Parppei, Kati. Image Studies in Examining Shared Perceptions of the Past: Two Russian Cases

Parppei, Kati Mari Johanna — Academy Research Fellow, Adjunct Professor, Department of Geographical and Historical Studies, University of Eastern Finland; Life Member, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (UK), Scopus ID 36161985900, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

UDK 9(47)13; BBK 63.3(2)42

10.21638/11701/spbu19.2019.202

The article was written under the Academy Research Fellow funding granted by the Academy of Finland.

Historical image studies have been used successfully in analysing, for instance, representations of «otherness». Despite of its certain restrictions, the approach can also be used in studying phenomena that are more complex. In this article, two recent case studies, both concerning Russian historiography and the formation of national narratives, are shortly discussed in order to ponder upon the applicability of the method in examining collective perceptions of the past. The first case is about the formation of the historiographical image of the borderland monastery of Valaam. The second one examines the development of the collective ideas concerning the battle of Kulikovo (1380). It can be said that in the image formation of Valaam, the emphasis is on spatiality, religion and contested frontier, whilst in the case of Kulikovo imagery, the ideas of temporality, national significance and active, unified resistance prevail. What is common for both case studies, however, is that the formation of the imagery has been intertwined with contemporary political issues of each given time. The process has had a full support of the power structures. Also, there is strong undercurrent of National Romanticist thinking connected to both of the cases. Both of the imageries have been formed anachronistically, in hindsight. Especially in the case of Kulikovo this phenomenon has a central role: the idea of the medieval battle as a crucial turning point is a prime example of explaining history in the light of contemporary knowledge and the prevailing ideological undercurrents. In both cases it is possible to analyze and trace the formation of separate images of certain scenes, turns and figures, and on the other hand, examine them as a whole imagery.

image, historiography, nationalism, identities, myths, narratives

• Amel’kin, Andrey Olegovich; Seleznev, Yuriy Vasilyevich. Kulikovskaya bitva v svidetel’stvakh sovremen­nikov i pamyati potomkov [Battle of Kulikovo in the Testimony of the Contemporaries and the Memory of the Posterity]. Moscow: Kvadriga Publ., 2011. 414 p. (in Russian).

  Assmann, Jan. Collective Memory and Cultural Identity, in New German Critique. No. 65 (Spring–Summer 1995). Pp. 125–133.

  Azbelev, Sergey Nikolaevich. Kulikovskaya pobeda v narodnoy pamyati [Victory of Kulikovo in the Memory of the People]. St. Petersburg: Dmitriy Bulanin Publ., 2011. 312 p. (in Russian).

  Bassin, Mark. Asia, in Rzhevsky, Nicholas (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. 65–93.

  Bell, Duncan S. A. Mythscapes: memory, mythology, and national identities, in British Journal of Sociology. Vol. 54. Issue 1 (March 2003). Pp. 63–81.

  Beller, Manfred. Perception, Image, Imagology, in Beller, Manfred; Leerssen, Joep (eds). Imagology ― The cultural construction and literary representations of national characters. Amsterdam: Rodopi Publ., 2007. Pp. 3–16.

  Bobrov, Aleksandr Grigoryevich. Novgorodskie letopisi XV veka [Novgorod Chronicles of the 15th Century]. St. Petersburg: Dmitriy Bulanin Publ., 2001. 287 p. (in Russian).

  Boulding, Kenneth. The Image. New York: The University of Michigan Press, 1959. 175 p.

  Brooks, Jeffrey. When Russia Learned to Read. Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861–1917. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003. 450 p.

  Crummey, Robert O. The Formation of Muscovy 1304–1613. London: Longman History of Russia Publ., 1987. 275 p.

  Fält, Olavi K. Introduction, in Alenius, Kari; Fält, Olavi K.; Jalagin, Seija (eds). Looking at the Other. His­torical of Images in Theory and Practice. Oulu: Oulu University Press, 2007. Pp. 7–11.

  Halperin, Charles. A Tatar Interpretation of the Battle of Kulikovo Field, 1380: Rustam Nabiev, in Nationali­ties Papers. 2016. Vol. 44 (1). Pp. 4–19.

  Halperin, Charles. Text and Textology: Salmina’s dating of the Chronicle Tales about Dmitrii Donskoi, in Slavonic and East European Review. 2001. Vol. 79. No. 2. Pp. 248–263.

