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Garden of the Empire: Catherine's Appropriation of the Crimea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Andreas Schönle
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Abstract

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.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , Spring 2001 , pp. 1 - 23
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2001

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References

I would like to acknowledge the contributions of my three anonymous referees, whose comments have helped me sharpen considerably the argument developed in this paper, as well as the suggestions made by Andrei Zorin. Work on this article was supported by a Fellowship for University Teachers from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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