The Monsters of Peter the Great: The Culture of the St.

Petersburg Kunstkamera in the Eighteenth Century Anthony Anemone, College of William and Mary At the center of the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, in a large circular room, is a permanent exhibition of a representative sample of items collected by Peter the Great at the beginning of the eighteenth century for his original Kunstkamera.1 Among the curiosities on display there is a large, complete human skeleton, identified only as the remains of "the giant named Bourgeois." In another, smaller glass cabinet in the same room, a visitor can see preserved an abnormally large heart that is identified as belonging to the same Bourgeois. Old catalogs of the collection contain Latin descriptions of other noteworthy parts of Bourgeois's oversized anatomy that are preserved, but no longer displayed at the Museum.2 But who was the giant Bourgeois? A Frenchman whose main distinction was that he was several inches taller than the Tsar, who picked him out of a crowd at the carnival celebrations in Calais in the spring of 1717. Peter was particularly intrigued by the fact that the mother of the French giant was a dwarf, and he immediately invited the young man to enter his service. Not only was Bourgeois offered a handsome salary of 300 rubles,3 but Peter apparently settled a considerable sum of money on his mother in order to allay the fears of a dutiful son on abandoning his mother. His mother provided for, the young Frenchman accompanied Peter's entourage back to Russia, never to see his native France again (Baer 149-52; Staniukovich 1953, 41-42; Hughes 1998, 256-60). Back in Russia, the giant, called Bourgeois in most contemporary Russian sources, Nikolai Zhigant in others, and simply Nikolai by the Tsar, served as Peter's personal servant for seven years until his death by natural causes in 1724.4 Although one contemporary memoirist reports that Bourgeois became so obese in Russia that he was unable to perform the duties of a servant (Hughes 1998, 259), in a posthumous portrait by George Gsell, which today hangs in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Tsars giant appears stout but hardly obese.5 Bergkholts reports that in 1720 Peter allowed Bourgeois to marry his pregnant mistress, an

exceptionally tall Finnish woman, in the hope that their children would provide tall recruits for the army (1: 52-54). They did, apparently, have two children, whose height, unfortunately, has not been preserved by history. Although there is much that we dont know about the lives of Bourgeois and his Finnish bride, there was precious little about them, their life together, or their bodies that could be called private in any meaningful sense. For Bourgeois was purchased in order to be seen, to be made a public spectacle of, both during his life and after his death.6 I say purchased rather than employed because his employment contract stipulated that, after his death, Bourgeois body would become the property of the Kunstkamera. And indeed, after his death, scientists of the Kunstkamera were directed to study, preserve, and display "the most remarkable parts of Bourgeoiss body (Baer 149-52). In fact, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, Bourgeoiss stuffed body appears to have become the main attraction of the entire collection (Baer 140). But before we continue with the posthumous fate of the giant Bourgeois and the other "living exhibits" collected by Peter, we need to take a step back and describe the institution that became their home, the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera. Although it did not open its doors to the public until 1718, the conventional date for the establishment of the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera is 1714, when Peter transferred his personal collections of scientific instruments, curiosities of natural history, and books from Moscow to his Summer Palace in St. Petersburg. His rapidly growing collections would soon fill the available space in the Summer Palace, necessitating its transfer to the recently confiscated mansion of Aleksandr Kikin and, eventually, to its permanent home on Vasilevskii Island.7 By the early 1720s, the collection included more than 2,000 human embryological and anatomical specimens, almost 1500 animals, insects, and stuffed birds, two cabinets of dried plant specimens, a large quantity of shells, and some 15,000 books in Russian, Slavonic, Latin, Greek, French and German (Staniukovich 1953, 36-41). Located near the geographical and historic city center, the Kunstkamera is flanked by the central administrative, military, and commercial institutions of Peter's city: the "Twelve Colleges," the Custom house, the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Admiralty. The symbolism of locating Russia's first museum and research institution at