  Hastings, Adrian. The Construction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cam­bridge University Press, 2000. 235 p.

  Heffernan, Thomas. Sacred Biography. Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. 333 p.

  Hoppenbrouwers, Peter. Medieval peoples imagined, in Beller, Manfred; Leerssen, Joep (eds). Imagology — The cultural construction and literary representations of national characters. Amsterdam: Rodopi Publ., 2007. Pp. 45–62.

  Ingham, Norman W. On Historical Truth and Hagiographical Truth: Saint Feodosii’s Mother, in Russian History/Histoire Russe. Vol. 18. No. 2 (Summer 1991). Pp. 127–141.

  Kloss, Boris Mikhaylovich. Nikonovskiy svod i russkie letopisi XVI–XVII vekov [Nikon Chronicle and Rus­sian Chronicles of 16th and 17th centuries]. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1980. 336 p. (in Russian).

  Klyuchevskiy, Vasiliy Osipovich. Russkaya istoriya. Polniy kurs lektsiy [Russian History. The Full Course of Lectures]. Vol. I. Minsk: Kharvest Publ., 2007. 591 p.

  Kuchin, P. Kulikovskaya bitva. Biblioteka krasnoarmeytsa [The Battle of Kulikovo. The Library of the Red Army]. Moscow: Voenizdat Publ., 1939. 32 p. (in Russian).

  Lenhoff, Gail. Politics and Form in the Stepennaia Kniga, in Lenhoff, Gail; Kleimola, Ann (eds). The Book of Royal Degrees and the Genesis of Russian Historical Consciousness. Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2011. Pp. 157–174.

  Lisovoy, Nikolay Nikolaevich. Vosemnadtsatiy vek v istorii russkogo monashestva [18th Century in the History of Russian Monasticism], in Sinitsyna, Nina Vasil’evna (ed.). Monashestvo i monastyri v Rossii XI–XX veka. Istoricheskie ocherki. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 2002. Pp. 186–222. (in Russian).

  Lotman, Yuriy Mikhaylovich; Uspenskiy, Boris Andreevich. The Role of Dual Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture (Up to the Eighteenth Century), in Lotman, Yuriy Mikhaylovich; Uspenskiy, Boris Andree­vich (eds). Semiotics of Russian Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1984. Pp. 3–35.

  Lowenthal, David. Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 338 p.

  Lowenthal, David. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 489 p.

  Mäki-Petäys, Mari. On the Applicability of Image Research to the Study of Medieval Hagiographies // Kari; Fält, Olavi K.; Jalagin, Seija (eds). Looking at the Other. Historical of Images in Theory and Practice. Oulu: Oulu University Press, 2007. Pp. 89–103.

  Miller, David B. Creating Legitimacy: Ritual, Ideology, and Power in Sixteenth Century Russia, in Russian History/Histoire Russe. Vol. 21. No. 3 (Fall 1994). Pp. 289–315.

  Miller, David B. Saint Sergius of Radonezh, His Trinity Monastery, and the Formation of the Russian Iden­tity. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. 374 p.

  Nora, Pierre. Between Memory and History, in Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations. Vol. 26. Spring, 1989. Pp. 7–24.

  Okhotina-Lind, Natalya Aleksandrovna. Skazanie o Valaamskom monastyre [The Tale of the Monastery of Valaam]. St. Petersburg: Glagol Publ., 1996. 246 p. (in Russian).

  Onufriy, ierodiakon (Makhanov). Prichal molitv uyedinennykh. Valaamskiy monastyr’ i ego nebesnye pokro­viteli prepodobnye Sergiy i German [Quay for Secluded Prayers. The Monastery of Valaam and its Heavenly Patrons, Venerable Sergei and German]. St. Petersburg: «Tsarskoe Delo» Publ., 2005. 738 p. (in Russian).

  Ostrowski, Donald. Muscovy and the Mongols. Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier. Cam­bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 329 p.

  Parppei, Kati. «The Oldest One in Russia» ― The Formation of the Historiographical Image of Valaam Monastery. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2011. 299 p.

  Parppei, Kati. The Battle of Kulikovo Refought ― «The First National Feat». Leiden: Brill Academic Pub­lishers, 2017. 258 p.

