“I am so tired of being a bird of passage”. Imperial Space and imperial rule in the autobiography of a Russian noblewoman

Abstract

The article focuses on the autobiographical writings of the Russian noblewoman
Varvara Dukhovskaia (born Golitsyna) (1854—1931), whose memories are analysed
as source material of a cultural history of the late Russian Empire. As the wife of
Sergei M. Dukhovskoi, a high-rank dignitary of the Tsarist regime, who — among
other offices — served as governor-general in the Amur province and in Russian
Turkestan, Dukhovskaia was part of the mobile imperial elite who got in close
contact with the cultural, geographical and political diversity of the Tsarist realm
in the last decades of the 19th century. How, the article queries, did Dukhovskaia
reflect in her memories the experience of the nomadic life, the representatives of
the autocratic regime had to lead? Where did she locate Russia and the empire’s
peripheries on her mental maps? How did she describe her own role as female
spectator and actor on the stage of Russia´s “scenarios of power”? Autobiographies,
like those of V. Dukhovskaia are of great value for the writing of “imperial
biographies”. They help analysing both self-images of the imperial elite and the
emotional dimension of imperial rule. Ego-documents texts written by women
stand out in particular, since its discoursive boundaries differ to autobiographical
texts written by men. With the help of sources of this kind, the article argues,
we can better understand the spectrum of emotions of imperial rule, shared both
by men and women, a reality of imperial history we have been knowing about so
little, because of the restraints of male autobiographical writing.