H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Russia@h-net.msu.edu (May, 2000)

James Cracraft. _The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery_.
Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.  xxiv +
375 pp.  Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and index.
$50.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-226-11665-4.

Reviewed for H-Russia by Robin Bisha <rbisha@aol.com>, School of
Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill.

The First Cultural Revolution in Russia?

James Cracraft's study is a beautiful and important contribution to
the historical debate about the nature the contribution of Peter I,
"the Great," to Russian history.

Cracraft's stated purpose is "to provide a concrete demonstration of
cultural Europeanization in Petrine Russia in both its settings and
its ramifications"(p. 5).  He examines the process whereby a
contemporary European aesthetic in the visual arts was deliberately
imported and institutionalized in Russia during the reign of Peter
the Great (p. 4). In his focus on the policies of Peter the Great,
Cracraft takes a stand on the major issue that concerns historians
of this period -- was Peter's "revolution" just that, or was it
merely the continuation of cultural trends that had been developing
throughout the late seventeenth century in Russia.

In arguing strongly for revolution over gradual change, Cracraft's
work counters the thesis of Lindsay Hughes' monumental study of
Peter and his reign.[1] It is interesting to note that Hughes is
looking forward from the seventeenth century to the Petrine period
while Cracraft is more interested in starting with the Petrine
period to generate explanations for later Russian developments.

Cracraft makes a passing nod to some antecedents of Peter's taste
and policies prior to the Grand Embassy (1697-1698), but spends
considerable effort to demolish the idea that the changes that took
place in Russian art, which he uses as a barometer of cultural
Europeanization, in the early eighteenth century would have taken
place without the conscious efforts of the reforming tsar and his
cohorts, most notably Alexander Menshikov (p. 205).

However, Cracraft has made considerable effort to analyze
pre-Petrine art, paying particular attention to the artistic
heritage of Muscovy.  He considers the traditions and theories of
icon painting in Byzantium as earlier models for Russian visual
expression.  However, he finds that Russian icon painting developed
largely in isolation from Byzantine trends (p.106).  Cracraft also
examines the heritage of European art before the eighteenth century.
The works that appealed to Peter were those executed in the style of
naturalism.

Cracraft presents a particularly detailed account of the adoption of
European techniques and aesthetics by Russians.  In Cracraft's view
this process is so profound that he labels it "conversion."  Of
course, the convert of the greatest importance was Peter himself.
Cracraft argues that the Grand Embassy marks the seminal moment in
the conversion.

The innovations drawn from European art were first applied in
graphic art. Before Peter's time, Cracraft argues, graphic art could
not develop, at least in part, because Russia did not produce enough
paper.  The state maintained a monopoly on paper production during
Peter's reign;  thus, most works that were printed followed Peter's
personal preferences and aesthetic sensibilities.  Painting,
particularly portraiture, developed next, along with sculpture.

According to Cracraft, after the initial period of adoption of
innovations from Europe, the new techniques and aesthetic sense were
institutionalized through a variety of official means.  First,
foreign artists were hired to execute works in the new style and to
teach Russians.  Then, Russian artists were required to register
with one of the official government workshops before being allowed
to paint (at one point Peter recalled all "poorly painted" portraits
of himself and the empress, p. 298), and later the Academy of
Sciences and the Academy of Fine Arts (founded by Catherine II)
trained artists in the new style.  Peter and his successors
commissioned many works of various sorts of official art, including
coats of arms for both cities and families.  These works reflected
the new aesthetic sense, spread it, and provided employment for
newly trained graphic artists and painters.

Additionally, the development of a private art market played a part
in institutionalization of the innovations (p. 205).  Finally, the
institutionalization of the new technique and artistic style was
complemented by a revolution in the representation of the country
itself. Through clever projects in cartography, Peter ensured that
Russia, at least west of the Ural Mountains, was now included in
Europe.  It was at this time, in fact, that the Urals were
designated as the boundary between Europe and Asia.  Cracraft argues
that "[a] critical question of Russian national identity, and of
Europe's as a whole, was being visibly resolved"  in the new
mapmaking conventions (p. 278).

The path and extent of the diffusion of these innovations will come
as no surprise to students of Russian history.  While Peter could
influence his court, his artistic taste was not adopted throughout
the empire, or even in all of the European part of Russia.  Cracraft
suggests, in fact, that the new imagery did not diffuse far beyond
St. Petersburg.

In his concluding chapter, which is less of a conclusion than an
epilogue, Cracraft returns to the question of religious art and
brings up the entirely new one, for this study, of popular imagery.
He argues that secular art was a product of the Petrine revolution
in imagery. He describes Russian art before Petrine innovations as
almost purely religious and devotional but lacking theory (p.  106).
The cultural Europeanization of Russia is reflected in the
replacement of such art with official art (medals, portraits of the
emperor, other objects commemorating the regime's glories), academic
art (art sponsored by the Academy of Arts and Sciences and later the
Academy of Fine Arts), and popular art (_lubki_ on secular themes).

