In her article about Russian encounters with the peoples of the Caucasus, Susan Layton concludes with a comment about the cultural effects of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. In particular, Layton focuses on the imagery that appeared after the war in such journals as Niva, illustrations that contained representations of Caucasian savages. “This iconography,” she argues, “gave even illiterate Russians access to the postwar mythology of national victory over Asian fiends.”^[1] Layton explains that this characterization came at the end of a decades-long Russian engagement with Asiatic cultures in the region. These encounters, which produced some memorable writings by Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Pushkin, among others, “revealed the writers’ need to define their own nationhood.” As Layton and other scholars have noted, the portrayal of foreigners as an “other” served as a means of defining one’s own culture and its perceived strengths.^[2]
Layton’s work also highlights the importance of imagery in the process of constructing identities, the subject of this article. While she mentioned the Niva illustration as a solitary visual example in her account of popular literature, the popular prints, or lubki, of the Russo-Turkish War served as an important source for illiterate and literate Russians to understand the encounter with the Turks. These prints played an important role in spreading information about the war, and in portraying this war as a “holy” one.^[3] Lubki trumpeted Russian acts of heroism, including the siege of Plevna and other Turkish fortresses. These images helped to create a new hero, General Mikhail Skobelev, who appeared in numerous images of the time and whose leadership became a regular theme in the Russian press.^[4] The “Skobelev phenomenon” began in the lubki of the Russo-Turkish War, and his presence in Russian popular culture remained vivid decades after his death. A semi-official propaganda company that produced popular images, films, and patriotic performances during the Russo-Japanese War and Great War would bear his name.
Most importantly, however, the images of 1877-1878 celebrated the Russian triumph over the Turks, and lubok publishers depicted this victory as proof of Orthodox superiority over Islam, firmly establishing the Russian faith as a source of patriotism and national identity. This article will examine the articulation of the “Holy War” and will discuss the images of the Turk as a means of exploring not only Russian national identity, but of Russian attitudes toward the “Orient.”^[5] In addition, the description of the lubki in this chapter will highlight how these images functioned in some respects like newspapers. Containing valuable information about the conflict itself, and often appearing within a week of events, the lubki of this war, while certainly containing highly subjective renditions of the war’s events, nevertheless remained the best means for a number of Russians to learn about the details of this conflict. This article will explore these issues by first focusing on the images themselves, then how Russians understood their contents. The conclusion will discuss this reception as an important source for understanding Russian national and patriotic identity during wartime.

The Holy War in Images

The prints from the Russo-Turkish War continued to build upon the popularity of this genre that had grown since 1812.^[6] During the Napoleonic invasion, the wartime lubok had established itself as the most important visual media that explained Russia’s conflicts. After the Crimean War (1853-1856), however, Russian military failure precipitated important crises that overshadowed the celebration of Russianness present in its imagery. Against Turkey in 1877, Russian publishers were able to denigrate the Turks and proclaim Russian cultural superiority alongside triumphs in the field. The images from this war contained stereotypes of the Turkish enemy present in previous lubki, but they highlighted more clearly the confrontation between Christianity and Islam deemed to be at the center of the war.
Russia’s entry into the Balkan conflict brought an immediate outpouring of popular prints. “Kishinev, the Racing Ground, 12 April 1877”, illustrates events on the day Russian declared war.^[7] This lubok contains most of the imagery that reoccurred throughout the war images, and features a large public prayer given for the departing Russian troops. An altar adorned by an Orthodox cross and around which several priests hold icons and other religious banners dominates the print. Alexander II kneels to receive a blessing at the shrine, along with his son, the tsarevich and future Alexander III. The rest of the print contains numerous Russian troops kneeling solemnly before their tsar and receiving the blessing of their Orthodox faith for the coming war. The text notes that these troops, about to embark for a long march through Turkey, kneel “in the presence of His Imperial Highness, the Emperor of Russia,” who proudly “makes way for the ceremonial march of the troops.” From the very first days of the war, then, the Russian tsar appeared in the patriotic images, alongside the notion that religion formed a prominent part in the meaning of the conflict.^[8]
A second image provides a powerful attempt at defining what the war would be about. “Russia [Rossiia] for Faith and the Slavs” appeared on April 20.^[9] The image, identified as the work of N. Kulakov, centers around a bearded Russian peasant soldier in the center, defiantly holding his rifle aloft. The soldier stands atop a small knoll, and to his left a large number of fellow soldiers march by, prominently carrying the imperial standard. A group of Slavic peasant women, dressed in traditional clothing, stand nearby and offer thanks to their “savior.” A solitary male peasant kneels before the Russian soldier and offers his thanks as well. These peasants, probably Serbs or even Russians living under Turkish occupation, thank the soldier for “rescuing them.” Underneath the small mound lie the bodies of four Turkish soldiers slain by the Russians. The image contains a powerful series of visual references to Russian identity: Slavic background, faith, the peasant soldier, and the imperial banner all help to define what Russia fought for in the war, while the Turkish soldiers and the thanks of the liberated peasants remind viewers why Russia must fight.
