The image of Ekaterinoslav as an unrealized potentiality in Russian travelogues of the late 18th — 19th centuries
- DOI
- 10.5922/2225-5346-2025-4-7
- Pages
- 132—150
Abstract
The paper examines the representation of Ekaterinoslav’s urban space based on twenty-two Russian travelogues of the late 18th—19th centuries (texts by Ivan Ya. Akinfiev, Alexander S. Afanasyev, Pavel A. Bibikov, Ivan F. Vernet, Fyodor F. Vigel, Alexander F. Voeikov, Nikolai S. Vsevolozhsky, Karl I. Hablitz, Ivan M. Dolgoruky, Mikhail P. Zhdanov, Konstantin P. Zhukov, Vasily A. Zhukovsky, Iakov I. Vecherkov, Lev Z. Kuntsevich, Nikolai M. Longinov, Alexei N. Molchanov, Dmitry M. Perevoshchikov, Vasily M. Sidorov, Pavel I. Sumarokov, Gerasim T. Khokhlov, Alexander V. Khrapovitsky, and Pavel I. Shalikov). The study aims to provide an analytical description of the main spatial characteristics shaping the city’s image within a semiotic—imagological framework. The representation of Ekaterinoslav is shown to be constructed primarily through the opposition between ‘the space of a glorious past’ and ‘the space of an inglorious present’. Correspondingly, the motif of unrealized potential is a defining feature of the city’s 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 19th-century authors are predominantly negative, marked by motifs of smallness, unattractiveness, provinciality, decay, monotony, heat, and mud.