A Full-Frontal History of the Romanov Dynasty: Pictorial 'Political Pornography' in Pre-Reform Russia
Abstract
This profusely illustrated article expands the chronological and evidentiary basis
of Boris Kolonitskii's argument about the role of scurrilous rumors and sexual innuendo
in the desacralization of the Russian monarchy and demonstrates the complexity of
the processes of reception, re-appropriation, and subversion of imperial “scenarios
of power.” It does so by offering a close reading of what is arguably the earliest-known
example of the genre of pictorial “political pornography” in Russia: a set of five,
unique watercolors from the collection of the New York Public Library depicting eighteenth-century
Russian emperors and empresses in flagrante delicto. The author presents evidence
that suggests that this anonymous series of “folded” or “double pictures” (skladnye
or dvoinye kartinki) was created in the first half of the nineteenth century by means
of a subversive repurposing of Russian popular broadsheets, French revolutionary pornography,
and official Russian royal portraiture. He argues that this artifact of male salon
culture is the product of a deliberate attempt to create nothing less than an alternative,
unexpurgated history of the House of Romanov: a sexually explicit, full-frontal assault
that takes pleasure in exposing the “mysteries of state” that nineteenth-century royal
apologists sought to conceal in official histories of the dynasty, which presented
the children of Paul I and Maria Fedorovna as epigones of family values and models
for the nation.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5734Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1111/j.1467-9434.2011.00629.xCitation
ZITSER, E. A. (2011), A Full-Frontal History of the Romanov Dynasty: Pictorial “Political
Pornography” in Pre-Reform Russia. The Russian Review, 70: 557–583.
Collections
More Info
Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Erik Zitser
Librarian for Slavic & Eastern European Studies
Ernest (“Erik”) Zitser is the Librarian for Slavic and East European Studies,
library liaison to the International Comparative Studies (ICS) Program, and Adjunct
Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University.
He is an active member of a number of professional organizations, including the East
Coast Consortium of Slavic Libr

Articles written by Duke faculty are made available through the campus open access policy. For more information see: Duke Open Access Policy
Rights for Collection: Scholarly Articles
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info