863, Isakov helped found the Ministry of War's Pedagogical Mu

seum and the Museum of Applied Knowledge in St. Petersburg. He was

close to Viktor Della-Vos, director of the Imperial Technical School and

member of the organizing committee. Finally, Isakov was a member of

numerous voluntary associations, including the Russian Technical Society

26. Golos, no. 45 (14 February 1871): 1; Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 5 (1872): 1; Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 3 vols.

(Moscow, 1869-71) : 1:34; Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 9, no. 1 (1872) :

col. 31-33; Protokoly chetvertogo zasedaniia Kommissii po obsuzhdeniiu programmy i plana Mos

kovskogo tsentral'nogo politekhnicheskogo muzeia (Moscow, 1874), 1-4. On Popov, see Russkii

biograficheskii slovar', 14:561-65.

27. RGIA, f. 733, op. 142, d. 530, 11. 11-13 ("Ob uchrezhdenii muzeia prikladnykh

znanii"); RGIA, f. 1263, op. 1, st. 475, d. 3598, 11. 13-25 ("Osobyi zhurnal Komiteta min

istrov po predstavleniiu Ministra finansov ob uchrezhdenii Moskovskogo muzeia priklad

nykh znanii," 1872).



948 Slavic Review

and the Russian Musical Society.28 The organizing committee included

government officials, municipal leaders, businessmen, and educators.

Although the organizing committee was government appointed, it had considerable autonomy in planning. It could select additional members,

appoint directors of the various divisions of the sections of the exposi tion, and invite consultants whose expertise was deemed necessary in

particular aspects of planning. This state of affairs conforms to the Eu

ropean practice, especially in France, of state-society cooperation and dual responsibility, whereby governments, while still holding ultimate

supervisory control over expositions, allowed private bodies to organize them.29

At the beginning, the organizing committee had no more than a very

general charge?to draw up a program for the "systematic display of the

applications of science." In the early stages committee members traveled abroad to observe European exhibitionary practice, establish contact with

European learned societies, and acquire objects for display. During the era of the Great Reforms such komandirovki to the centers of European science were part of a larger mutual project of state and society to draw on European practices in the dissemination of useful knowledge. The ul timate objective of such technology transfer was to create a Russian sci entific infrastructure that would obviate the need for such visits in the future. Exposure to a variety of practices in the popularization and display of industry and the arts encouraged a decentralized planning style, which the government sanctioned. The organizing committee determined only the most general aspects of the exposition, leaving all other matters to

be decided by the appropriate subcommittee.30 For example, a building subcommittee considered three sites in central Moscow?the Manezh, the Noble Assembly Building, and the Alexander Gardens, offered for the exposition's use by the Ministry of the Imperial Court. The first two

had been the site of smaller technical exhibitions and offered the model of the large, "monumental" exhibition hall, common in Europe at the time. By selecting the Alexander Gardens, however, the organizing com

mittee brought the "garden" style of smaller pavilions, pioneered by the

French, to Russian exhibitionary practice for the first time. Considered more attractive to the public, pavilions allowed the simulation of a small

town and emphasized the dual use of urban space for edification and

28. On Isakov, see Russkii biograficheskii slovar', 8:143-44; Entsiklopedicheskii slovar'

Brokgauza iEfrona, 86 vols. (Moscow, 1890-1907), 25:363. 29. RGIA, f. 733, op. 142, d. 466a, 11. 46-47, 157-58 ("Ob ustroistve v Moskve Poli

tekhnicheskoi vystavki i Politekhnicheskogo muzeia"); RGIA, f. 934, op. 2, d. 158, 11. 1-2

(G. E. Shchurovskii to P. P. Durnovo, 19 November 1870); Bogdanov, Piatidesiatiletie, 7; "Moskovskaia Politekhnicheskaia vystavka," Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 115 (9 May 1872): 4.

30. GARF, f. 109, 1 eks., d. 32 (1870), 11. 15-15ob.; Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 9, no. 1 (1872): 38; Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekh nicheskoi vystavki, 1:17. See also N. V Niki tin, "Otchet o proizvedennom po porucheniiu Imperatorskogo obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia osmotra zagranichnykh muzeev," in

Materialy, 1:30-49, esp. 30-31; "Iz Moskvy," Golos, no. 192 (13July 1871): 2, no. 256 (16

September 1871): 1, and no. 40 (9 June 1872): 1; Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 29 (1872): 2, no. 31 (1872): 3, no. 32 (1872): 3, and no. 85 (1872): 2.




leisure.31 And, as we will see below, the pavilions evoked not just any small town but a Russian small town. Similarly, a separate finance subcommit tee engaged in fund-raising, an important concession from a govern

ment that restricted private associations' opportunities to accumulate

capital reserves. The finance subcommittee carefully matched the flow of

donations with expenditures for pavilion construction and acquisition of

display objects. The finance committee also suggested including entertain

ment at the exhibition in order to increase ticket sales and raise additional

revenue.32

The organizing committee involved the public in the enterprise, a new

opportunity available to voluntary associations under autocracy. It sent bro

chures explaining the purposes of the exposition to be appended to issues

of newspapers and magazines. It also sent letters to other organizations in

viting them to participate. At almost every meeting of the organizing com

mittee, a Russian voluntary association, many of them newly established

in the reform era, offered its services. The Moscow Architectural Society, founded in 1867, organized competitions to design the pavilions; the Rus

sian Music Society, founded in 1860, presented a music program; the So

ciety of Russian Physicians, founded in 1859, helped organize the medical

displays; the Association for the Dissemination of Technical Knowledge, founded in 1868, organized the photography display. The list could go on

and before it ended would include the Russian Technical Society, the Rus

sian Geographical Society, the Moscow Literacy Committee, the Moscow

Agricultural Society, the Horticultural Society, the Moscow Racing Society, the Moscow Sailing Club, and the Society for Improving the Morals of Arti

sans and Workers. A representative of each of these associations sat on the

relevant subcommittee, frequently alongside government officials. As one

organizing committee member put it in October 1870, "All of Russia came

to our aid."33 The cooperation of a broad range of business, scientific, and

philanthropic organizations demonstrated the fruits of private initiative, as well as providing evidence of the horizontal linkages between organiza tions that were characteristic of Russia's growing civil society.

The exposition's organizers sought publicity, a quintessential feature of

modern urban culture. As suggested above, discussion for and against the

31. Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 1:8-9, 31 and

2:5-11, 31, 135-37. See also Doklad chlenov Moskovskogo arkhitekturnogo obshchestva N. A.

Shokhina i N. V. Nikitina o poezdke

v Sankt Peterburg po delu organizatsii Arkhitekturnogo otdela

Politekhnicheskoi vystavki (Moscow, n.d.); Evgeniia I. Kirichenko, "Kvoprosu o poreformen

nykh vystavkakh Rossii kak vyrazhenii istoricheskogo svoeobraziia arkhitektury vtoroi po

loviny XIX v." in G. Iu. Sternin, Khudozhestvennye protsessy v russkoi kul'ture vtoroi poloviny XlXveka (Moscow, 1984), 83-136, esp. 119.1 am grateful to Katia Dianina for alerting me

to this source.

