In 1910, Europe and Russia were rocked by a sensational murder trial: three Russians stood accused of conspiring to murder one of their compatriots in Venice. Filmed and photographed, the lurid details of affairs and petty violence shocked the world. But what brought these Russians to such dire straits? And what did the trial reveal about how Europeans and Russians thought of one another?
This tale is heavily dependent on the interpretation and reconstruction of events in Louise McReynolds, Murder Most Russian: True Crime and Punishment in Late Imperial Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013).
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...
In the 1890s, the tiny village of Ashchepkovo in western Russia was struck by an epidemic of demonic possession. This episode attempts to understand...
From the 1890s, the Russian Empire saw an outburst of interest in vegetarianism, especially since it was being propounded by famous figures like the...