Abstracts
Clothing the Body Politic in Catherinian Russia: From Uniform Dresses to Regional Uniforms
Soon after the palace revolution of 1762, which brought Catherine II to power, the Danish artist Vigilius Erichsen painted the equestrian portrait of the empress in the Life Guards’ uniform. Catherine donned this uniform during the coup d’état that dethroned her husband Peter III. This paper examines several important events, ceremonies, and policies during Catherine II’s reign through the prism of dress. It argues that by regulating the social and the visual, Catherine II attempted to shape political and cultural imaginary, building on the example of the Petrine clothing policies.
The paper explores the political meanings of Catherine’s personal "investiture", which drew on the concept of the King’s two bodies—the physical body of the sovereign, and the body politic of his kingdom. The second concept gradually started to refer to the people organised politically under the King’s authority and by extension to the sovereign territory of the state. The paper shows how Catherine II extended the rhetorical and symbolic functions of dress to nobles and civil servants, shifting the emphasis from gender and national implications to those of symbolic heritage and affiliation. By focusing on the discourse of belonging, which the empress developed through her sartorially deployed coup narrative, royal ceremonies and regional policies, the article demonstrates how the complex culture of the uniform of that period became transposed into an idea of regional divisions – as part of a policy regulating the body politic.
The article consists of three parts. The first part analyses the episode of cross-dressing during the coup d’état in the context of Catherine’s legitimation narrative. It argues that the juxtaposition of Russian and Prussian uniforms in this episode endowed them with the narratives of disawovel and legitimization, and charged Catherine and Princess Dashkova’s cross-dressing with the narrative of loyalty to the legacies of Peter I and Empress Elizabeth.
The second part discusses uniform gowns which Catherine II wore as a colonel and patron of military regiments for formal and informal ceremonies with members of the regiments and on other occasions. The paper discusses the incorporation of pre-Petrine and European elements in these dresses in the context of national and transnational processes in the European culture of the late eighteenth century, and in the context of Russian political culture and the empress’s approaches to modernisation.
The third part explores how the principles of Catherine’s personal "investiture" were realised on a grand scale after Pugachev’s rebellion when the empress introduced regional uniforms for nobles, civil servants and their wives as a part of her regional reforms. This part discusses the introduction of the uniforms in the context of the revival of interest in the regions, revitalisation of local civil service and nobles’ connections with the regions, and in the context of similar clothing policies in Europe.
The paper is part of a larger research project tentatively entitled "Clothing, Society, and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia". The project examines sumptuary and appearance regulations, related practices, eighteenth-century garments, and visual and literary representations of eighteenth-century dress to explore the ways in which Russian sovereigns harnessed practical and ideological meanings of clothing and appearance to promote social and political changes and implement normative expectations.
The second aim of the project is to study the ways in which the population of Russia received and responded to these changes, and the extent to which various social groups challenged, internalized and transformed these practices. As part of the project, I look closely at the role of sartorial discourse in cultural debates around questions of identity and changing social and gender roles.
– Viktoria Ivleva, Durham University
A German version of this paper was published in: Bettina Braun, Jan Kusber, & Matthias Schnettger, eds., Weibliche Herrschaft im 18. Jahrhundert. Maria Theresia und Katharina die Grosse, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2019, pp. 375-406. An expanded version of the paper was published in: Costume: The Journal of Costume Society, vol. 52, no. 2 (2019), pp. 207-230.
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