MONARCHY AND THE MUNDANE: PICTURE POSTCARDS AND IMAGES OF THE ROMANOVS, 1890–1917

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Abstract In mid nineteenth‐century Europe, the emerging market for new paper products facilitated, for the first time, the widespread circulation of mass‐produced depictions of royalty. This article uses picture postcards to explore this process of commodification as well as some of the implications of it. In particular, the author focuses on the depiction of members of the Romanov dynasty and examines the unwitting desacralization that accompanied their efforts to employ a new form of mass media. From objects of awe, the Romanovs were transformed into something much more mundane: an ordinary bourgeois family. Existing scholarship has looked at this shift in terms of the impact of ceremonial occasions, of pornographic images of the tsar, the tsarina and Rasputin and of such major events as Bloody Sunday or the Lena Goldfields massacre. The contribution of such ephemeral items as picture postcards has so far been overlooked. It is argued herein that the production of literally millions of such items – albeit that they were things that could be defaced or thrown in the bin – had ramifications on the popular perception of the tsar. Notes 1. Tweedy, Russia at Random, 105. 2. Wichard and Wichard, Victorian Cartes‐de‐Visite, 36. 3. For details see Heffer, Power and Place, 74–75. 4. Cockfield, White Crow, 101. 5. It is reproduced in Dimond and Taylor, Crown and Camera, 176. 6. Steinberg and Khrustalev, The Fall of the Romanovs, 148, 221. Syroboiarskii was a wounded soldier befriended by Alexandra when he was a patient at the Tsarskoe Selo infirmary. 7. Darrah, Cartes de Visite in Nineteenth Century Photography, 6. 8. Ibid., 43. 9. Hamilton and Hargreaves, The Beautiful and the Damned, 45. 10. Houston, Royalties, 56. Victoria also filled 84 photograph albums with pictures of family and friends. Her collection amounted to roughly 100,000 photographs. 11. See Williams, The Contentious Crown. 12. Schwarzenbach, 'Royal Photographs', 267–86. 13. Cannadine, 'The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual', 106. 14. Hellberg‐Hirn, 'Imperial Places and Stories', 26. 15. Berberova, The Italics are Mine, 80. 16. Denikin, The Career of a Tsarist Officer, 273. 17. Lensen, 'The Attempt on the Life of Nicholas II in Japan', 251. 18. On the ritual significance of coronations, see Cannadine, 'The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual'. 19. Baker, 'Monarchy Discredited?', 2. 20. Sablinsky, The Road to Bloody Sunday, 285. 21. Ibid., 274. 22. Here I disagree with Daniel Field who, with respect to Bloody Sunday, argued that one event in the capital could not possibly have had such a widespread effect. The point is that Bloody Sunday was part of a pattern of mishaps and violence. It was not seen as an isolated event. See Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar, 20. 23. For more on this subject, see the conclusion in Melancon, The Lena Goldfields Massacre. 24. Briggs, Victorian Things, 143, 145. 25. For a list of occasions marked by the production of a postcard, see Coysh, The Dictionary of Picture Postcards in Britain, 228. 26. The postcard can be seen in Swinglehurst, Cook's Tours, 106. 27. Richard Wortman's work mentions coins, postage stamps and newsreels, as well as commemorative volumes. See Wortman 'Publicizing the Imperial Image in 1913'. 28. For an excellent analysis of this icon, see Thyret, Between God and Tsar, 70–73. A reproduction of the icon is included on page 71. 29. Jahn, 'For Tsar and Fatherland', 136. 30. Anonymous, The Russian Diary of an Englishman, 51. 31. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 422. 32. Baker, 'The Social and Ideological Role of the Monarchy in Late Victorian Britain', 16. 33. See article by Bishop Nikon, 'Vera Khristova ne terpit dvoedushiia', 283. 34. Wortman, 'Publicizing the Imperial Image in 1913', 98. 35. Kandaouroff, Collecting Postal History, 180. 36. Schama, 'The Domestication of Majesty', 157. 37. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 336. 38. The exception to that unspoken rule was the photographs taken by Britain's Queen Alexandra (see below) that were included in special charitable albums and sold as postcards. When a touring exhibition of them was created it caused a sensation precisely because it revealed such personal details. 39. Prochno, 'Nationalism in British Eighteenth‐Century Painting', 29. 40. An example can be seen in Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution. 41. She is quoted in Miliukov, Political Memoirs, 235. 42. Huss, 'Pronatalism and the Popular Ideology of the Child in Wartime France', 334. 43. Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 14. 44. Coe and Gates, The Snapshot Photograph, 29. 45. Dimond and Taylor, Crown and Camera, 77. 46. Cannadine, History in Our Time, 27. 47. Lindenmeyr, Poverty is Not a Vice, 75. 48. On her charitable work, see Kudrina, Imperatritsa Mariia Fedorovna, 27–30. 49. See Bradley, 'Voluntary Associations'. 50. Tagrin, Mir v otkrytke, 50. For additional information about the Society, which survived into the early Soviet period, see Komitet populiarizatsii khudozhestvennykh izdaniii, Za tridtsat′ let. 51. A number of them are described in the entry 'Special Welfare Organisations in Russia', in Bartmann, Picture Postcard Encyclopedia of Russia. 52. Prochaska, Royal Bounty, 68. 53. Erickson, Alexandra, 224. 54. On the healing power of monarchs, see Bloch, The Royal Touch. 55. Kleinmichel, Memories of a Shipwrecked World, 216. 56. Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 24. 57. Kleinmichel, Memories of a Shipwrecked World, 217.