Matthew Klopfenstein | Creating Respectability: The First World War and The Death of Maria Savina

19 апреля 2022 г. в рамках работы Международной лаборатории региональной истории России (современное название – Институт региональных исторических исследований) и семинара Научно-учебной группы изучения мемориальной культуры в России состоялось выступление Мэтью Клопфенштейна (Университет Южной Каролины, США) с докладом «Creating Respectability: The First World War and The Death of Maria Gavrilovna Savina». Аннотация: The death of the actress Maria Savina (1854-1915) was a major media event in late imperial Russia, attracting widespread attention in the Russian-language press throughout the empire at a time when news coverage was dominated by the events of the First World War. In this extensive posthumous coverage, the thrice-married actress, known for backstage intrigues, tabloid coverage, and a middlebrow repertoire, emerged as an elevated symbol of Russian culture and nationality. In doing so, reactions to her death revealed the evolving relationships between celebrity, middle class civil society, and public death in late imperial Russia. This presentation first examines the ways in which Savina was reimagined in the pages of the mass-circulation press as an emblem of maternal, patriotic femininity suitable to wartime visions of a unified national culture and to the values of respectability championed by the commercial classes who had long formed the core of Savina’s audience and increasingly sought to position themselves as leaders of the war effort. The presentation next analyzes how this posthumous image of Savina was reinforced and transformed into a marker of cultural status in the two-volume publication The Death of Maria Gavriilovna Savina. This elaborate publication, the work of Savina’s husband Anatolii Molchanov and other allies of the actress, drew upon earlier forms of public commemoration and Savina’s own history and techniques of image management, while bringing a distinct focus on death itself that implicitly reflected the reality of the war. By analyzing the creation and content of these volumes, and the extensive press coverage that served as their primary source, this presentation demonstrates the ways in which patriotic rhetoric and the celebrity fixation of the mass circulation press could be marshalled as resources to reimagine and assert the place of a famous female performer as a figure of cultural respectability in a time of war and growing privation. Телеграмм-канал Института Портал «Регионы России в исторической перспективе»