32. TsIAM, f. 227 (Muzei prikladnykh znanii), op. 2, d. 6,11. 1, 138-39; Protokoly zase

danii OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 3, no. 2 (1886): col. 273; Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 1:17. For a list of donors, see Obshchee obozrenie Moskovskoi

Politekhnicheskoi vystavki (Moscow, 1872), 1-58.

33. Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 2:6; Protokoly zase

daniia OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 9, no. 1 (1872): 32; "Doklad Komissii ob ustroistve,"

6; Bogdanov, Piatidesiatiletie, 14.



950 Slavic Review

exposition, as well as discussion of its goals, took place on the pages of the

daily press, especially in Moskovskie vedomosti. The organizing committee

familiarized the public with the progress of exposition planning by pub

lishing summaries of its meetings and budget reports in the metropolitan

newspapers. The different proposals for various parts of the exposition were printed in the newspapers Golos, Sovremennye izvestiia, and Russkie

vedomosti. Beginning one month before the exposition opened and con

tinuing through September, the organizing committee published a daily

newspaper, Vestnik Moskovskii Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, "in order to give the public a faithful and complete account of the exposition." The news

paper also provided "other useful information and announcements"?

government directives, wire service dispatches on political affairs, stock ex

change and commercial news, correspondence from the provinces, feuil

letons of Moscow life, and information about Moscow especially aimed at

Russian and foreign tourists.34

A Day at the Exposition: Tradition and Innovation on Display

The opening ceremonies, the "solemn celebration of public life" (torzhestvo obshchestvennoi deiateVnosti), as one newspaper put it, continued into the

afternoon and evening. In the afternoon, the new Moscow Philharmonic

performed an occasional piece for chorus and orchestra by Petr Chai

kovskii, set to the words of the poet Iakov Petrovich Polonskii. Performed

in the open air on Trinity Bridge, the cantata celebrated past and pres ent: just as a great Russia emerged under Peter, so too was a great Russia

(re) awakening under the current enlightened reign of Alexander II.35

The inaugural banquet that followed was an opportunity not only to re

iterate the goals of the exposition but also to put a Russian stamp on

a borrowed occasion and to prompt expressions of patriotism in front

of dignitaries, which included Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and

Moscow Governor-General V A. Dolgorukov. The decoration invoked na

tional triumph and national heroes: roses and garlands of laurel leaves

adorned the main hall and corridors of Moscow University, and electric

lights illuminated the bust of Peter the Great (figure 3). By celebrating Peter the Great at Moscow University, the inaugural banquet, like the

exposition as a whole, blended symbols of Peter's Russia with Moscow's

Russia. In his oration, Della-Vos, stressed that it was the obligation of ev

ery nation to participate in international competition, thereby asserting Russia's arrival in that class of nations with the scientific and industrial

capacity to hold such exhibitions. And private initiative enhanced that ca

pacity: "Moscow, the center of Russian industry, demonstrated brilliantly that private initiative and energy in every useful undertaking is a force

34. Golos, no. 147 (29 May 1871): 3. See also Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 131 (27 May

1872): 2, and no. 132 (28 May 1872): 2; and Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 1 (1872): 2. A Moscow guidebook prominently featured maps of the exposition: V. A.

Dolgorukov, Putevoditel' po Moskve i ee okrestnostiam (Moscow, 1872). 35. Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 113 (7 May 1872): 3; Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi

vystavki, no. 15 (1872): 2, no. 28 (1872): 2, and no. 32 (1872): 3.




SwctsSk*. - ft*?*!?*? *Kt,?CJ*e M x???kh? ?jrt ?tttsMC?*?'? psW***?*, SO ?s*, y[\ ss?jmscis?. St., *s,^-p?Ba; \m>: Jt #..%**!>, tjf&i ?S. J?^wj*);'

Figure 3. Assembly at Moscow University. Vsemirnaia iWustratsiia, no. 185

(1872): 37.

that can overcome the most difficult and, at first glance, insurmountable

obstacles. . . . The engines that switched on this major manifestation of

private activity were government support, individual initiative, clarity of

vision, and national pride." Rebutting arguments that Peter's reforms were either ephemeral or uprooted Russia, the historian S. M. Solov'ev, a member of the organizing committee, celebrated the Russia of Peter's

creation?a confident borrowing of science and technology from the west

to enlighten the nation. No less patriotic was Shchurovskii, the president of OLEAE, who claimed that the exposition would promote native in

dustry and help Russian industrial design overcome its dependence on

foreigners.36 There were many more ceremonial occasions. In displays of the

bond between tsar and people, members of the royal family visited the

exhibition throughout the summer. In early June Alexander II and his

entourage promenaded from one pavilion to another; saw work being

performed; listened to an orchestra of wards of a school for the blind

36. Cited passages in "Torzhestvennoe otkrytie Politekhnicheskoi vystavki," Izvestiia

OLEAE, vol. 10, no. 2 (1874): ix-xi; and "Rech' o zadachakh muzeia prikladnykh znaniia,

proiznesennaia pri otkrytii muzeia 30 noiabria 1872 g.," in Moskovskii muzei prikladnykh znanii, Materialy, 1:61. See also Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 22, 31, 37

(1872). Opened as a trade school for orphans in 1839, the Imperial Technical School became well known in Russia for combining theoretical knowledge with practical training. Della-Vos developed the first systematic program of workshop instruction. See Pamiati

Viktora KarlovichaDella-Vos (Moscow, 1897); Russkii biograficheskii slovar', 6:192-94.



952 Slavic Review

perform the national anthem; and accepted gifts?a silver commemora

tive dish from a manufacturer, bouquets of flowers from the Horticultural

Society, and the like. On 16 June Grand Duke Konstantin was guest of

honor in the Kremlin gardens at a fund-raiser, a dinner to raise money for

scholarships to Moscow University and the Imperial Technical School.37 At a banquet for the organizers and foreign guests held at one of the

exposition's restaurants on 10 June, Solov'ev was the keynote speaker. At

the conclusion of his oration, which extolled Peter's vision and Russia's

future, the audience rose to its feet and tossed bouquets and garlands. "Not able to contain their joy, the audience cried 'Bravo!' left their seats, embraced Solov'ev and lifted him up and tossed him high up into the air

several times."38 Many Moscow organizations and clubs sponsored other

parties and amusements as fund-raisers. A costume party, to which guests were invited to come in clothes of Peter's time, used dress to evoke not

only Russia's past glories but also its participation in a common European culture.39

Although the tsar appeared rather distracted and stiff at the civilian

displays, he perked up considerably at the army and navy pavilions, among the largest and most impressive sections at the exposition. Along the Mos

cow River, the navy pavilion, a structure of iron and glass designed by I.

