The Science of the Thrill: Russian Sliding Hills under Elisabeth Petrovna and Catherine II

Abstract

This paper recovers the socio-political purposes that the katalniye gory – or ‘sliding hills’– performed for two Russian empresses in the eighteenth century. An integrated analysis of the visual rhetoric of these sites, their construction, mechanics, and social functions reveals the significant, but overlooked role that they played in legitimising female leadership. Recognising the popularity sliding hills had with peasants and nobles alike, the empresses Elisabeth Petrovna and Catherine II developed these entertainments as sites of orchestrated abandon that made visible their own breaks from preceding reigns, increased their bonds with their supporters, and created a free and open atmosphere ripe for introducing their programs of reform. In these spaces, these ruling women connected a visual showcase of fecundity and the power of femininity to the flourishing future that awaited peasant Russia, when managed by the nobility on behalf of a benevolent and enlightened female ruler. We argue that this is a particularly fruitful avenue for seeing the workings of women’s leadership in eighteenth-century Russia. Ephemeral public environments allowed women to develop overlapping structures of power in new and creative ways.