the center of the city speaks eloquently to the critical role reserved for culture, education, scholarship and science in Peter's new capital.8 In the eighteenth century, the west wing housed the library of the Academy of Sciences, while most of the Tsar's collections were arranged in the east wing. In the five-story rotunda that occupies the center of the building were located an anatomical theater, laboratories, and demonstration space for the Great Gottorp Globe and the other scientific instruments necessary for an eighteenth century research center and working astronomical observatory.9 It was Peters intention - and this intention became reality when the Kunstkamera became part of the newly established Russian Academy of Sciences in 1724 - that his Kunstkamera combine the functions of library, museum, anatomical theater, scientific research center, and astronomical observatory in one state-of-the-art institution.10 That Russia's first museum, built to exhibit Peter's bizarre collection of anatomical preparations, natural history objects, artificial curiosities, ethnographic rarities, and freaks of nature also housed Russia's first scientific research center suggests the general baroque tendency of comprehending and incorporating together the most disparate and even incongruous things that characterizes much of Russian culture in the Petrine period.11 If the oddities and curiosities that Peter collected symbolize his wonder and curiosity at "exotic flora, fauna, and human cultures, as well as his recognition of the existence of a New World beyond the imagination of the typical Muscovite, the telescopes, globes, medical and surgical instruments displayed and used in the Academy Kunstkamera reflect a pragmatic attempt to raise Russia to the level of the technologically advanced West.12 In order to understand the particular range of functions in the eighteenth century Kunstkamera, we need to imagine the specific cultural and political contexts of Petrine Russia. In theory, if not always in practice, the sciences included in the original Kunstkamera - anatomy, astronomy, physics - were all directly applicable to the military needs of the modernizing Russian state: medicine, esp. surgery, map making, and artillery.13 World-class collections of books, natural history, art, and curiosities, on the other hand, are related to the symbolic dimension of eighteenth century statecraft. They were intended as scenarios of power, visible

signs that Peter's court truly belonged to the modern European system of enlightened monarchies (Wortman 3-10). In his 1779 catalog of the Kunstkamera and the library of the Academy of Sciences, Johann Bakmeister stresses both the utility and the symbolism of the Imperial library: Nothing creates knowledge and leads to a blossoming of the sciences as much as the writings of wise and learned men. Their works, collected from everywhere in order to satisfy public curiosity, constitute establishments worthy of enlightened ages and great monarchs. These buildings, known as libraries, are truly the temples of the muses. From them all manner of citizens may gain knowledge according to his tastes and exertions, and little by little spread them throughout society. They are like a lit lamp, whose rays extend into the distance and dissipate the darkness of ignorance and prejudice. Has there ever been a similar institution among any barbarian nation? And, conversely, has there ever been an even slightly enlightened state that did not possess such public libraries (31)? And of the natural history collections of the Kunstkamera: Who can doubt the use, the pleasure, and even the necessity of studying nature? What joy can compete with the feeling one gets from examining an elegant Cabinet of Curiosities? What can bring us more pleasant joys? If the sciences can add to the well being of the people, and if national monuments can add to the glory of a state, then the knowledge of nature and collections of its wonders can only help. St. Petersburg can justly be proud of its large collection of natural history objects (108-9).

The central component of the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera was the anatomical and zoological collection of Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731), that Peter purchased in 1717 for 30,000 ducats.14 In addition to a rich collection of shells, Ruysch's collection of naturalia included insects, rare reptiles, mammals, birds, and fish, often preserved in bottles with decorative arrangements of coral, shells, plants or insects meant to suggest the natural habitat of the specimen. But the most significant part of Ruyschs collection were the anatomical specimens, prepared over a period of seventy years and described in the ten volumes of his Thesaurus anatomicus. These included embalmed body parts, whole fetuses and neonates preserved in a secret solution and displayed in glass jars, individual organs with their vascular systems revealed

through injected wax solutions, complete skeletons and examples of skeletal deformities, and various allegorical ensemble constructions composed entirely of organic materials. Famous throughout all of seventeenth century Europe as an embalmer and anatomical preparator, Ruysch devised techniques of displaying and preserving organic tissue that have not been surpassed to this day.15 Having arrested the natural process of bodily decay, Ruysch created grotesque and disturbing yet strangely beautiful works of anatomical art. Among his specialties was the "artistic" presentation of individual organs: the exposed brain of a decapitated child, his face perfectly preserved in a jar; the severed arm of a child, dressed up in a lace sleeve, holding an eye socket or an enlarged bladder.16 Ruysch would place embalmed babies, dressed in lace garments and adorned with flowers and beads, in tiny coffins. While some had their eyes closed, others gazed at the visitor with glass eyes.17 One of Ruysch's most unusual genres, allegorical ensembles composed of skeletons, organic stones, and other assorted anatomical materials, survive today only in written descriptions and illustrations from the catalogs of Ruysch's works.18 Skeletons of fetuses and newborns are arranged against "geological" or "botanical" landscapes composed of hardened veins and arteries, kidneystones, gallstones, bladders, brachial tubes, lung and brain tissue. In one tableau, for example, two newborn skeletons are grieving over a field of assorted and scattered bones, using various kinds of anatomical tissue as handkerchiefs. Another shows a child's skeleton at the top of a mound of various stones, playing a violin, while several other, smaller skeletons stand around, bemoaning the inevitability of death. As the leading Dutch scholar of Ruyschs anatomical art has shown, these works can be read as more or less straightforward narrative illustrations of the typical Baroque topoi of vanitas mundi and momento mori (Luyendijk-Elshout 121-25). Ornamented with traditional symbols of the brevity of life (e.g., mayflies, strings of pearls, small candles, and flowers), Ruysch's tiny skeletons become actors in a grim and grotesque morality play. One skeleton, for example, holds a string of pearls next to the text: "Why should I long for the things of this world?" Another skeleton holds a sickle under the motto "Death does not spare even innocent youth." The syphilitic skull of a prostitute kicked by the leg of a baby placed is