A. Monighetti that resembled London's Crystal Palace, housed a full-size

merchant marine vessel as well as displays of Russia's growing maritime

strength (see figure l).40 Inside the Kremlin, the army displayed weapons and models of barracks. The Sevastopol' section, the result of private ini

tiative (the Veterans' Charitable Society) combined with the backing of

Grand Duchess Mariia Nikolaevna, commemorated the famous defense

during the Crimean War and displayed the heroism and sacrifice of the

Russian soldier, thereby turning a defeat into an object of pride. Other

displays?a mobile hospital and improvements in treating and transport

ing the wounded?suggested that past glories inspired future greatness. The army pavilion also included a display of Russian history. By using scenes and objects from the reign of Peter the Great, the museum rein

forced the bond between tsar and people as well as the idea of Russian

37. Gobs, no. 41 (10 June 1872): 3; Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 37,

39-43, 45-46, 48, 81-84 (1872); Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 151 (I7june 1872): 3.

38. S. M. Solov'ev, "Znachenie Petra Velikogo vo vsekh otrasliakh ego raznoobraznoi

deiatel'nosti," Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 10, no. 2 (1874): ii-iv; Golos, no. 41 (10 June 1872): 3.

In an expanded version of his banquet address, a series of public lectures on Peter the

Great, Solov'ev emphasized Peter's role as teacher of the nation. S. M. Solov'ev, "Politekh

nicheskaia vystavka i 200-letnii iubilei Petra Velikogo," Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 9, no. 1 (1872): 36. See also Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, 2 vols. (Princeton, 2000), 2:123-24.

39. Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 4 (1872): 1.

40. Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 116 (11 May 1872): 1, no. 143 (9 June 1872): 4, no. 145

(11 June, 1872): 2, and no. 152 (18 June 1872): 2-3; Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi

vystavki, nos. 10-12, 68, 76, 99, 115-16 (1872). As I. L. Zhuravskaia points out, however, the modern looking glass and iron structure incorporated the traditional head-dress motif

(kokoshnik) in the design of the arches. See I. L. Zhuravskaia, "Kistorii Politekhnicheskoi

vystavki v Moskve," in V L. Egorov, ed., Istoricheskii muzei: Entsiklopediia otechestvennoi istorii

ikul'tury (Moscow, 1995): 11.




greatness.41 Since this was one of the first attempts to show the artifacts of

Russian history to a broad audience, exposition visitors could thereby also

enjoy this shared historical experience, that is, a bond with the nation.

The overall architectural integrity of the exposition, to which the navy

pavilion was a striking exception, also tied the visitor to the nation and to

history. The building subcommittee, chaired by N. V. Nikitin, president of the Russian Society of Architects and proponent of the "Russian style" in architecture, created an architectural and aesthetic theme park that

placed pre-Petrine folk motifs in the service of modern urban culture.

The grand exhibitions of the day in Europe and North America captured the imagination and drew crowds by placing the visitor in a fantasy realm

of the striking, the surprising, and the exotic. But while the European exhibitions found the exotic in other civilizations, most commonly the

"Orient," at the 1872 Polytechnical Exposition the exotic was old Russia.

The famous architect Viktor Gartman, a pioneer in the use of the elabo

rate lace- and embroidery-like decoration of folk architecture, designed a historical museum in ornamental Russian style for the army pavilion

(figure 4). The semicircular pavilion was topped by a "tent-roof "

(shatior), reminiscent of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovite churches,

especially the Church of the Ascension at Kolomenskoe, one of Peter the

Great's childhood residences. Gartman's mobile public theater, which also

employed elaborate carved decoration, was inspired by the balag?n, tem

porary wooden stages of urban popular entertainments.42 Although the

stylized wooden architecture evoked Muscovite Russia, the use to which

it was put looked forward to urban mass culture. As Evgeniia Kirichenko

argues regarding the proponents of the Russian national style in architec

ture, "The influence of temporary wooden exhibition halls on the charac

ter of Russian urban architecture was immense . . . [It] gave a new impulse to the development of construction in wood in the Russian style.

. . . The

1872 Exposition became something of a manifesto and a demonstration

of their artistic credo."43 Moreover, although it might be tempting to see

41. Golos, no. 39 (1872): 3; Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 145 (11 June 1872): 2-3. Several

articles were devoted to the Sevastopol' section. See Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 116 (11 May

1872): 1, no. 152 (18June 1872): 2, no. 163 (29June 1872): 3, and no. 233 (18 September 1872): 2-3. The glorification of Sevastopol' recalled the Moscow merchants' extravagant

honor of the Sevastopol' defenders upon their return in 1856. See Owen, Capitalism and

Politics, 31, 35. The Sevastopol' section eventually became the basis for the Imperial His

torical Museum in Red Square. See Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 14

(1874): col. 33; and A. M. Razgon, "Rossiiskii istoricheskii muzei: Istoriia ego osnovaniia i

deiatel'nosti, 1872-1917," Ocherki istorii muzeinogo del? v Rossii, vol. 2 (1960): 224-99.

42. Doklad chlenov Moskovskogo arkhitekturnogo obshchestva; Golos, no. 39 (1872): 3; Mos

kovskie vedomosti, no. 145 (11 June 1872): 2-3. On Gartman, see Russkii biograficheskii slo

var', 4:242-43; Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, 169-70. On Nikitin, see S. O. Shmidt,

M. I. Andreev, and V. M. Karev, eds., Moskva: Entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1997), 558.

43. Evgeniia Kirichenko, Russian Design and the Fine Arts, 1750-1917, trans. Arch Tait

(New York, 1991), 99, 102; Kirichenko, "Kvoprosu o

poreformennykh vystavkakh," 109,

117-21. See also V G. Lisovskii, "Natsional'ny i stil'" v arkhitekture Rossii (Moscow, 2000), 135;

Ekaterina A. Dianina, "Nation on Display: Russian Museums and Print Culture in the Age

of the Great Reforms" (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2002), chap. 7.1 am grateful to Katia

Dianina for alerting me to Lisovskii's book.



954 Slavic Review

?ocHOBCK&a iiNnmxHHWBHt *uc*sxg?,-$W** mmm? w^tutrn?t-WH** ?& #? *??? toaras?, pa. ? i^Mt. 6. Haft}..

Figure 4. Main entrance to the army pavilion, designed in the "Russian style" by Viktor Gartman. Vsemirnaia illiustratsiia, no. 193 (1872): 165.

the use of the Russian style in architecture solely as a nationalistic evoca

tion of the Russian past, the organizers regarded the aesthetic originality as a necessary way to attract visitors and increase ticket sales, the measure

of success of modern exhibitions. Thus, the exposition's organizers em

ployed the Russian style aesthetic for the ultimate in modern purposes?

marketing: the marketing of industrial development, national identity, and patriotism.