The revolution did not affect religious and devotional art in a
significant way. Instead, the conventions of pre-Petrine icon
painting came to be seen as a necessary part of the sacred in
Russian icons (pp.  300-305).  However, the theory of the sacred
nature of pre-Petrine conventions in religious imagery was not
developed or articulated until well after Peter's death.  In fact,
Cracraft notes a general lack of attention in the scholarly
literature to religious art of the eighteenth century and calls for
further research in this field.

The conclusion of this, the second volume in what the author calls
"a comprehensive study of the cultural revolution in Russian history
that is inseparably linked with the person and policies of Peter I
'the Great'," is rather frustrating. After three hundred pages of
evidence and analysis, including references to the first volume of
Cracraft's study (on Petrine architecture), the reader learns that
the importance of the Petrine revolution in visual imagery cannot be
understood until the iconology of the entire imperial period in
Russian history is developed (p. 313).  In conclusion Cracraft poses
essentially the same question he started with and calls for more
research on the problem. Of course, the call for further research is
an accepted trope in academic writing, but this formulation ends up
seeming to sell short the contribution of this work.

In placing the emphasis on the visual in a work of history (rather
than art history), Cracraft adds an important dimension to our
understanding of the changes that took place in Russia in the early
eighteenth century.  Scholars have written much about the reforms in
the Russian Orthodox Church under Petrine rule, but
bureaucratization has been the focus of this work.  Cracraft adds a
visual element to the reform that makes it even easier to understand
why believers would resist the reforms.  The _Ecclesiastical
Regulation_ called for the seizure of "miracle working"  icons from
private homes and the removal of domestic (and according to Peter,
badly painted) icons from parish churches, both of which would not
only change the look of homes and churches but Orthodox practice as
well (p. 296).

Cracraft has pulled together an immense amount of scholarship, much
of it in art history, and primary source material to support his
argument that Peter was the necessary agent of change in late
seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Russia.  The book is
wonderfully illustrated with 130 plates (thirty five of them in
color).  Almost forty pages of notes document the work, and another
eleven pages are devoted to a comprehensive bibliography of relevant
scholarly works in Russian and English (along with a few German and
French works).  Cracraft's work took him to all the major Russian
libraries, archives, and art museums (including the Russian Museum
and the Hermitage in St.  Petersburg and the Tret'iakov Gallery in
Moscow), as well as some notable U.S. collections.

Much of Cracraft's contribution can be seen in his analysis of works
of art history to answer questions of interest to social and
political historians.  He is often successful in making this leap,
but sometimes his sentences seem to be built almost entirely from
translated quotations from Russian studies (examples are too
numerous to note).  He states that he is not concerned with issues
of the quality of artworks, but he does judge the quality of Russian
work in comparison with contemporary European work, as his subjects
and sources would have done (p. 189, for example).

The book provides a comprehensive social history of art in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Cracraft has constructed
biographies of artists from scarce archival evidence. He assesses
the relative importance of various art forms by the salaries
practitioners received for their work in official workshops. In
particular, he notes the decline of icon painting and its
replacement with graphic art as the preferred recipient of imperial
funding.

At its heart this is not simply a study of visual imagery.
Cracraft's overarching project is documentation of Russia's cultural
Europeanization as a result of the policies of Peter the Great.  As
such, this is a study of the diffusion of innovations.  In his
concluding remarks Cracraft suggests that his point has been argued
rather than fully demonstrated (p. 311).  In spite of the impressive
documentation and dense narrative, this does sometimes seem to be
the case.  Cracraft's assertions could perhaps be supported by
reference to the scholarly literature on the theory of diffusion of
innovations.  Through references to this literature, Cracraft could
support some of his assumptions with theory.[2]

Certainly there are many points with which one may take issue with a
work which examines questions of such grand scope.  I would like to
raise just one. Throughout this work, Cracraft argues against
Marxist and, according to his view, excessively nationalist scholars
of the Soviet period who consistently overestimated the quality and
creativity of native Russian art in the late seventeenth century.
In creating this straw man, Cracraft appears to be relying primarily
on the interpretive framework that my professors in graduate school
trained us, basically, to ignore.

While the Soviet regime was in power, we tried to find the scholar's
contribution in the body of a work, or sometimes the body of a
paragraph, where it was assumed the scholar had made the final
interpretive decisions.  We assumed that the broader interpretations
were imposed on most works to make sure they reflected the current
Party line.  In the post-Soviet era are we now to hold scholars
responsible for such views?

Notes

[1]. Lindsey Hughes.  _Russia in the Age of Peter the Great_.  New
Haven:  Yale University Press, 1998. See my review in _Russian
Review_ (1999).

[2]. Perhaps the best place to start in reviewing this literature is
Everett M. Rogers, _Diffusion of Innovations_, third edition (New
York and London: The Free Press, 1983).

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