Sankt-Peterburg – Velikobritaniia. XVIII–XXI vv. by E. N. et al. (eds) Kal'shchikov Kobak, A. V. and Kuvaldina, O. L. (eds) Rossiia-Velikobritaniia. Plat' vekov kul'turnykh sviazei. Materialy VI Mezhdunarodnogo petrovskogo kongressa, Sankt-Peterburg 6–8 iiunia 2014 goda (review)

Abstract

SEER, 95, 4, OCTOBER 2017 768 himself took part — in 1697–98 and again in 1716–17, with a detailed focus on the visits to Vienna and to Paris (chapter 4). There is also an extended and important analysis of the so-called ‘Matveev affair’, when a departing Russian ambassador was briefly imprisoned for debt in London (pp. 221–37). Conventionally examined through the prism of the immunity conferred by evolving notions of international law, Dr Hennings instead suggests that the real key was that of the Russian monarch’s honour and that the outcome — in which the British ambassador Charles Whitworth had to apologise for the arrest during a public audience at which many of his fellow diplomats were present, was ‘a great ritual success’ for Peter (p. 232). Here, as elsewhere, Jan Hennings’s deeply considered judgement forces a reconsideration of longestablished assumptions. There can have been few more impressive scholarly débuts than this dazzling study. Jesus College, Oxford Hamish Scott Kal´shchikov, E. N. et al. (eds). Sankt-Peterburg – Velikobritaniia. XVIII–XXI vv.. Seriia ‘Sankt-Peterburg i mir’. Evropeiskii Dom, St Petersburg, 2014. 534 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Price unknown. Kobak, A. V. and Kuvaldina, O. L. (eds). Rossiia–Velikobritaniia. Piat´ vekov kul´turnykh sviazei. Materialy VI Mezhdunarodnogo petrovskogo kongressa, Sankt-Peterburg 6–8 iiunia 2014 goda. Institut Petra Velikogo and Evropeiskii Dom, St Petersburg, 2015. 768 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Price unknown. Boththesemonumentalvolumesrecordtheproceedingsofmajorinternational conferences held in St Petersburg in 2014, the year designated as the Russia-UK Year of Culture. Taken together, they offer just over 100 essays by scholars, archivists, librarians and museum curators from Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the USA. The subjects vary widely, covering almost everything from trade and technology to religion and art, and treating the experiences of Russians in Britain alongside those of the British in Russia. Inevitably, the papers vary somewhat in length, significance and originality. Nevertheless, while some were clearly conceived as pièces d’occasion, others promise a lasting contribution to scholarship. Since the contents of the two volumes are in many ways interchangeable, it is tempting to think that a single, more selective collection might have had a greater impact. And yet the cumulative impression is positive. For these two books not only give a sense of the liveliness of the field, but also indicate all manner of ways in which the subject might be taken forward, not least in relation to the under-studied REVIEWS 769 nineteenth century. Some contributors, indeed, have already gone on to publish related works on a larger scale. For example, V. A. Chernenko’s synoptic paper on the Bairds of St Petersburg, which appears in Rossiia–Velikobritaniia, heralded his important monograph, Pervyi parokhod v Rossii: parokhod Berda (St Petersburg, 2015), a meticulously documented book which ranges much more widely than its title suggests. The names of some other authors will be even more familiar to readers of this journal. Dedicated to Anthony Cross, the doyen of the study of Anglo-Russian relations, Rossiia–Velikobritaniia includes an essay by him on British tourists in Russia; Sankt-Peterburg – Velikobritaniia opens with his paper on Alexander I’s visit to England in 1814 (this is the sole paper in either volume published in English: the remainder are all in Russian). Among the more substantial contributions to the St Petersburg volume is that by V. V. Noskov, who offers much the most comprehensive description currently available of the wedding in 1874 between the Grand Duchess Maria Aleksandrovna, the only surviving daughter of Tsar Alexander II, and Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. On more recent years, there is much of interest in the paper by E. P. Tikhonova, N. V. Slepkova and A. N. Tikhonov on ‘Scientific contacts between the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences and British scholars from the 1950s to the 1980s’. Striking contributions to the RussiavolumeincludeDavidRaskin’sessayonBritishinventorsinRussiainthe early nineteenth century. Based on a study of patents, this piece draws on the author’s unrivalled knowledge of the holdings of the Russian State Historical Archive in St Petersburg. Since there is equally significant material on this subject in British archives, this is one...