Garden of the Empire

Catherine's Appropriation of the Crimea

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4208017
AutoresAndreas Schönle (0000-0001-5897-0489, autor de correspondencia)
Año2001
Volumen60
Número1
Páginas1-23
Fecha de publicación2001-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSlavic Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2697641
PMID18727221
OpenAlexW2331850306
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12
Referencias citadas15

This paper investigates the ramifications of the garden trope, as Catherine the Great and Grigorii Potemkin applied it to the Crimea after Russia's annexation in 1783. Schönle argues that Catherine conceived of the province as a kind of garden and that she did so in order to bolster the identification of the Crimea with the garden of Eden and thus appeal to the paradise myth that became an intrinsic part of Russia's ideology of imperial power. The Crimean garden was meant to exemplify the benefits of her loving and protective rule, one that enables multicultural coexistence, eschews the risks of assimilationist imperial policies, and yet brings about a moral transformation of the subjugated population. In both its physical and ethnic geography, the Crimean garden claims universality in that it foregrounds an eclectic diversity of species and peoples. Catherine ascribed religious overtones to the garden trope, and she did so in opposition to a western Enlightenment definition of empire and civility

Ancient history · Art · Civility · Empire · Ideology · Literature · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Trope (literature · Byzantine Studies and History · Eurasian Exchange Networks · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Law