The text of this lubok, attributed to the nationalist and xenophobic poet Fedor Bogdanovich Miller, contains language that reappeared throughout the images of 1877-1878. Claiming that the “hour of retribution has struck for the Slavic blood,” Miller calls on “Holy Rus’ [Sviataia Rus’]” to “avenge the torture of Christians” suffering “abuses” from “the savage Muslims [svirepye musul’many].” Noting that the Turks had started war on Russian land, Miller writes that “the tsar appeared” to declare retribution against the Turks, and that “the love of the father among his children” delighted everyone gathered to hear the tsar, who called “Bless us, God” and asked for Russians to “stand up for the motherland [rodnaia strana].” Miller then called for God to “bless the Russian tsar,” to “help us to victory” for “the fatherland and for Christ.” The text refers to Russia as “Holy Rus’”, a term that referred to the first Russian polity and one that occurred countless times in the images of the Russo-Turkish War.
Other examples from the first full month of the conflict redefined the concepts of Russian heroism and Turkish cowardice that had also appeared in images from the Crimean War. “The Passage of the Russian Army Across the Danube” depicts impressive-looking Russian artillery, infantry, and cavalry marching across a makeshift wooden bridge or aboard boats ferrying across the famous river.^[10] Accompanied by the same text by Fedor Miller that appeared in “Russia for Faith and the Slavs”, this image became the source of other lubki also advertising the heroism of the Danube crossing (see Figure 1).^[11]
The summer months of 1877 brought a variety of popular images that furthered the notion that the ongoing war was a Holy War against the Islamic Turks. “God Bless the Tsar” depicts Alexander II’s appearance in a small town across the Danube. A shell explodes in the center, narrowly missing the tsar, whose horse rears back from the blast. Alexander is surrounded by Russian generals and troops that he is reviewing as the shell explodes. The text notes that the incident occurred when the tsar, after crossing the Danube, reviewed Russian forces at the village of Sistov. An unexploded shell “blew up near the tsar, who asked calmly, ‘Is anyone injured?’” When everyone answered negatively, the tsar “crossed himself twice,” then blessed his troops, who received him “with the usual enthusiasm and rapture.”^[12] The print attributes Alexander’s narrow escape from death to the fact that God was on his side, a point further reinforced by the action behind the emperor, where Russian shells rain down on the spires of a Turkish town.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/lubki1.jpg>

Figure 1. “The Russian Army Crosses the Danube on June 10, 1877.”^[13]

As the war moved into the late summer months, the war lubki glorified continued Russian victories and acts of heroism, and reveled in the demonstration of Russian military prowess. Near the end of August, the first image appeared in Russia that depicted the newest target of the Russian army, the fortress of Plevna. Simply entitled “A Battle Near Plevna,” the subject of this lubok was the fierce 19 August engagement between Russian and Turkish troops.^[14] Its features are typical of the battle lubki of the war: Russian forces impressively organized and urged on by stoic commanders and comrades proudly carrying the Russian banner face off against the less-organized Turkish troops easily identified by their fezzes. Several Turkish troops lay dead or wounded in the foreground, their bodies resting in the uncomfortable poses of a painful death. One Russian soldier lies wounded nearby, clutching his heart with his left hand and holding his rifle in his right. His face is turned toward two comrades behind him, beseeching them to carry on.^[15] The defining moment of the war began with this first engagement near the fortress of Plevna, which appeared in the background of the image.
The focus of the war images changed somewhat in September 1877, as the Russian army laid siege to Plevna and suffered through numerous hardships and casualties. In a style similar to the Sevastopol imagery from the Crimean War, lubok publishers began to focus on acts of heroism by Russian troops, began to lionize Mikhail Skobelev, and stressed the faith of the Russian troops and their tsar by contrasting them with the Turkish enemy. From July until late November 1877, the two sides fought a prolonged and bloody siege at the Turkish fort located halfway between Bucharest and Sofia. In the words of the leading military historian of the war, this event “set the stage for an epic confrontation at Plevna between Russian and Turk for Balkan hegemony.”^[16] After numerous attempts at taking the fortress, and over the course of three separate strategies at gaining control of Plevna, the Russians, guided by the ideas of a Sevastopol veteran, General E. I. Totleben, settled on a policy of starving the enemy into submission.^[17] Despite massive losses, this approach proved victorious in late November, when Oman Pasha surrendered the fort to the Russian command.
The ferocity of the siege, combined with the possibility of military failure reminiscent of Sevastopol in the Crimean War, resulted in a wide range of images that depicted the bravery of the Russian troops and a series of prints that refocused attention on the goals of the war. The lubok “A View of Constantinople from the Bosphorus”, depicts the Turkish capital as seen from the port that surrounds it. The spires of Turkish mosques dominate the skyline of the city, while its strategic importance as a port is easily understood from the angle of the print. The text provides a brief history of the city from a Russian perspective, noting that the city marks “the border between Europe and Asia,” and was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who intended to “move his Christian empire there 700 years after the birth of Christ.” In order to display his intention to build “a second Rome,” Constantine erected “sturdy and beautiful walls, great buildings, and soon a young capital was able to rival” the old one. As the text states, this beautiful capital fell to the Turks in 1453, “and the splendid Christian buildings were converted into Muslim ones [magometanskie]: such as the famous Cathedral of St. Sophia, which was transformed into a mosque.”^[18]
Other lubki published at the height of the Plevna campaign depicted the Turks as savage enemies, capable of committing incredible acts of brutality. “The Russian Generals” features several leaders, including Mikhail Skobelev, all on horseback surrounded by their troops.^[19] Illustrated by P. Shcheglov, this print focuses on the decapitated corpses in the center, alleged victims of the Turks. The Russian leaders and their troops stare solemnly at the bodies of their countrymen, reminding them (and the viewer) of the barbarous nature of the enemy. The text notes that “the seething battle was not long lost and the Turks ran,” massacring Russian prisoners in the process of fleeing back toward Plevna. As this and similar images claimed, the Turks’ savagery and brutality toward Russian soldiers and civilians necessitated the continued war and the capture of Plevna.^[20]
The siege also furthered the growing stature of Mikhail Skobelev, who began to appear in a number of popular prints in the late fall of 1877. The son of Dmitrii Skobelev, another prominent Russian general,^[21] Mikhail Skobelev inspired an array of patriotic images devoted to his exploits at Plevna.^[22] In the lubok “The Valiant and Heroic Victory of General Skobelev in Battle Near Plevna,” Russian and Turkish troops engage in close hand-to-hand fighting in a trench.^[23] Skobelev stands with one arm on his sword and a second pointing forward, unmoved by the shells exploding around him and inspiring his troops forward. Underneath the Russian general rests his dead horse, killed in the midst of the battle. Unaffected, Skobelev continues onward, and his troops respond around him. The print, drawn by N. Astashev, includes a text that claims that Skobelev inspired both his troops and the Turks, who “already know well of the white general.”