Outside, the pavilions reflected the wooden architecture and orna

mentation borrowed from Muscovite churches and peasant handicrafts;

inside, the new technologies and display techniques were borrowed from

Europe and international exhibition practice. Three imaginative pavilions created spaces in which the traditional and the Russian enclosed the new

and the foreign. In the Technology Pavilion the Society for the Diffusion of

Technical Knowledge displayed the history of photography. A studio dem

onstrated step-by-step photographic processes, and visitors could get their

pictures taken. The applied physics section acquainted the public with the

metric system. Each visitor received miniature conversion tables. And, in case the Russian public grumbled about foreign measurements, the orga nizers displayed the traditional measures in France and England in order to show that other countries, too, changed their systems. Finally, exhibits

in the postal and Turkestan sections aimed to raise people's consciousness

about the modern concepts of space and time (stamps, maps, calendars, and railroad timetables) and imperial Russia's new conquests (tableaux vivants, and even imported craftsmen, were used to display the rhythms of




daily life in a distant land). Thus, wooden structures with elaborate deco

rative carving in the Russian folk style enclosed exhibits of applied science and modern empire that were, quite literally, "at home" in Russia.44

Education was an especially important objective of the world's fairs, and ideas and cultural values, as well as the products of modern indus

try, were on view. The dissemination of information about new products and processes, the sequential display of the evolution of industry from

primitive to complex, and the obsession with classifying and ordering ex

perience, all had a didactic aspect.45 As Delia-Vos put it in his address at

the inaugural banquet, the purpose of the exposition was to popularize science and technology, to demonstrate the practical applications of sci ence in everyday life, and to acquaint the public with "a few examples of the latest technology" and with "the basic principles and processes of

production."46 Indeed, as its proponents never tired of stating, previous

manufacturing and agricultural exhibitions, to say nothing of the world's

fairs, were overly commercial; the excessive buying and selling allegedly turned pavilions into brokerages. In order to fulfill a very modern agenda and represent new areas of practical knowledge, the exhibition had sec

tions featuring agriculture, medicine, architecture, education, printing,

photography, forestry, postal and telegraph services, geology, botany, zo

ology, and horse breeding, among others.47 The need "to acquaint the

public with the basic principles of production" was arguably most acute in

agriculture. The chair of the agriculture subcommittee was Ivan Shatilov,

longtime president of the Moscow Agriculture Society, an organization that had followed the development of agricultural exhibitions in Ger

many. Exhibitions were even more important in Russia, Shatilov claimed, where the farming population was less literate and could not otherwise

follow agricultural developments in a vast land. At the same time, a new

urban public was more removed from the land. Thus, Shatilov argued, the

exposition needed to present a synthesis of Russian farming, "in its primi tive state as well as in those improved forms that can be attained with the

help of science, labor, and capital."48 In the rather breathless words of one

44. A description of the Technology Pavilion, including the sections for photography and applied physics, may be found in Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 34,

53, 55, 95-97, 102, 110, 117, 122, 126-27, 130, 134, 137, 140, 142, 144, 149 (1872); de

scriptions of the postal section may be found in nos. 3, 63, 87, 89,116,124,147,150 (1872) and of the Turkestan pavilion in nos. 5, 105, 149 (1872).

45. Benedict, ed., Anthropology of Worlds Fairs; George W. Stocking, Victorian An

thropolgy (New York, 1987); D. K. Van Keuren, "Museums and Ideology: Augustus Pitt

Rivers, Anthropology Museums and Social Change in Later Victorian Britain," Victorian

Studies2S (Autumn 1984): 171-89, esp. 185.

46. "Torzhestvennoe otkrytie Politekhnicheskoi vystavki," Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 10, no. 2 (1874): ix-xi; Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 22, 31, 37 (1872).

47. Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 1:17; Protokoly zasedaniia OLEAE, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 9, no. 1 (1872): col. 37; Vestnik Moskovskoi Poli

tekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 5 (1872): 1; Obshchee obozrenie Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki

(Moscow, 1872): 1-58.

48. Politekhnicheskaia vystavka Imperatorskogo obshchestva, 39. Shatilov was a member of

OLEAE as well as of the Free Economic Society, the Moscow Society of Naturalists, the

Forestry Society, and others. Russkii biograficheskii slovar', 22:542-46.



956 Slavic Review

observer, "The exposition can redirect tens of millions from crude, un

productive labor to rational, modern labor and, having let them discover a wonderful world, double or triple their productivity."49 In promoting the

more efficient use of human and natural resources, the 1872 exposition was fulfilling its patriotic mission.

The home economics section (domovodstvo), suggested by the co-chair of the organizing committee, N. V Isakov, and patterned after similar sec

tions at the Paris Expositions, clearly illustrates both the fusion of educa tional and patriotic missions and the blend of old and new. In England, home encouragement societies tried to educate the population to lead healthier and more orderly and industrious lives by "sponsoring exhibi tions and classes on neat and tidy homes, window gardening, cooking, and the best use of cultivated land."50 In the Kremlin gardens, the home economics section consisted of a model landowner's house, a church, and a village school. The landowner's house showed off the latest hous

ing construction using prefabricated building materials. Not surprisingly, the interior of a prefabricated house contained "everything necessary for low-cost comfort" as well as that most genteel of home furnishings, a pi

ano. But it also exhibited practical and inexpensive peasant-made wares, "not widely distributed due to their unfamiliarity," that would "satisfy the

requirements of taste, order, convenience, and education."51 In its dis

play of peasant-made objects, the Moscow exposition was at the cutting edge of the promotion of the region's kustarf industries at the end of the nineteenth century. As Wendy Salmond argues, the "collision of tradi tion and modernity" that characterized Russia in the latter part of the

nineteenth century, was accompanied by "an unprecedented revival and reassessment of native Russian traditions." Such "vernacular revivals," the

Russian version of the arts and crafts movement, were an effort to as

sert an organic cultural identity and a sense of a distinct national past. At an exhibition that stressed new practices and technologies, "unfamiliar"

peasant handicrafts were not displayed to influence industrial design but to publicize and market an image of Russia that the exhibition organiz ers reckoned would appeal to visitors. As Evgeniia Kirichenko puts it, the

everyday and the prosaic were transformed into the artistic by the "poetics of exposition."52

Juxtaposed with peasant-made wares in the model home was the li

brary of reference works, dictionaries, encyclopedias, Russian atlases, and Russian history books, as well as several books on home economics,

49. Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 148 (14 June 1872): 3.

50. Helen Elizabeth Meiler, Leisure and the Changing City, 1870-1914 (London, 1976), 172.

51. Golos, no. 84 (23July 1872) : 2-3; "Moskovskaia Politekhnicheskaia vystavka," Mos kovskie vedomosti, no. 116 (11 May 1872): 4. At the same time, one

correspondent hinted that some visitors viewed the model home "with dishes that you never see anywhere" with some amusement. Golos, no. 209 (30 July 1871): 2-3.

