The Winter Palace and the People: Staging and Consuming Russia's Monarchy, 1754–1917

by Susan P. McCaffray

St. Petersburg's Winter Palace was once the supreme architectural symbol of Russia's autocratic government. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it became the architectural symbol of St. Petersburg itself. The story of the palace illuminates the changing relationship between monarchs and their capital city during the last century and a half of Russian monarchy. In The Winter Palace and the People , Susan McCaffray examines interactions among those who helped to stage the ceremonial drama of monarchy, those who consumed the spectacle, and the monarchs themselves. In the face of a changing social landscape in their rapidly growing nineteenth-century capital, Russian monarchs reoriented their display of imperial and national representation away from courtiers and toward the urban public. When attacked at mid-century, monarchs retreated from the palace. As they receded, the public claimed the square and the artistic treasures in the Imperial Hermitage before claiming the palace itself. By 1917, the Winter Palace had come to be the essential stage for representing not just monarchy, but the civic life of the empire-nation. What was cataclysmic for the monarchy presented to those who staffed the palace and Hermitage not a disaster, but a new mission, as a public space created jointly by monarch and city passed from the one to the other. This insightful study will appeal to scholars of Russia and general readers interested in Russian history.  

288 pages, Paperback

Published September 21, 2018

Reviews

[Marissa | storiesinthemeadow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the subject interesting, and it was written in a way that flowed well. I made it about 1/4-1/3 of the way through before stopping. I originally picked this up to read for a discussion on 19th century Russian history. I think if I had it in paper form (instead of ebook) that I would finish. However, the medium is not appealing to me and I know that I won’t ever want to pick it up to read now that my book club has met and discussed this topic. I appreciated the insight this book offered into some of the cultural issues of the time.