Skobelev’s name and image appeared in numerous other popular prints of the time, including several that featured only his portrait. One of these lubki, entitled “His Highness General-Lieutenant Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev” depicts the general, bedecked with medals and with a calm, determined look on his mustached face. The text lauds Skobelev as “one of our bravest Generals in our contemporary army, who particularly has distinguished himself in the capture of Lovech and near Plevna.” Glushkov further writes that “the war has quickly advanced the name of one of our friendliest and most talented generals, Mikhail Skobelev, whose name is awesome,” while claiming that Russian soldiers say “where Skobelev is there is victory [gde Skobelev tam pobeda].” Furthermore, “the Turks are afraid of the White General, who inspires superstitious terror in them.”^[24] In both the language of the text and the demeanor of the General in the print, Skobelev is portrayed as quintessentially Russian, a leader who embodies Russian manliness and bravery, known as the “White general” because he always rode a white horse, and who simultaneously provokes suspicion and fear within the Turkish enemy.
By the end of the fall, the siege of Plevna began to take its toll on the Turks, and Russian troops made further gains, eventually culminating in the fall of the Turkish fort in late December 1877. The increasingly imperious tone adopted in Russian accounts of the war after this victory appears most clearly in a Sharapov lubok from October 26. Entitled “For Me, Lads!” the print pokes fun at the cowardice of the Turks, and also hints at their savage nature.^[25] A plump Mukhtar Pasha with both his hands thrown up in the air flees at the head of his army. To his left two advisors run in panic, one of them attempting to shred incriminating documents along the way. A third falls to the ground, unable to keep up with the pace of the retreat, his fear etched on his face. Behind the Pasha run “his lads,” the Turkish army, consternation clearly apparent on their faces too. Although they carry the Turkish flag, the soldiers, in their hurry to flee from the Russian troops visible behind them, trample on two of their comrades, while a third Turkish soldier falls at the front of the column. The text claims that “after the pogrom at Avliar on 3 October [alleged atrocities committed by the Turks on Russians], the valiant hero Mukhtar Pasha, lightly clad and without his Russian spoils . . . galloped away from Kars to Erzerum,” followed by “four battalions of Turks.” Having lost Kars, the Pasha allegedly inflicted death on Russian civilians, then fled to the fortress of Erzerum before facing the Russian troops again.^[26]
The impending Russian victory not only prompted publishers to lambast the Turkish leadership, it also produced the reappearance of Alexander II in the wartime images. “The Visit of the Sovereign Emperor to the Hospital in Gorni Studen” depicts the tsar’s concern with his soldiers.^[27] This brightly-colored lubok presents the interior of a field hospital, complete with thirteen beds, wounded Russian soldiers, and several Red Cross nurses. Alexander II stands at the nearest bed on the right side, flanked by his staff and two nurses. A Russian soldier in the bed sits upright and is presented with a small gift from the tsar. Other soldiers look onward or receive treatment from the nurses. The text states that the tsar “appeared in the field hospital on August 21 with entire masses of gifts for the wounded,” and personally “made his way around the chamber several times and gave every wounded soldier a present,” thanking them for their service.