52. Wendy R. Salmond, Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia: Reviving the Kustar Art

Industries, 1870-1917 (Cambridge, Eng., 1996), 1-4; Kirichenko, "Kvoprosu o porefor

mennykh vystavkakh," 121. Descriptions of the kustar section may be found in Vestnik Mos kovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 39, 41, 46, 54, 57, 78, 107 (1872).




health, and child rearing?the fruits of the "industrial Enlightenment," to use the terminology of economist Joel Mokyr, that "reduced access

costs" to modern useful knowledge.53 These books, as well as fiction (for the benefit of "someone who wants to read something besides the news

papers once in awhile"), suggest a model landowner already connected

to a print public. The village school, stocked with books supplied by the

Society to Disseminate Useful Books, had a place for each pupil to store

things: "in this way, the pupils will, without knowing it, get used to order

and will learn to look after their property."54 Reminders of traditional

Russian paternalism and wooden handicrafts made for a seamless transi

tion to a new rural life that exemplified the "industrial Enlightenment" and respect for private property.

The European exhibitions emphasized the importance of vocational

and technical education in the development of native industry. Gov

ernments, facing industrial competition and imperatives to economic

growth, perceived that a skilled labor force was in the national interest.

Government officials, employers, and educators recognized that the dis

semination of applied science and practical knowledge in a competitive era of more complex technology and increasing specialization of labor re

quired a greater investment in education. Accordingly, organizers wanted

to draw teachers and pupils to the exhibits as well as to provide educa

tional materials for classroom use. In addition, the world exhibitions or

ganized congresses, a new form of education, representation, and advo

cacy.55 Borrowing from the European experience, the education section

of the Moscow Polytechnical Exposition capitalized on the partnership

between private initiative and the state to display new educational prac

tices. Organized by the Ministry of War in conjunction with the Russian

Technical Society and the Literacy Committee of the Moscow Agricultural

Society, the education section displayed textbooks and teaching aids. The

St. Petersburg and Moscow Froebel societies provided classroom furni

ture and model kindergartens, complete with games, building blocks, and

brainteasers. Russia's two best-known vocational schools, the Stroganov School and the Imperial Technical School, showed instructional processes

and wares. England, Sweden, and Germany sent "progressive" teaching

materials and models of schools. In addition, the St. Petersburg and Mos

cow Literacy Committees organized a Teachers' Congress, held from 1 to

23 July in the Manezh. More than 500 teachers and administrators, 200

of whom were women, attended. The Teachers' Congress discussed all

aspects of school life from parental involvement to art education, reme

dial instruction, and the merits of compulsory education, which was later

53. Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Prince

ton, 2002). 54. Cited passages from Golos, no. 84 (23 July 1872): 2-3; and "Moskovskaia Politekh

nicheskaia vystavka," Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 116 (11 May 1872): 4. See also Moskovskie

vedomosti, no. 148 (14 June 1872): 4; and Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 5,

18, 24, 38, 42, 45, 48, 58, 73, 77, 80, 83, 85-87, 120, 122, 136 (1872).

55. Auerbach, Great Exhibition, 10, 94, 108, 111; Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas,

29, 145.



958 Slavic Review

to become an energizing issue in educational societies. In addition to

the sessions, the Teachers' Congress sponsored teaching demonstrations, excursions, and public lectures, the latter held in the Manezh before au

diences of up to 1,000 visitors. For the provincial teachers, whose visits were subsidized by the Ministry of Education, the exhibition was "like

discovering America."56 The international exhibitions, with the French leading the way, be

came part of movements of social reform and displayed the efforts of the middle classes to meliorate the lives of working people. Attempts to

provide education and to promote self-improvement acted as a labora

tory for the study of society and mobilized a public for reform causes

through a variety of projects.57 Borrowing from the French model, the

Polytechnical Exposition's Section for the Welfare of Workers sought a balance between the new needs of labor and the old paternalism. How to pitch a section on Russian labor at an exposition that exalted modern

industry was no easy task. The answer was to show how modern labor fit within the paternalistic framework of Russian industry and Russian gov ernance. Since the processes of manufacturing and the products of labor

were exhibited elsewhere, the Section for the Welfare of Workers focused

chiefly on daily life and leisure time activities. The commission in charge of the section created an "establishment" (zavedenie) on Varvarka Square near the Kremlin at which "a literate artisan or worker could profitably spend his free time and which would have a library, public lectures and

readings, choral singing, a tearoom, an exercise room, and bowling."58 By separating work from "daily life" and by suggesting that urban elites could organize leisure activities to inoculate workers against vices such as

56. The official name of the congress was Pervyi Vserossiiskii s"ezd narodnykh uchitelei

i inspektorov narodnykh uchilishch. More material on the educational function of the ex

position can be found in Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 1:28, 114; and in Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 22, 69-70, 72-73, 75-77, 79-81 (1872). See also Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 129 (5 May 1872): 3, no. 142 (8 June 1872): 3, and no. 167 (4July 1872): 2; and Golos, no. 96 (4 August 1872): 2. An example

of a teacher's reaction is K. Chekhovich, "Otchet po komandirovke na Politekhnicheskuiu

vystavku v Moskve 1872 g.," Tsirkuliarpo Vilenskomu uchebnomu okrugu, no. 11 (1872): 1-27. The "discovering America" quote is from Marietta Shaginian, Pervaia Vserossiiskaia: Roman khronika (Moscow, 1965), 38. Shaginian builds her historical novel about the exposition around the fact that one of the delegates to the teachers' courses was a school inspector from Simbirsk, Il'ia Ul'ianov, Lenin's father. Technical and vocational education occupied a prominent position at the other major congress held at the exposition, the Manufactur

ing Congress. 57. Katherine Auspitz, The Radical Bourgeoisie: The Ligue de renseignement and the Ori

gins of the Third Republic, 1866-1885 (Cambridge, Eng., 1982); Auerbach, Great Exhibition, 10, 94, 108, 111; Sanford Elwitt, "Social Reform and Social Order in Late Nineteenth

Century France: The Mus?e Social and Its Friends," French Historical Studies 11, no. 3

(Spring 1980): 431-52; Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 29, 145; Moskovskii muzei priklad nykh znanii, Materialy, 2:29.

58. Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 2:8. Accounts of the planning sessions may be found in TsIAM, f. 227, op. 2, d. 28 ("Perepiska s Minister stvom

narodnogo prosveshcheniia ob organizatsii pri Politekhnicheskom vystavke otdela

popecheniia o rabochikh i remeslennikov i narodnogo teatra"), 11. 26-31; and GARF, f.

109, 3 eks. (1872), d. 94,11. 1-6.




the tavern, the exposition endorsed the rhythms of modern industry and

middle-class values.