  Picchio, Richard. The Impact of Ecclesiastic Culture on Old Russian Literary Techniques, in Birnbaum, Henrik; Flier, Michael S. (eds). Medieval Russian Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Pp. 247–279.

  Plokhy, Serhii. The Origins of the Slavic Nations. Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 379 p.

  Pospielovsky, Dimitry. Orthodox Church in the History of Russia. New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998. 413 p.

  Pushkarev, L. N.; Sidorova, L. P. Povesti o Kulikovskoy bitve v russkoy lubochnoy kartinke i knizhke XIX – nachala XX veka [Tales of the Battle of Kulikovo in Russian lubok images and booklets from the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century], in Robinsona, Andrey Nikolaevich (ed.). Kulikovskaya bitva v literature i iskusstve. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1980. Pp. 129–153 (in Russian).

  Ratz, David. The Study of Historical Images, in Faravid 31/2007. Pp. 189–220.

  Robinson, Andrey Nikolaevich (ed.). Kulikovskaya bitva v literature i iskusstve [Battle of Kulikovo in the Literature and Art]. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1980. 288 p. (in Russian).

  Rock, Stella. Rasputin the New — Mythologies of Sanctity in Post-Soviet Russia, in Brinks, Jan Herman; Timms, Edward; Rock, Stella (eds). Nationalist myths and modern media: Contested identities in the age of globalization. London: I. B. Tauris Publ., 2005. Pp. 257–270.

  Rostovtsev, Evgeniy Anatolyevich; Sosnitskiy, Dmitriy Aleksandrovich. «Kulikovskiy plen»: obraz Dmi­triya Donskogo v natsional’noy istoricheskoy pamyati [”The Capture of Kulikovo”: the Image of Dmitrii Donskoi in the National Historical Memory], in Quaestio Rossica. Vol. 5. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 1149–1163. (in Russian).

  Rybakov, Boris Aleksandrovich; Kuchkin, Vladimir Andreevich. Pamyatniki Kulikovskogo tsikla [Memorials of Kulikovo]. St. Petersburg: Russko-baltiyskiy informatsionnyi tsentr BLITs Publ., 1998. 412 p. (in Russian).

  Sakharov, Andrey Nikolaevich. Istoriya Rossii s drevneyshikh vremen do kontsa XVI veka. Akademicheskiy shkolniy uchebnik [History of Russia from the Ancient Times to the End of the 16th Century]. Moscow: Prosveshchenie Publ., 2013. 255 p. (in Russian).

  Salmina, Marina Alekseevna. K voprosu o vremeni i obstoyatelstvakh sozdaniya «Skazaniya o Mamaevom poboishche» [To the Question of the Dating and Circumstances of the Production of the “Tale of the Rout of Mamai”], in TODRL. Vol. 56. 2004. Pp. 251–274. (in Russian).

  Solovyev, Sergey Mikhaylovich. Istoriya Rossii s drevneyshikh vremen. Kn. II [History of Russia from the Ancient Times], in Solovyev, Sergey Mikhaylovich. Sochineniya v vosemnadtsati knigakh. Moskva: Mysl’ Publ., 1988. 765 p. (in Russian).

  Sperling, Valerie. Making the Public Patriotic: Militarism and Anti-Militarism in Russia, in Laruelle, Marlène (ed.). Russian Nationalism and National Reassertion of Russia. New York: Routledge Publ., 2009. Pp. 218–271.

  Spiridonov, Andrey Mikhaylovich; Yarovoy, Oleg Arkad’evich. Valaam: ot apostola Andreya do igumena Innokentiya [Valaam: from Apostle Andrew to Igumen Innokentii]. Moscow: Prometey Publ., 1991. 125 p. (in Russian).

  Stepennaya kniga, stepen’ XII [Book of Degrees, Degree XII], in Pokrovskiy, Nikolay Nikolaevich; Lenk­hoff, Gail (eds). Stepennaya kniga tsarskogo rodosloviya po drevneyshim spiskam. Teksty i kommentarii. Vol. II. Moscow: «Languages of Slavic cultures» Publ., 2012. 559 p. (in Russian).

  The Official Site of Valaam Monastery (URL: https://valaam.ru/heritage/ (last visited ― July 8, 2019)).

  Topolski, Jerzy. The Role of Logic and Aesthetics in Constructing Narrative Wholes in Historiography, in History and Theory. Vol. 38. Issue 2. May, 1999. Pp. 198–210.