Abstracts
Technologies of Power in Eighteenth-Century Russia: The Origins and Typology (not to mention Typography) of Printed Blank Forms
The printed blank form is among the most significant, most widely used and influential, yet most neglected, products of print culture. Blank forms in general do not have to be printed: where scribal labor is cheap, the hand-written blank can also be viable; but it was the fixity of print that enabled the blank form to thrive, to become established and embedded as the quintessential tool and emblem of bureaucratic administration. What, for many, is the activity that most pithily defines our dealings with authority? Form-filling. Nor has the influence of the printed blank become obsolete in the digital age. It is the direct and necessary precursor of almost all online transactions. Yet in surveys of print culture in Russia there is almost no identification of the blank form as an object of study or note. The history of print has been dominated by the history of books. Blank forms are (with very few exceptions) neither catalogued nor classified. Their preservation is random and sporadic. West European bibliography and bibliophily suffer from analogous lopsidedness, but in Western convention “ephemera” have at least constituted a recognized subject, with a tradition of formal and informal study ranging from collectors’ societies, through major digitalized library holdings, to more-or-less systematic textbooks and guides. The history of blank forms in Cyrillic remains virtually a blank page.
In uncharted territory one has to start by making maps. The present survey covers the early stages of blank forms in Russia, with particular focus on the proliferation of “secular” blanks in civic type during the first decade or so of their production (c. 1714-24). I suggest a provisional taxonomy of blanks, before proceeding to some remarks on their contexts, scope, limitations, subsequent development and significance. The study is based on archival research, mainly in St Petersburg, and with additional material from collections in Moscow, London, Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh.
The survey is divided into three sections. The first considers ‘precursors’: Cyrillic-type printed blanks over the second half of the seventeenth century. These are now to some extent traceable through the records of the Prikaz responsible for printing. The first such documents were ecclesiastical: certificates of ecclesiastical appointments (stavlennye gramoty), letters of absolution (razreshennye/razreshitel’nye gramoty). The earliest secular blanks were land grants (zhalovannye gramoty), which began to be produced quite regularly from 1668. However, these were highly elaborate, verbose and cumbersome. The routine use of ordinary administrative secular blanks in civic type dates from around 1714, and is the subject of the second section of the survey. It describes the following types of blank: patents (certificates attesting conferment of rank); certificates of exemption or release from military service; military travel passes; foreign travel passes; certificates of release of prisoners; peasant travel passes (pokormezhnye); and, in a supplementary note, oaths of allegiance). In addition, there is a list of further types which may be adduced from secondary evidence: permits for the use of official transport (podorozhnye); certificates of assignment to a military unit; certificates of customs clearance. The third section of the survey considers the contexts for the appearance of these secular blanks, and their significance. They tended to be closely tied to specific legislation, and should be linked to Peter’s broader promotion of print as the medium for legislation, dating from the same year (1714).
- Simon Franklin, University of Cambridge
scf1000@cam.ac.uk
Back to the contents page.