Although such amusements were officially sanctioned and meant to

"provide to the class of people with modest means not only harmless, but

also useful, ways to spend leisure time,"59 the Russian government scruti

nized this section more than any other part of the exposition. In an age of populism, the authorities were highly suspicious of any unmediated

and unsupervised contact between educated society and the common

people. The Ministry of Education had to vet carefully the books in the

reading room, as well as the books to be read aloud in public readings,

despite the fact that a government-approved association, the Society to

Disseminate Useful Books, supplied them. Although choral singing was

considered a beneficial recreation, the government insisted that censors

had to approve the songs and that the singing must be primarily religious. The portraits used to decorate the "establishment" were limited to great

figures of the past. The effect of the "establishment" on the worker was to

be "beneficial, and not stir up passions." Both officialdom and organizers,

however, overestimated the section's effect on its intended audience. Al

though 100,000 workers were admitted free, many complained that they

could not take the time on working days to get there for meals, let alone

for amusements?not a surprising complaint, considering that the exhi

bition was far from the factory districts of town.60

The entertainment at the exposition was also a blend of old and new.

Although the organizers referred to the public amusements and assem

blies created by Peter the Great, the setting and context of the amusements

looked forward to Russia's budding commercial culture. One example is

the theater. In the 1860s and 1870s, educators and artists regarded pub

lic, or popular (narodnyi), theater as a low-cost and accessible means of

improving public morals through art. But a censorship regime, the mo

nopoly position of the imperial theaters, and suspicion in conservative

circles had thwarted the popular theater movement. In a memorandum

to the organizing committee, A. F. Fedotov, an actor and director of the

Imperial Moscow Theaters and an advocate of Russian popular theater,

argued that since workers' lives were devoid of any useful entertainment,

they needed a theater that was accessible in price and repertoire.61 Sup

ported by the Moscow City Council, the Workers' Section built a public

59. Quoted in Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 73 (1872): 3. See also

"Doklad Komissii ob ustroistve," 2, 6; Naumov, "Po povodu predpolagaemoi Politekh

nicheskoi vystavki," 161.

60. Quoted passage in TsIAM, f. 16, op. 25, d. 116 ("Ob ustroistve Politekhnicheskoi

vystavki"), vol. 2,11. 13-16. See also TsIAM, f. 227, op. 2, d. 28,11. 115-117ob.; and GARF,

f. 109, 3 eks. (1872), d. 94,11. 10-11, 52-53, 79-81.

61. TsIAM, f. 227, op. 2, d. 28, 11. 20-22; Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki,

no. 4 (1872): 1. For more on the popular theater movement at the exposition, see Gary

Thurston, The Popular Theatre Movement in Russia, 2S62-i979(Evanston, 1998), 10,54-57;

Eugene Anthony Swift, Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist Russia (Berkeley, 2002) ; and

Murray Frame, School for Citizens: Theatre and Civil Society in Imperial Russia (New Haven,

2006). Louise McReynolds samples other late-imperial leisure in Russia at Play: Leisure

Activities at the End of the Tsarist Era (Ithaca, 2003).



960 Slavic Review

I 20(kiMHia k?bme? ihm pokjvhw Hmoipatop? ?Ietp? Bmwmm,

Figure 5. Public theater designed by Viktor Gartman. Vsemirnaia illiustratsiia, no. 184 (1872): 1.

theater seating 2,000, designed by Viktor Gartman, where Fedotov's en

semble could stage government-approved plays during the exposition

(figure 5). The exposition marked the first time that a public theater was

officially sanctioned. Although the popular theater movement received a

boost, the actual performances had mixed success because they were too

expensive for most workers.62

Studies of Victorian Europe show that music societies, glee clubs, mu

sic festivals, and outdoor band concerts were very popular among the

middle classes and a highly visible mark on the urban landscape.63 The

62. Arkhiv RAN, f. 446, op. la, d. 41a, 1. 37ob.; Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 115 (9 May

1872): 4 and no. 125 (20 May 1872): 3; Bogdanov, PiatidesiatieUtie, 45-47; Lisovskii,

"Natsional'nyi stil'," 136. Among the plays performed were Nikolai Polevoi, Dedushka

russkogo flota; Nikolai Gogol', Revizor; Rusalka (Aleksandr Pushkin's play and Aleksandr

Dargomyzhskii's opera); Mikhail Glinka, Zhizn' za tsaria; several plays by Aleksandr Os

trovskii, including Bednost' neporok, Ne v svoi sani ne sadis1, and Svoi liudi sochtemsia, as well

as a Moli?re farce, comic opera, and vaudeville. TsIAM, f. 227, op. 2, d. 28,11. 94-94ob.

A seasonal roundup can be found in Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 149

(1872): 3; other reviews and features about the theater are in nos. 35, 41, 43, 70,138, and

141 (1872). 63. H. Cunningham, "Leisure and Culture," and R. J. Morris, "Clubs, Societies and

Associations," in F. M. L. Thompson, ed., The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750

1950 (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), 2:279-339 and 3:395-443; Michael Rose, "Culture, Phi




Moscow Music Society, founded in 1860 to promote music education, teacher training, and a national agenda in the concert canon, organized the music program. Under the baton of Nikolai Rubinstein, conductor

of the Moscow Conservatory, a series of concerts prominently featured

the works of Russian composers?Mikhail Glinka, Milii Balakirev, Niko

lai Rimskii-Korsakov, Aleksandr Borodin, Petr Chaikovskii, and Modest

Musorgskii?in order "to expose native composers and musicians to a

public that already knows foreign works well but does not know native

compositions."64 Thus, music was another way that the exhibition showed

visitors that the modern world did not exclude Russian national distinc

tiveness. Although the music selection stressed national epics and legends, its placement in the realm of nineteenth-century science and industry looked forward to modern urban popular entertainment.

Of course, much of the entertainment consisted of the spectacle of the

exhibition itself and the chance to stroll and see people enjoying them

selves. The government made available to the exposition the gardens in

and around the Kremlin walls. By so doing, the government did more

than provide exhibition space; it shared with the public terrain custom

arily reserved for state or religious ceremonies, for "scenarios of power."

The exposition transformed the monumental space of the Kremlin, a

stage for the theater of dynastic and religious awe, into a very different

kind of stage, filled with "a brightly colored and bazaar-like clamoring."

The nearby Bolshoi Theater and Moscow University were lit up at night.

Provincials, used to the darkness of small town and village evenings, came

upon "a fairyland of light and color."65 The "Midway" of the Moscow expo

sition was located on Khodynskoe Pole, an army drill field on the outskirts

of the city (figure 6). To mark the emperor's visit, 11 June was declared a

national holiday, and an estimated 150,000 people gathered during the

day and into the evening. Two open-air theaters built to accommodate

32,000 people were adorned with garlands of flowers; ten stages draped in

cloth decorated in the Russian style offered popular music and dancing;

in addition, acrobats, swings, rides, magicians, puppeteers, and carousels

beckoned fairgoers. There were races, pole-climbing competitions, and

target-shooting contests. Observation decks holding 50,000 people al

lowed the promenade to combine interactivity and spectatorship.

