L’image de Moscou entre la description standardisée des Lumières et la recherche de la singularité russe

Abstract

AbstractA representation of Moscow halfway between the standardized description typical of the Enlightenment and the search for Russian singularity : Engelbrecht Wichelhausen’s medical topography (1803).This article analyzes the content and organization of a medical text written about Moscow during the Enlightenment. One should expect from such a text that it fit into the classifications of the Enlightenment and that it meet its readers’ need to understand the Russian difference. We successively study the author’s -- the German doctor Wichelhausen’s -- legitimation strategies, his different readings of the object “city” and his arguments. The result is paradoxical : Wichelhausen sees Moscow as a city of the Enlightenment just like any other, which can bear comparison with other European and Russian cities, but which can also be fundamentally different and point to potential changes in Russia.