With the war apparently won by December, the popular prints began to re-emphasize the role that Alexander II had played in the victory. In these prints, however, Alexander II not only appears as the inspiration behind Russian bravery in the field, but also as a fellow soldier and concerned father-figure with the welfare of his troops. Alexander did in fact visit many hospitals during this time of the war, where Prince Vladimir Sollugub recounted that he approached each soldier “not as a person who was insignificant before him but as a comrade in heroism, as a confrere in painful service.” These visits, Sollugub wrote, transformed the injured: “sufferings were forgotten. Faces beamed with happiness, tenderness, and gratitude.”^[28] Both V. A. Cherkasskii, the chief of the Russian Red Cross, and S. P. Botkin, Alexander’s personal physician, also remembered the positive effects of Alexander’s hospital visits in 1877.^[29]
With Plevna in Russian hands, lubok publishers began in December 1877 to ridicule the enemy once more. A Russian peasant triumphantly celebrates his victory over Turkey in “One, Two, Three!” (Figure 2). The lubok is dominated by a larger-than-life peasant, again reinforcing images from earlier wars that defined Russian identity in terms of the size of the country.^[30] The peasant is hopping over the Danube River, his hands in fists as he easily performs the feat. Behind the soldier are the smoking ruins of three fortresses, (the “one, two, three” of the title) that the Russian has conquered. Labeled, from left to right, “Plevna,” “Kars,” and “Ardahan,”^[31] after three major victories against the Turks, the peasant strides toward three more cities in the distance, also a reference to the title. These three towns are marked “Sofia,” “Adrianople,” and “Constantinople.” To the left of the giant peasant, just below the next three targets of the Russian, a small Turk points out the onrushing conqueror in fear to a Turkish woman, warning her of the juggernaut. Abramov’s text celebrates the Russian victories of 1877 as a manifestation of the Russian national spirit, and assumes a light tone to convey a sense of the ease with which Russia thoroughly defeated Turkey. Adopting the language of a folk tale, the text recounts how the “Russian man snatched everything from the Turk.” The peasant “leapt with one leg, and jumped over the Danube, strode with the second and crossed.” The Russian then “flapped his arm,” causing “Kars to shake” while another wave of his arm sent “Ardahan crumbling.” Taking another step, the Russian “took Plevna captive” and now strode ahead toward his three next targets, asking the Turks “well now, how are you getting on?” and pausing to tell the woman “I don’t mean to bother you.”^[32]
This triumphal tone continued in images that exalted the advancing Russian army in 1878. After the Russian forces entered Sofia and then Adrianople, the path to Constantinople lay open. Turkish diplomats began to press for negotiations in January 1878, as the Russian army slowly advanced toward the capital. The Russians halted at the village of San Stefano, also located on the Aegean Sea and a mere fifteen kilometers from Constantinople.^[33] “A Solemn Prayer Upon Hearing of the Concluding Peace in San Stefano (Near Constantinople)” provides a final testament to the religious nature of the war.^[34] A large contingent of Russian soldiers, including such luminaries as Skobelev and Gurko, kneel in prayer to celebrate their victories and conquest of the Turks. Leading the service are four Orthodox priests, who bow in front of a large Orthodox cross and two icons. Resembling the lubok that featured a prayer service in Kishniev on the day the war began, this print provides an excellent bookend to the end of the war.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/lubki2.jpg>
Figure 2. “ One, Two, Three!”^[35]

With victory won and harsh terms imposed upon the Turks, lubok publishers in March and April began to produce popular images that reflected on the meanings of the war. “Skobelev’s Pedigree” featured an arresting portrait of the Russian hero on horseback, surrounded by pictures of a youthful Skobelev and his father. Further images recounting Skobelev’s heroic acts during the war, particularly at Plevna, reaffirmed the position of the White General as the preeminent hero of the campaign, and furthered the construction of the “Skobelev phenomenon” that would follow the war. The Russian general became the most popular and well-known figure in the country in the years after the war, and his further successes in the conquest of Central Asia would be celebrated in newspapers and popular prints. The death of Skobelev in 1882 at the age of thirty nine only added to his legend, and the crowds that thronged his funeral procession were composed primarily of people of the lower classes who had embraced the modest origins of the general.^[36] The Russian government commissioned an official collection of his orders in 1882, and the first call for a statue to celebrate the heroism of Skobelev was heard in the same year. By the time the project was finished in 1912, dozens of pamphlets, lubki, biographies, reminiscences, and fictionalized accounts of Skobelev had appeared, all part of the cult of Skobelev begun in the images during the war.
Other prints praised the Russian spirit that had brought victory against the enemy, a spirit embodied in the common Russian soldier. The Sharapov lubok “The Soldier’s Song Upon the Capture of Plevna” reminded Russians of the major battle of the war and the Russian national character that had triumphed at Plevna.^[37] A large number of peasant soldiers sing and dance in front of their field tents in the print. Four soldiers engage in typical Russian activities before a table: one stands on a bench, playing an accordion, while a second soldier claps his hands and sings a folk song. A third soldier dances a Russian dance, while a fourth seated at the table tends to the large samovar brewing tea. The soldiers gathered around dance, throw their hands in the air, or engage in conversation, while the text notes that the “brave Russians enjoyed themselves” at the expense of “Mohammed [magomet]” and the defeated enemy.^[38]
The prints of 1878 attempted to laud the Russian tsar’s role in bringing about the victory. The startling print entitled “Two Unforgettable Victories of Emperor Alexander II” contains separate panels that celebrate the greatest achievements of the tsar’s reign. The first depicts the tsar standing on snowy ground in the middle of a peasant village with two huts and a wooden church. Surrounding the tsar are grateful Russian peasants, some of them kneeling before Alexander II. The text at the bottom notes that this image depicts “the freeing of twenty-three million peasants from the bonds of servitude,” a reference to Alexander II’s freeing of the Russian serfs in 1861. The second panel contains the tsar on a white horse riding at the head of Russian troops, greeted by foot soldiers waving the imperial flag in his right. On the left of the tsar, several Serbian peasants kneel in joy before their Russian hero, and the text claims that the second victory of Alexander II was “the freeing of the Slavs from the Turkish Yoke.” As the image makes clear, both of these “victories” occurred on 19 February, seventeen years apart.^[39]