As night

drew near, electric lanterns and huge flares ("bengal torches") lit the

Ian thro py," in Alan J. Kidd and Kenneth Roberts, eds., City, Class and Culture: Studies of

Social Policy and Cultural Production in Victorian Manchester (Manchester, Eng., 1985), 112;

A. R. H. Baker, "Sound and Fury: The Significance of Musical Societies in Loir-et-Cher

during the Nineteenth Century," Journal of Historical Geography 12, no. 3 (July 1986):

249-68; Kathleen D. McCarthy, Noblesse Oblige: Charity and Cultural Philanthropy in Chicago,

1849-1929 (Chicago, 1982). 64. RGALI (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art), f. 661 (Russian Musical So

ciety), op. 1, d. 53,11. 32-33; Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 15, 28, 32, 47,

85, 106 (1872); "Moskovskaia Politekhnicheskaia vystavka," Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 113

(7 May 1872): 3 and no. 115 (9 May 1872): 4.

65. Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 1:8-9; Vestnik Mos

kovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, no. 31 (1872); "Moskovskaia Politekhnicheskaia vystavka

s

voennoi tochki zreniia," 4-5; Shaginian, Pervaia Vserossiiskaia, 81.



962 Slavic Review

::20O^ii??t:.ioto?? jiHA. hhk?bhik Hmoip?tom Hetp? Bsmmto.

Figure 6. Festivities (narodnye gulianiia) at Khodynskoe field. Vsemirnaia

Uliustratsiia, no. 185 (1872): 44.

field; the holiday ended with fireworks.66 Thus, the amusements blended

traditional ceremonies, the new "rational uses of leisure" of theater and

concerts, and the urban popular festivals (narodnyegulianiia).

More than a century and a quarter have past since the Russian Poly technical Exhibition closed its gates for the last time in September 1872.

The pavilions were torn down long ago. With the notable exception of

Moscow's Polytechnical and Historical museums, whose core collections came from the exhibition and which have been in continuous operation in central Moscow since that time, the 1872 exposition seemingly disap

peared without a trace.67 Yet, it left behind an example of the populariza

66. Vestnik Moskovskoi Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, nos. 4, 7, 36, 40, 41, 44, 48, 59, 70, 80, 138, 141, 149 (1872); "Moskovskaia Politekhnicheskaia vystavka," Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 115 (9 May 1872): 4, no. 128 (23 May 1872): 4, no. 146 (12 June 1872): 2, and no. 204

(13 August 1872): 2; Golos, no. 46 (15 June 1872): 3; Zhuravskaia, "Kistorii," 20. Like the education efforts, popular amusements were scrutinized closely by a government suspi cious of activities pitched at the laboring population. See GARF, f. 109, 3 eks. (1872), d. 94,11. 1-11, 52-53, 79-81. In his jubilee history of OLEAE, Bogdanov notes the gov ernment's nervousness when it came to the public amusements. Bogdanov, Piatidesiatiletie, 45-47.

67. Just before the official closing, attendance was 30,180 on August 27; 23,862 on

August 28; and 37,579 on August 29. See two stories about the closing of the exposition and about the final report of the exposition submitted to OLEAE in Moskovskie vedomosti,




tion of science, private initiative, and national and civic patriotism. It was

an original contribution to Russia's postreform "exhibition boom," and

the Russian section at every subsequent world's fair imitated the architec

ture and design that evoked native Russian culture.68 In its interpretation of past and future, as well as in the mixed messages it sent, Russia's 1872

exposition followed the tradition of grand European exhibitions of science

and industry. On the one hand, to its organizers and promoters, the Mos

cow exposition displayed the wonders of modern science and technology. On the other hand, the efforts to publicize craftsmanship constituted a

critique of modern mechanized industry. While its promoters celebrated

Russia's entry into the European community, the 1872 exposition created

an environment of national distinctiveness to soften that entry. As in many areas of Russian life, western practices

were grafted onto native traditions,

and a new civic endeavor blended with an older tradition of patriotic ser

vice, the tradition of Peter the Great.

Of course, Peter the Great is synonymous with the modern Russian

state, and we are accustomed to seeing such grand projects as national

exhibitions as the result of government decree. That is how Minister of

Education D. A. Tolstoi viewed matters. After an official visit to the exposi

tion, he remarked to Bogdanov, "This is all well and good. But to organize

such exhibitions is a matter for the state, not for the professors."69 In fact,

the Polytechnical Exposition was the result of voluntary private initiative

not government decree. The critic Vladimir Stasov understood this. In his

view, private initiative, "a new force in every endeavor," while heretofore

"meager and bashful," now "showed itself in full splendor. ... [A ma

jor undertaking] was carried out by private initiative without any outside

orders or interference from the government."70 Exhibition organizers

believed that they could facilitate the cooperation between science and

industry and assist the state at the same time. Such collaboration between

no. 272 (1 October 1872): 1-2 and no. 304 (1 December 1872): 3-4. On the Imperial

Historical Museum, see Razgon, "Rossiiskii istoricheskii muzei"; and Dianina, "A Nation

on Display," chap. 7, pp. 38-58.

68. Kirichenko, "Kvoprosu o

poreformennykh vystavkah," 95; Lisovskii, (<Natsional'nyi

stil'/' 147-51, 234-37.

69. Bogdanov, Piatidesiatiletie, 45. The Russian government may have been less sin

gular in this regard than commonly thought. Long ago Alexis de Tocqueville opined that

"Everywhere at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France." Democ

racy in America, trans, and eds., Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago, 2000),

2:489.

70. Quote from V. V. Stasov, "Nasha etnograficheskaia vystavka i ee kritiki," Sankt

Peterburgskie vedomosti, nos. 179 and 182 (1867); reprinted in Sobranie sochinenii V V Sta

sova, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1894), 3:col. 936. Although Stasov was writing about the 1867

Ethnographic Exhibition, also organized by OLEAE, his assessment pertains equally to the

Polytechnical Exposition. References to individual initiative may also be found in "Tor

zhestvennoe otkrytie Politekhnicheskoi vystavki," Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE, 1872-1873,

in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 10, no. 2 (1874): xi; in a report of the exposition presented by

A. lu. Davidov to a meeting of OLEAE, 15 October 1872, in Protokoly zasedanii OLEAE,

in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 10, no. 2 (1874): col. 22; and by Bogdanov, in Zasedaniia Komitetc

muzeia za 1877-82, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 36, no. 3 (1883): 1.



