SUMMARY:

The article by Elena Vishlenkova explores the peculiarity of the visual language of self-description in the Russian Empire and its potential for constructing Russian identity. The author contends that visual language was central to the process of constructing “Russianness” due to the following considerations: the majority of Russia’s population was illiterate, mass visual production was superior to other “languages” in terms of its communicative and semiotic potential, and due to the existence of a link between visual and verbal projects of Russianness and the subsequent concept of the “Russian people.” The author analyzes mass graphic production from the 18th century to the first quarter of the 19th century in Russia. She scrutinizes the ethnographic illustrations (“costumes”), caricatures, print making and the decoration of kitchen ware, medals, and bas-reliefs. The author contends that there were at least three visual images of Russianness: “ethnographic,” “populist,” and “Slavic.” Vishlenkova focuses on the various intentions of the authors of constructed Russianness, the practices of representation, and the emerging visual conventions of the perception of art. In terms of intentionality, she differentiates between the desire of the authorities to capture a cumulative image of the subject-population, the search for a medium for interaction between elites and the people in the situation of war, and the response to the intellectual challenge of German Romanticism. The author demonstrates the development of representations of Russianness from conventionality to naturalism and metaphoric elevation. The narrative also captures the ruptures and alternative modalities of representations that resulted from the limitations of collective art production and the lack of authenticity in the process of the development of visual language.