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From Russia’s Orient To Russia’s Riviera: Reimagining The Black Sea Coast/Caucasus from Romantic Literature to Early Tourist Guidebooks

Lywood, William George

Abstract Details

2009, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, History.

In the 1870s a new railroad connected the Crimea to Russia’s two capitals, opening the door for tourism on the southern periphery of the Russian empire. Until this time, it was difficult to access the Black Sea Coast, and it was primarily the wealthiest Russians who traveled there. By the 1890s, however, it was possible for a much broader segment of the Russian empire’s multi-ethnic population to access the North Caucasus and eastern coast of the Black Sea by train, opening the door for a tourist industry to blossom in the last three decades of tsarist rule.

This study examines the role of tourist guidebooks in transforming the Black Sea Coast and the Caucasus mountains in the minds of Russian readers into a premiere tourist destination within the tsarist empire. It will consider themes such as orientalism, romanticism, imagined geography, and tourism, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between these themes, tourist guidebooks, and Russian imperial expansion into the Caucasus.

In the first two thirds of the nineteenth century, correspondence from the military fronts of the Crimea and Caucasus (‘pacified’ and ‘incorporated’ into the empire gradually from 1783 to the 1860s) made Russians in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities of the empire envision the Caucasus as Russia’s own orient, a place that was exotic yet conquerable. The Caucasus, more than any other peripheral region in the tsarist empire, was the setting for poems, short stories, drama, and novels that gained widespread readership amongst Russians in the nineteenth century and today. This literature became the center of a discourse about the Caucasus that fashioned an ambiguous and tenuous relationship between Russians and Muslims in the Caucasus.

The principle argument of this study is that guidebooks changed Russian perceptions of the Black Sea Coast by removing any imperial ambiguity. In this way, guidebooks played a nationalist and imperialist role. They worked to integrate parts of the Caucasus into the Russian empire as an authentically Russian place that was no longer foreign. For tourists, the coast and mountains were indisputably part of the Russian empire, and the right to travel there was hardly questioned. Histories provided in guidebooks did not have the goal of describing cultural diversity and the possible cross-cultural encounters tourists might face along the Black Sea Coast. Quite the opposite, non-Russians were almost entirely written out of the story. Guidebooks offered histories of the region that served to make the potential tourist feel safe, and to make them feel as though, because they were staying in Russia, they were contributing to the welfare of their homeland. The Black Sea Coast may still have been exotic, but guidebooks transformed it into a space of incredible sights, leisure, and health resorts.

Nicholas Breyfogle, PhD (Advisor)
Alice Conklin, PhD (Committee Member)
David Hoffmann, PhD (Committee Member)
54 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Lywood, W. G. (2009). From Russia’s Orient To Russia’s Riviera: Reimagining The Black Sea Coast/Caucasus from Romantic Literature to Early Tourist Guidebooks [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1236622370

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Lywood, William. From Russia’s Orient To Russia’s Riviera: Reimagining The Black Sea Coast/Caucasus from Romantic Literature to Early Tourist Guidebooks. 2009. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1236622370.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Lywood, William. "From Russia’s Orient To Russia’s Riviera: Reimagining The Black Sea Coast/Caucasus from Romantic Literature to Early Tourist Guidebooks." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1236622370

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)