964 Slavic Review

private initiative and state supervision worked due to a shared agenda? promoting education, popularizing science and technology, and fostering civic and national pride.71 To create such a center of useful knowledge and Russian cultural identity took vision, considerable planning, organi zational skills, and the mobilization of private persons. Such horizontal

linkages and interConnectivity expanded the boundaries of public space and allowed Russians to learn about themselves.72

One generation after the Crystal Palace Exhibition, Russia had gained considerable experience in organizing large-scale expositions of science and industry.73 OLEAE helped mobilize resources and create the infra structure grounded in civil society for popularizing science that connected tsarist officialdom, the Moscow municipal government and business com

munity, the university scientists, and private associations. By organizing a blockbuster exhibition, OLEAE stimulated the production and con

sumption of natural knowledge. With its displays of machinery, techni cal processes, and ways to use the natural world for productive ends, as

well as its lectures and demonstrations pitched at a broader audience, the Polytechnical Exposition was a

striking example of Russian society's rap idly developing scientific potential. Established by scientists who framed their projects in terms of a public, OLEAE used publicity and visibility to achieve its goals. As was the case in Europe and the United States, the exposition treated the public as an audience for science. Indeed, by dis seminating useful knowledge in an

entertaining way, exhibitions helped create a modern public culture.74 Moreover, the exposition organizers believed that such public science was good for science. "Science thrives and takes root only where it is firmly linked with society," wrote Bogdanov, "when it is not the exclusive property of an isolated caste of scientists. . . . It gains strength where there are institutions that act as extensions of the schools. . . . Science needs to

speak in the vernacular."75

By speaking in the vernacular, OLEAE hitched the popularization of science to the mobilization of human resources in the service of civic

71. Such rhetoric was pervasive. One can find it in the minutes of the meetings of

OLEAE and of the exposition planning committee. A good example is A. P. Bogdanov and I. Beliaev, "O tseli i kharaktere Politekhnicheskoi vystavki," and Viktor Della-Vos, "Po po vodu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki," in

Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 1:18-23; "Protokoly chastnogo sobraniia chlenov Komiteta po ustroistvu Poli tekhnicheskoi vystavki 17go oktiabria 1870 g.," in

Protokoly zasedanii Komiteta po ustroistvu Politekhnicheskoi vystavki, 2:7-11.

72. See Joseph Bradley, "Subjects into Citizens: Societies, Civil Society and Autocracy in Tsarist Russia," American Historical Review 107, no. 4 (October 2002): 1094-1123.

73. At the Paris World Exposition of 1878, Russia had agricultural, technical, and natural history sections; in general, the Russian collections were

largely educational. Pro tokoly zasedanii OLEAE, 1876-1880, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 37, no. 1 (1881): 114.

74. See Frederick B. Artz, The Development of Technical Education in France, 1500-1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 133, 143-45; Dorinda Outram, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science

and Authority in

Post-Revolutionary France (Manchester, Eng., 1984), 94, 109-10, 162-65; Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830-1885 (London, 1978). 75. A. P. Bogdanov, "Zametki o

zoologicheskikh sadakh: Iz putevykh vpechatlenii po

zagranichnym zoologicheskim sadam," Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 25, no. 1 (1876): 1-2.




pride and national prestige. In Europe and America at the time, cities

sponsored exhibitions to enhance cultural life and cultivate civic and na

tional pride, to show that city leaders could apply their vision and exper tise in the service of civil society. Organized by a society whose members

were professors at Moscow University, the Moscow exposition had the

backing of the city council and the Moscow business and industrial elite.

It enabled Moscow to display distinction and gain recognition for its tal

ents, cultural achievement, and claims to importance in Russian industry. The Romantic and Slavophile ideas of a Russian national identity and

cultural distinctiveness centered in Moscow received their institutional

expression during the era of the Great Reforms in museums and exhibi

tions that displayed that identity in its most visual form, and the exhibition

reflected this same spirit. Like its European brethren, the 1872 exposition fostered a collective endeavor to learn about the nation, thereby promot

ing a sense of national identity and self-esteem.76 Pavilions, such as the

army pavilion, in which modern weaponry was displayed in a building of

the "Russian style," showed that modernity could be fused with Russian

traditions. Displays such as those describing the postal system were not

only meant to demonstrate progress but also designed to shape a con

sciousness of a vast empire and instill national pride (natsional'noe samo

liubie) in the visitor. More important, the Moscow exposition, according to

OLEAE president Shchurovskii, demonstrated to foreigners that "Russia

is mentally and morally disposed to participate actively and independently

in European civilization."77 In a claim tirelessly repeated by the society's

officers, Russian engineers needed to wrest control of industrial design

away from foreigners, and Russian scientists needed to become indepen

dent of European science.To assert its place in European civilization in an

age of nationalism and imperialism, Russia had, paradoxically, to assert its

Russianness?its cultural distinctiveness, patriotism, and imperial pride.

By sharing space in and around the Kremlin customarily reserved

for state or religious ceremonies, the government conferred a degree of

legitimacy on the projects of nongovernmental

associations. During the

second half of the nineteenth century, the receding role of the state and

the greater role of private initiative in exhibitions was but one example of

a rapidly developing public sphere in Russia.78 Alas, that public became

sharply divided, and government suspicion and tutelage coupled with in

transigent radicalism polarized the nation. But this should not detract

76. Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge, Eng., 1989),

210; Lynn L. Merrill, The Romance of Victorian Natural History (Oxford, 1989), 78, 97; David

Blackbourn, The Long Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918 (Oxford, 1998), 275. See

also Dianina, "Nation on Display," chap. 7, p. 34.

77. From Shchurovskii's remarks, opening a meeting of OLEAE, 15 October 1878,

in Protokoly zasedaniia OLEAE, 1876-80, in Izvestiia OLEAE, vol. 37, no. 1 (1881): 87. See

also Della-Vos, "Rech' o zadachakh muzeia," Materialy, 1:61-62, and I. A. Kablukov, "Iz

vospominanii o deiaternosti Obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii

i etno

grafii," Priroda (December 1913): 1463-70. On the stimulation of national pride, see N. K.

Bestiuzhev-Riumin, "Sankt-Peterburg, 30 ianvaria 1873," Golos, no. 31 (31 January 1873),

cited in Dianina, "Nation on Display," chap. 7, p. 45.

78. Kirichenko, "Kvoprosu o

poreformennykh vystavkakh," 95-96.



966 Slavic Review

from the importance of projects such as the Polytechnical Exposition. The

exposition accorded an opportunity for a variety of civic groups to enter

the public arena, to subject their missions to public scrutiny, and to be

stewards of culture. With its constant emphasis on change and progress, as well as on Russian cultural identity, the exposition fostered the Russian

public's awareness of its place in a changing world, of its place in history, of its identity as a nation.



Documents

Pictures at an Exhibition: Science, Patriotism, and Civil Society in Imperial Russia