Episode 16: Insulting the Tsar. The Tale of Vasilii Zverev

In this episode, we examine the history of lèse-majesté (insulting the honour of the tsar, his family, and his image) in imperial Russia through the story of Vasilii Zverev, an unfortunate factory worker who took the tsar's name in vain during a heated quarrel in 1908. Tracing the history of these crimes back to the early eighteenth century, we ask what these affronts to imperial virtue tell us about the people of the empire, the state that so harshly prosecuted these crimes, and popular conceptions of monarchical government.

Sources

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E. Anisimov, Derzhava i topor. Tsarskaia vlast’, politicheskii sysk i russkoe obshchestvo v XVIII veke (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2019).

B. Kolonitskii, “Tragicheskaia erotica”: Obrazy imperatorskoi sem’i v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2010)

D. Beer, ‘“To a Dog, a Dog’s Death!”: Naïve Monarchism and Regicide in Imperial Russia, 1878-1884’, Slavic Review, vol. 80, no. 1 (2021), 112-132.

N. A. Konovalova, ‘Ob izuchenii problem oskorbleniia krest’ianami osoby gosudaria imperatora v nachale XX veka’, Vestnik Omskogo Universtiteta, no. 1 (2014), 42-47.

V. B. Bezgin, ‘Za chto i kak krest’iane branili tsaria (po materialam sledstvennykh del kontsa XIX – nachala XX veka)', Manuskript, no. 12 (74), part II (2016), 24-27.

M. N. Korneva, ‘“Oskorblenie ego velichestva derzkimi slovami” kak gosudarstvennoe prestuplenie (na materialakh Sankt-Petersburgskikh arkhivov)’, Nauchnyi Dialog, vol. 11, no. 10 (2022), 388-409.

E. N. Tarnovskii, ‘Staticheskie svedeniie ob osuzhdennykh za gosudarstvennye prestupleniia v 1905-1912 gg.’, Zhurnal Ministerstva Iustitsii, no. 10 (1915), 37-69.