2016 11/08 Ekaterina Boltunova

EKATERINA BOLTUNOVA

"This is a strife of Slavs among themselves": Memories of the Time of Troubles and the coronation of Nicolas I in Warsaw in 1829

Ekaterina Boltunova is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Professor Boltunova was a 2008-2009 Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, NY; Visiting Lecturer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2009). Her research interests include cultural and political history of the Russian empire and the USSR; topography and semiotics of power; imperial discourse of war; historical memory; and Soviet and post-Soviet reception of the imperial space. She is the author of numerous publications including (most recently) “Reception of Imperial and Tsarist Spheres of Authority in Russia, 1990s-2010s,” Ab Imperio 2 (2016): 261-309.

Graduate student inquirer TBA

Summary

On May 12, 1829, Emperor Nicholas I, by invoking Article 45 of the Constitution which had been granted to the Kingdom of Poland by Alexander I, was crowned King of Poland in Warsaw. This happened some three years after his coronation in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin (August 22, 1826). The unique event in Warsaw, which marked the only coronation of a Russian emperor as King of Poland, has been obscured by the later tensions in Russo-Polish relations and almost erased from the official historical memory of the empire. At the same time, the coronation was a fascinating attempt to legitimize the Emperor’s power over Poland by shaping a new space of power in Warsaw – a space which, in its turn, was built around the memorials of Sigismund III, King of Poland, and his victories over Muscovy during the Time of Troubles.