Two final lubki best sum up the tone of the images from 1877 and 1878. The first, a Strel’tsov image approved in March, is entitled “In Memory of Russia’s War with Turkey.” The print includes a number of Russian national symbols. In the center, a Cossack soldier stands proudly, holding a flag of victory adorned with an Orthodox cross. The Cossack stands in the middle of the Kremlin, and behind him loom the Cathedrals of Moscow, all physical manifestations of Russian identity. Beneath Ivan the Great’s bell tower one can glimpse the Tsar Bell. In the most striking part of the image, the Cossack is standing on a Turkish flag adorned with the Muslim half-moon, a clear visual reinforcement of this war as a Holy War with the superior Russian side emerging victorious. The text quotes a poem from Evgenii Gorbushin:

Glory to the realm of the Russians
Glory to the tsar-father
Glory to the tsar’s home
Glory to the ancient Kremlin

[Слава царству русскому
Слава батюшке царю
Слава дому царскому
Слава древнему Кремлю].^[40]

The second print also appeared around the same time, and was entitled “Hurrah to Our Glory!”^[41] The print contains portraits of all the heroes of the war, on horseback behind Alexander II. Radetskii, Skobelev, and Gurko, the victorious generals of the conflict, ride before a large number of banners in the back of the lubok. The Russian tsar, however, dominates the print, magnificent upon a white horse. Beneath the hooves of Alexander’s horse is a crushed Turkish half-moon, trampled by the tsar. To the left of the tsar are a broken set of chains, symbolizing the breaking of Slavic slavery under the Turks. The text lauds the tsar as the architect of this great victory, stating “praise be to our mighty tsar! From all the humble Russians–you set in motion our awesome troops that fought for the oppressed Christians.” Calling the tsar’s leadership “powerful” and “accomplished,” the lubok claims that on “liberating the Christians,” Alexander II “has brought to its knees the arrogant moon [slomil roga lune nadmennoi].”
These two prints illustrate many of the dominant themes present at the time of the war against Turkey, a conflict that lubok publishers depicted as a Holy War against the Muslim enemy. The symbols of Russian identity present in the war lubki since 1812 found redefinition in 1877-1878: the double-headed eagle, the Russian peasant, the Cossack, visual reminders of a Russian spirit, the Orthodox church, and Russian heroism. Alexander II, the tsar of Russia, appeared as the architect of victory in this Holy War, marking the first time since the Patriotic War that the tsar featured so prominently in the patriotic images.
Richard Wortman has provocatively argued, however, that Alexander’s presence at the front, presented not only in images but also newspapers, only magnified his inability to direct the war and made his decision an empty gesture compared to the sufferings of soldiers around him. By contrast, Skobelev struck a glamorous figure, forcing the tsar to contend with a new type of hero who demonstrated more courage.^[42] In other words, the use of the tsar’s image in the wartime lubok may have been detrimental to his place in Russian patriotic culture. As Wortman has demonstrated, the tsar of Russia was supposed to serve as the embodiment of the state, the ruler of the empire, and a source of popular devotion. By using his image in a manner that suggested a different, more mundane role, wartime lubki portrayed Alexander without the mythic aura vital to his scenario of power. The tsar’s image inadvertently opened up contesting visions of the Russian nation, even in the images from a successful war. Whereas Alexander I had appeared in the popular prints from 1813 and 1814 as a divine emperor who had directed the victory over Napoleon, Alexander II looked far less impressive, and certainly less elevated, in the prints from the 1877 war.^[43] In its role as propaganda, the wartime images may have spread more than just information about the war and its heroes; they also opened up different windows through which one could view patriotic and national identities.^[44]

The War in the Countryside and at the Front, 1877-1878

The prints discussed above enjoyed a wide distribution in Russia. Sold in city markets such as the Nikolskii in Moscow, at fairs throughout the country, and by wandering peddlers (ofeni) employed by the publishers, the lubki of the war spread the themes of the conflict extensively. Ivan Sytin, whose name became synonymous with the lubok trade, got his start during the war and acknowledged the fortuitous circumstances that paved the road to his later success. Embarking on a venture such as lubok publishing that in 1877 featured products from many prominent publishers, he admitted “I hired the best graphic artists and first class printers, did not bargain with them over wages, but demanded high quality work; finally, I followed the market and with the greatest effort studied people’s preferences.”^[45] His success in carving out a niche for himself emboldened Sytin, who embarked on a series of commercial ventures after 1878. In addition to his lubok pictures, Sytin also printed pamphlets, and with his prints “sold in the millions of copies.”^[46] By 1882, Sytin had opened his first retail outlet near Petr Sharapov’s store at Illinskii Gate, and in 1883 he formally founded Sytin and Co. The career of the man who came to be known as the undisputed king of the lubok had indeed begun.
Peasants, townspeople, soldiers, and even aristocrats encountered the images, and reflected on their meanings. The war images of the time proved particularly popular in the Russian countryside. The most prominent Russian historian to study the reception of the war among the Russian peasantry, A. V. Buganov, has argued that the Russo-Turkish War helped to create a feeling of national identity and national consciousness among the Russian peasantry.^[47] These lubki, however did not just appeal to the peasantry. The future tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, then a young boy, enjoyed receiving the patriotic images as gifts and followed the war closely through them. Finally, soldiers who fought in the war at the front frequently bought lubki and commented in later memoirs about how these prints inspired them to fight.
