Personality and Place in Russian Culture—or Not

Abstract

Simon Dixon, ed., Personality and Place in Russian Culture: Essays in Memory of Lindsey Hughes. 435 pp., illus. London: Modern Humanities Research Association for University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 2010. ISBN-13 978-1907322037. $20.00. This collection of articles is a tribute to memory and rich intellectual legacy of late Lindsey Hughes (1949-2007), professor of Russian history at London University's School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES, now part of University College London [UCL]). Hughes is probably best known for her pioneering biographies Sophia, Regent of Russia, 1657-1704 and monumental Peter Great: A Biography, as well as for her interest in material as a primary historical source--particularly architecture but also art, clothing, fashion, icons, and ritual. (1) As Robin Miller-Guilland writes, In her many shorter articles, we find a tireless enthusiast for generally disregarded corners of history ..., multivalent, disparate strands that make up texture of human culture (22). These have been cleverly distilled by editor of volume under review, Simon Dixon, Hughes's colleague at SSEES and a leading scholar of Catherinean Russia, as a focus on personality and place, reflecting Hughes's interests in kaleidoscopic variety of individual motivations and shifting meanings attributable to particular settings (13). Dixon's characterization of Hughes's scholarship as a self-denying empiricism and concept-driven (5) may also be applied to works in Personality and Place, which do not attempt large-scale statements about Russian or forefront theoretical or methodological problems but focus on the shifting meanings attributable to particular settings and on specific materials under consideration. That said, it is not easy to identify major themes or issues that tie together collection of articles by 17 authors on a variety of subjects and periods; volume also includes an article by Hughes on Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul and a bibliography of her main works. To some extent, Personality and Place may be taken as a cross-section of contemporary scholarship in English on Russia before Soviet period, with most attention given to 18th century. The book also appeared as a special issue of The Slavonic and East European Review, and it retains look and vestigial traces of a journal (e.g., reference to this journal, 14). (2) Indeed, majority of readers will most likely refer to individual contributions in volume rather than read it in linear fashion. To a greater or lesser extent, all entries deal with personality and/or place but with no common understanding of what exactly these mean. That said, we may tentatively break subject matter down into topics concerning material and print culture, historical sites, expeditions and geography, examinations of discourse in historical context, biographical studies, literary depictions of self, and tributes to Hughes's life and work. I will say a few words about each contribution, by group. Dixon's introduction to collection offers a beautiful evocation of social and cultural world in which Hughes grew up and describes her intellectual formation in postwar Britain. James Cracraft continues with a personal memoir of Hughes, centering on her work on Peter I; Hughes's exhaustive research in archives, libraries, museums, and architectural sites, in his words, yielded an unprecedentedly detailed, complex, and often dark portrayal of great tsar.... Her book leaves its readers, at Peter's death, with a Russia that is exhausted, confused, and fearful--not unlike immediately post-Soviet Russia in which she conducted much of her research (17). Following Hughes's lead, Sergei Bogatyrev and Simon Franklin take up what we may classify as problems in material and print in order to explore images of Russian rulers. …