Lindsey Hughes on Peter the Great: A Personal Memoir

Abstract

SEER, Vol. 88,Nos. 1/2,January /April2010 PART ONE Lindsey Hughes on Peter the Great: A Personal Memoir JAMESCRACRAFT Well known as she is for her work on Peter theGreat, Lindsey Hughes was drawn to intensive study of his reign only gradually, and then reluctantly. As an undergraduate at Sussex University and a postgra duate at Cambridge she majored inRussian studies, as we would say in the United States, with concentrations in language, literature and visual art. Her Cambridge thesis (1976), a pioneering work in English, was devoted to late seventeenth-century 'Moscow Baroque5 architec ture seen as an instance of early 'Westernization5 inRussia. Portions of the thesis were soon published as articles, which served in turn as my introduction to her work; in my own monograph on architectural developments in Petrine Russia I cited four of these articles as well as the dissertation while quoting from them several times. She was now the unique authority on Moscow Baroque architecture outside Russia and I was pleased to claim a convergence of views on the subject's historical significance.1 She had made an impressive debut as an early modern Russian architectural or more broadly cultural historian, and I was in her debt. But that was scarcely the end of it.Researching the transmission of Baroque architectural forms from Europe to Russia had immersed Lindsey (as I soon came to know her) in the simultaneous transmission of the new (post-Renaissance) graphic art and in the roles of the local people involved, both artists and patrons. An article (1982) and then book (1984) on Prince Vasili Vasil'evich Golitsyn ensued. Golitsyn was a Westernizing patron second in importance only to Russia's 'regent5 in the 1680s, Grand Princess Sofiia Alekseevna, the subject of another series of articles (including a seminal one in this journal) that culmi nated in a major monograph published in 1990.The impactof this James Cracraft is Emeritus Professor of Russian History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 1 James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture, Chicago, IL and London, 1988,pp. 99, 100,106-07,345 ( ?30>32,44)> 34^ ( .47)>359~6o JAMES GRAGRAFT I5 thoroughly researched, engagingly written and judiciously feminist study remains, I think, incalculable. Sofr?a Alekseevna was thereby not simply restored toRussian history but given at long last her rightfully prominent place in it.2 At some point after leaving Cambridge, possibly while she was lec turingat theUniversity ofReading (1977-87),Lindsey began toying with the idea of writing a biography of Peter the Great, the undeserv ing winner (as shemightwell have thoughtofhim) in the struggle for power with his elder half-sister Sofiia that issued in the latter's deposi tion and virtual imprisonment and the beginning of Peter's (or his party's) de facto rule. A touch of revenge playfully fueled her motiva tion here, I suspect: the debt the crass upstart owed to hisWesternizing half-sister would be revealed together with his quite shabby post-coup treatment of her, and the Petrine 'cult' would be thereby eviscerated for all to see. But an admirable professional restraint held Lindsey back from taking the plunge. She was neither excessively committed, like so many historians, to the period of her debut, determined to defend its importance at all costs; but nor was she as yet confident that she could master themassive documentation and controversial historiography of the Petrine era sufficiently to satisfy her own high standards. And then there were the many repugnant aspects of Peter's long reign to con sider. At any rate, I seem to recall a conversation along some such lines in the course ofmy first,very pleasant meeting with Lindsey over lunch at a restaurant in the shadow of the British Museum (then also the British Library), our mutual workplace in London, in 1979. She told me about her shift in focus from the architectural history of the Moscow Baroque to biographical study of Golitsyn and Sofiia. And I assured her, in response to her cordial inquiry, that I had no intention of writing a biography of Peter while rather needlessly observing that to do so successfully would be a daunting task. Probably...