The most revealing window into the peasantry’s response to the war comes through the letters of Aleksandr Nikolaevich Engelgardt.^[48] Engelgardt was a member of the Russian landed nobility and a chemist who had been sentenced to internal exile after a student uprising. With few other choices available, he decided to return to the estate on which he had grown up: Batishchevo, in the Dorogobuzhskii District of Smolensk Province.^[49] Once he settled at his estate, Engelgardt became an important eyewitness of the state of the Russian countryside in the post-emancipation village. He began to write a series of letters, published in Notes of the Fatherland, about his observations of the peasant’s world. His sixth letter, however, gave Engelgardt’s impressions of the impact of the Russo-Turkish War on the Russian countryside.^[50] Above all, Engelgardt was struck by the changes apparent in his district during the war, writing, “seven years ago, that is the way it was: we followed our usual routine, we did what was required, and nothing else mattered to us. But now, even in our backwoods, a different current of air has begun to come through and gradually budge us.” Engelgardt observed that the “peddler Mikhaila,” who usually sold scarves and colorful pictures on the estate, “suddenly is offering scarves with pictures of ‘the leaders and heroes of the Serbian uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina who fought for the Christian faith and the liberation of the fatherland from the barbarians.’” The former chemist noted, “well, how could you not buy one!”^[51]
In addition to the colorful scarves sold by peddlers, Engelgardt noticed that gentry women, townsmen, and other residents of the district began to wear patriotic colors or trade in patriotic goods soon after the first images appeared in the countryside. The whole district, according to Engelgardt, became acutely interested in the events of the war. At one point, the wife of Engelgardt’s steward burst into his study and announced “We’ve taken Plevna!”, obviously joyous at the news. When Engelgardt inquired about how she knew of the taking of Plevna, he observed the following:

The peddler Mikhaila brought war pictures: “The Marvelous Dinner of General Skobelev under Unfriendly Fire,” “and “The Storming of Kars,” “The Taking of Plevna.” Mikhaila knows all the pictures in great detail, and just as he previously explained the merits of his cottons and scarves, so he now describes his pictures.
“Here you have,” he explains to the babas and day laborers who have gathered around him in the dining room, “here you have Skobelev, the general, he took Plevna. Here’s the same Skobelev standing and pointing to the soldiers with his finger so that they’ll run faster to take the gates to Plevna. Here, you see, are the gates, here are our soldiers running. Here they’re taking the Osman pasha by their hands –look how he’s hunched over! Here our soldiers are taking Kars; do you see how our soldier has seized the Turkish flag?” Mikhaila points to a soldier who has erected a two-headed eagled flag on the walls of the fortress.
“That is the Russian flag, not the Turkish one,” I remark.
“No, it’s the Turkish flag. You see, there’s an eagle drawn on it, and there’d be a cross on the Russian one.”
“Here you have Skobelev dining . . .^[52]

Engelgardt’s account is a wonderful account into how the Russian peasantry viewed the war lubki, as well as the role these images played in inspiring the countryside to follow the events of the conflict. Engelgardt clearly expressed doubt at the ability of the peasants to understand the war completely, and later recounted that the peasants believed in rumors about the conflict inspired in part from the images.^[53] He muses “knowing how ignorant the peasants are, knowing that they do not possess even the most elementary geographic, historical, and political knowledge . . . it is true that you cannot imagine that these people could have any kind of comprehension of current political events.” For Engelgardt, “it seems unlikely that one would be interested in something one does not know, that one could sympathize with the war, understand its significance, when one does not know what Tsargrad [the Russian name for Constantinople] is.”^[54] To this member of the gentry class, the fact that the Russian peasantry did not know the historical background of the war or its aims excluded them from grasping the true significance of the conflict.
Yet one could look at the information presented by Engelgardt in a less patronizing tone. Engelgardt never doubted that the peasants and villagers in his district expressed a great deal of interest in the war, and continued to follow events throughout. The fact that Mikhaila believed that a Russian flag should have a cross on it indicates that the peddler conceived of himself as Russian and that this identity revolved around the Orthodox religion, a point pressed in the war imagery of the time. His lack of knowledge about the double-headed eagle suggests that in his case, this symbol of Russian identity made less sense than the religious imagery also present in the lubki of the war. Far more instructive for the historian is Mikhaila’s ability to view himself (and his audience) as Russian, with a sense of patriotism and a clear ability to view the Turks as non-Orthodox (and thus non-Russian). Mikhaila’s tales of Skobelev’s heroism had an effect on Engelgardt’s peasants too, for they later asked him to join them in a toast to the White General.^[55] The fact that the peasants around Batishchevo displayed a keen interest in the war and its events, eagerly gathered in the local tavern to discuss their views, and bought the pictures of Mikhaila indicate that they grasped the basic patriotic views depicted in the popular prints, however differently than Engelgardt.
