The image of Ekaterinoslav as an unrealized potentiality in Russian travelogues of the late 18th — 19th centuries
... image. The moment of the city’s foundation — its space of historical memory — is associated with motifs of grandeur, scale, and ambition, and linked to figures of the imperial personosphere, including Empress Catherine II, her favourite Grigory Potemkin, and Emperor Joseph II of Austria. By contrast, representations of contemporary Ekaterinoslav by 19
th
-century authors are predominantly negative, marked by motifs of smallness, unattractiveness, provinciality, decay, monotony, heat, and ...