This view of the Russian peasants’ ability to see themselves as belonging to a Russian nation echoes the important and ultimately convincing argument made by A. V. Buganov. Buganov has researched the attitudes of the peasantry to the war of 1877-1878 in more depth than any other historian,^[56] and in a larger monograph on peasant national identity in 19th Century Russia, argues that the experience of the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 fostered a sense of national consciousness among the Russian peasantry.^[57]
Buganov studied the records of ethnographers in the nineteenth century who had examined the attitudes of Russian peasants toward the war both during the conflict and in the years afterward. Through an examination of questions asked to peasants in 23 provinces in central Russia from 1876 through 1900, Buganov concludes that Russian peasants understood the war in patriotic terms and had preserved a particular memory of the war and their role in it that formed a sense of “national consciousness.” In the midst of the war, several ethnographers noted that the peasants remained extremely interested in the news of the conflict, and received their information, Buganov shows, through newspapers read aloud to them and from letters written to them by relatives at the front.^[58] In addition to these sources, peasants also received news from the itinerant book and lubki peddlers like Mikhaila who traveled throughout Russia.^[59]
Above all, Buganov concludes that Russian peasants conceived of the war as “a struggle for the Christian faith.”^[60] The concept of the war as a struggle against “infidels” or “un-Christians,” Buganov argues, became the defining concept of the war as its participants remembered it. Buganov recounts the observances of ethnographers who recorded the popular reception with which Russian peasants accepted the “heroes of 1877-1878,” particularly Skobelev and Gurko.^[61] By embracing the exploits of these generals, Russian peasants helped to create a memory of their own roles in the battles of Plevna, Kars, and elsewhere.
Engelgardt’s account of the popular images in his region, placed alongside the evidence presented by Buganov, suggests that the war lubok fulfilled an important function as a source of information about the war. The religious nature of the war presented in the war lubki helped to fuel the memory of the war among the peasants as a struggle against the infidels observed by the ethnographers Buganov studied. Given what we already know about the presence of lubki throughout Russia, it is not a stretch of the imagination, in light of Engelgardt’s letter, to suggest that these images of war helped to spread attitudes toward the conflict that peasants retained afterwards.
The news of the war presented in the popular images of the time did not just attract Russian peasants. A second, however brief, glimpse into the reception of the war lubki of 1877-1878 offers another tantalizing account of the popularity of these images in Russian culture. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, Konstantin Pobedonostsev served as the imperial tutor to the son of the tsarevich. His charge, Nicholas, later ascended the Russian throne as Nicholas II. Just ten years old at the start of the war, Nicholas displayed his father’s feeling of “national pride and contempt for other nationalities” during the war and afterwards.^[62] In a letter written to Nicholas’s father (the future Alexander III) dated 12 January 1878, Pobedonostsev suggested that Nicholas had begun to form opinions about other nationalities through his excitement for receiving patriotic lubki. Commenting about Nicholas’ education, the tutor noted that “today I saw your lovely children. I came to Nicholas Alexandrovich with the new lubok pictures about the war; he always waits for them with impatience and asks if some more are present.”^[63]
Although Nicholas’ tutor did not promise in this letter to provide him with more pictures, clearly the future tsar had come to expect Pobedonostsev to provide him with all the latest images of the war, which young Nicholas found impossible to resist. While it is certainly hopeless to assert that the future tsar of Russia formed his later chauvinistic attitudes toward other nationalities solely from the patriotic lubki of the Russo-Turkish War, Pobedonostsev’s letter offers one instance of how these images affected Nicholas during the war, a reminder that the lubok proved not just popular in the countryside, but in the cities as well.
In addition to city dwellers who bought lubki, Russian soldiers from a variety of backgrounds also purchased the popular prints at the front. Even the generals themselves acquired the prints of the war. An officer who crossed the Danube in June 1877 with M. I. Dragomirov’s troops later recalled that the first time he saw both Dragomirov and Skobelev was not on maneuvers or in battle, but when examining a lubok (kartina) that they had obtained. While examining the image, Skobelev congratulated Dragomirov for his “victory” (crossing the Danube). Dragomirov questioned Skobelev about the victory, to which the White General, referring to the lubok, stated that the victory could be detected in the face of the soldier depicted on the image. When the unnamed officer looks at the picture, he writes:
Well, already, the face that this soldier possesses: the kartina is an entire epic: the face from the forehead to the chin shines indeed, the eyes glow and are directed in time to the advancing mass of people before him: relentless, indestructible, and nothing can stop the force electrifying all the spirit within him. In his pose it is visible what drives him forward; not bullets, not bayonets, not the shots, not the ground beneath his feet, nor the shouts of the Turks, he doesn’t listen to anything, nor see anything, he goes and burns like a fire devouring dry straw in a field ...
It is not a brute who is exterminating the enemy, it is the Russian soldier who is defeating the nation’s enemy with some kind of fateful, powerful, double essence, physical and spiritual.^[64]

This officer, identified only by the first initial of his last name, “O,” then hears of the arrival of more forces across the Danube. With the Turks retreating before this display of force, the Russian writes, “the picture became understandable.”^[65]
A second Russian officer, “M. Ch.,” also found a lubok of the crossing of the Danube equally inspiring (the print would have resembled Figure 1). On 21 June, the same day that the officer above examined a print, M. Ch. acquired an image of the crossing. Gazing at the depiction of Russian troops forging ahead across the “majestic Danube” designed by “this worthy artist,” the Russian officer imagines himself showing the print to the Turks and “show[ing] them this mass of people, pedestrians, horses, hundred of guns, and ... tell[ing] them: you see–this Russian force, which is as numerous as the sand in the sea, is flowing toward you, to make you carry out its wishes! Do you know, that this which you see, it is only a fraction of what there is. Would you like to suppress this force?”^[66] After envisioning this encounter, with the Turks replying “no, we surrender to you, spare us,” the officer writes, “the picture of the crossing made such a strong impression on me [takoe sil’noe vpechatlenie proizvodila na menia kartina perepravy].”^[67]
These examples, from the peasants of Smolensk Province who buy the prints from a peddler to the soldiers at the front who are inspired by the heroism depicted in the lubki, reveal how powerful these images could be. The peasants described by Engelgardt followed the events of the war through its images, and even demonstrated signs of patriotic identity after discussing the meanings of the events. Even the future tsar of Russia kept up with the events of the war by eagerly examining the popular prints brought to him by his tutor. Finally, in the case of the soldiers who bought lubki at the front, these prints not only served as a source of information, but as a source of inspiration. In other words, these images served as “visual narratives” that made the lubok a pictorial equivalent to the newspaper.^[68] Visual accounts of Russian heroism in battle thus fulfilled a variety of roles, and during the 1877-1878 war enabled Russians to envision the action of the conflict and their place within the Russian nation.

Conclusion
At the very least, the war lubki from 1877-1878 represent a way for the historian to understand the visual culture of Russia’s wars. As an important component of Russia’s cultural world, the lubki serve as a valuable window into the ways Russian publishers and artists attempted to articulate the meanings of military conflicts. In this sense, the war lubok serves as an ideal source for understanding the “enmification” of Russia’s wars, and how Russians both created and understood not only their foes, but their own national traits.^[69]
Most importantly, however these popular pictures helped to articulate national identity and patriotism in Imperial Russia. The war lubok certainly can be viewed broadly as part of an “imagined community” of Russian nationalism, for these images helped to express aspects of the Russian nation that reached a diverse and widely distributed population, allowing a large number of Russians in the process to imagine what it meant to be a member of the entity that was the Russian Empire. Moreover, the themes of the war lubok illustrated a form of “Official Nationality” that continued to evolve over the course of the nineteenth century and went well beyond the rather narrow boundaries of the governmental policy associated with Count Sergei Uvarov and Nicholas I.^[70] The war lubok, however, also drew on ideas, themes, and myths about Russian identity that had existed for centuries.
Adrian Hastings reminds us that many ideas of nations and nationalism have deep roots, and often involve the presence of a strong ethnicity and religion.^[71] He argues that nations grow out of wars and other important events, but they do so bit by bit, so that at a given time one often cannot simply say “this is a nation or this is not.”^[72] What the images of war did represent was a redefinition of Russian patriotic and national identity, one that drew on past themes, myths and ideas about Russia while placing them in a contemporary perspective.^[73] The lubok artists who produced patriotic imagery in the war against the Turks consciously used their knowledge of European caricature and Russian folk traditions to exhort their countrymen to fight against the enemy. They articulated personal beliefs about nationalism in a genre designed to attract Russians of all classes. In this respect, the nationalism articulated in the war lubok forces us to acknowledge that nations and nationalism can trace their origins, development, and themes over a long period of time, a point stressed by Anthony D. Smith in his immense body of work.^[74]
Smith argues that nationalism involves recurrence, continuity, and reappropriation in order to develop a sense of national past, present, and future.^[75] Elements such as names, symbols, customs, territories, and rituals that help to establish common myths and historical memories play a vital role in both developing nationalism and sustaining it for centuries. When nationalists appeal to this common, shared culture, writes Smith, they often appropriate ethnic pasts and myths in order to inspire national feeling. As this argument makes clear, ethnicity plays an important role in the construction of national and patriotic identities, for ethnic communities share identifying names, a myth of common ancestry, shared historical traditions, some elements of a common culture, a link with a homeland, and a shared sense of identity.^[76]
Put in the context of the war lubok, Smith’s view of nationalism proves most enlightening. Lubok artists in 1877-1878 drew on established traditions, emblems, and myths to illustrate what “Russianness” was in the Russo-Turkish War, and they reappropriated these themes as a means of articulating Russian national identity (the stress is my own, for, as the lubki illustrate, the patriotic culture of Russia’s nineteenth century wars emphasized Russian national traits in a multi-ethnic empire).^[77] In the process, these artists and publishers helped to establish new myths and symbols of Russian identity, reinforcing the notion that nationalism is a constantly ongoing, evolving process.^[78] The war lubok formed an important part of how Russians both redefined and reconfirmed their sense of national identity. In addition, these prints illustrated the multiple ways in which Russian national identity could be conceptualized. Ideas about Slavic brotherhood, Orthodoxy, heroic troops, insidious enemies, and the presence of the tsar all found expression in the images of the war, and in some cases, as Richard Wortman has noted, led to contesting views of Russianness.
Above all, however, the images of the Russo-Turkish War defined the conflict as a Holy War, and in the process, publishers articulated Russian national identity in religious terms. The empire at war in 1877-1878, as Susan Layton alluded to, witnessed an outburst of patriotic imagery cast in religious and ethnic terms. The wartime memories lived on in the years after 1878. A pedagogical manual of 1887, for instance, contained excerpts from a Lermontov story on a Russian raid and commented that the Circassians in the tale brought about the military action because of their savagery.^[79] In his attempts to teach new converts to Orthodoxy about the faith and Russia in general, the Kazan professor Evfimii A. Malov often showed his pupils the lubki of the Russo-Turkish War, including one of the Danube crossing (Figure 1) because he believed in a strong association between Orthodoxy and Russianness.^[80] By making use the themes of Holy War, these two postwar examples illustrate how the new national mythology of victory continued to find expression in the years that followed.