explained by the following text: "The reason why part of the skull is placed under the little foot need not be sought far afield, since this prostitute would have not contracted this frightful disease had she not had such a reprehensible profession . . ! Another fetal skeleton points to an embalmed womb, above, which the viewer reads: "No nobler grave could have held it." Skulls weep into "handkerchiefs" made of brain tissue, as intestines wind up and around skeletal legs and torsos. While skeletons direct the viewers attention to edifying Latin proverbs,19 Ruyschs humor comes through in small details: a skeleton of a drunken rat holding a small beer barrel in his forepaws or a pair of copulating mice balanced on a chicken egg (Luyendijk-Elshout 121-25). Although Ruysch certainly used his anatomical preparations to teach medical students and midwives in training, modern researchers agree that his motivations in displaying his collection of anatomical preparations were primarily moralistic and edifying.20 In revealing the wondrous working of the human body and endowing death with a kind of bizarre elegance and moral value,21 Ruysch has been called the consummate baroque artist of the most intimate and familiar theme of death (Purcell and Gould 30). His anatomical displays owe as much to the prevailing moralism in seventeenth century Dutch Calvinism as they do to the emerging scientific culture of early modern Europe. The Baroque worldview emphasized the vanity and brevity of life that was the result of the fall from grace: pain, suffering, and misery were preordained, human pleasures and passions pointless, and death the inevitable end of all human endeavors. But rather than hide or ignore death, Ruyschs anatomical art transcends death by turning the dead body into a work of art. Mortal remains are transformed into a symbolic representation of immortality and while viewers are reminded of the inevitability of death, they are simultaneously reassured by the possibility of life after death. In its way, Ruyschs anatomical art represents a perfect Baroque allegory of life, death, and the afterlife. But for our purposes the real issue is what happened to Ruysch's anatomical collection after it was transplanted to Russian soil? Because eighteenth century Russia had not yet assimilated many of the cultural, religious, and historical elements that inscribed Ruysch's collection in its original context, the anatomical Kunstkamera in Orthodox Russia looks very

different from its European original. Despite the existence of Baroque literary, artistic, and architectural forms in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Russian culture, an extreme Baroque phenomenon like the anatomical Kunstkamera appears incomprehensible, foreign, and even threatening in the context of traditional Russian cultural values. For example, although familiar to a select group of educated courtiers of the Petrine period through the poetry of Simeon Polotsky and other graduates of the Kiev Collegium (Shapiro 163-67), the topos of momento mori, a key to the meaning of the anatomical displays, would have been largely incomprehensible to most contemporary Russians for both linguistic and cultural reasons. More important is the fact that Orthodox Russia never accepted the practices of anatomical dissection and display that were common in early modern European society.22 While the increasingly rationalist Christian culture of Western Europe justified, and eventually even encouraged, scientific inquiry into the functioning of the human body as a way of appreciating Gods unfathomable glory,23 in Russia all versions of scientific thinking continued to be associated with potentially dangerous and even heretical challenges to theological orthodoxy. In general, the dismemberment of the human body was acceptable in Russia only as punishment for especially vicious and dangerous sinners and criminals.24 The paucity of written documents composed by Russians in the Petrine period (Okenfus 144) makes reconstructing popular Russian attitudes towards anatomical practice and display in the first decades of the eighteenth century extremely difficult. Nevertheless, with the help of anthropological research into Slavic burial rituals and practices, and folk beliefs about the body and life after death, we can obtain some idea of what real Russians might have felt in the presence of this alien and difficult art form. Even modern Russian literary works may help us recreate the mentality of traditional Orthodox Russians confronted by the anatomical collections of the Kunstkamera. Notwithstanding the belief of the monks scandalized by the stink of the corpse of Father Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov namely, that the incorruptibility of human remains is a sine qua non of sanctity Orthodox beliefs about the posthumous body are actually much more complex.25 In fact, there is a long tradition in Orthodox thought and Slavic mythology that

associates the refusal of the corpse to rot with heresy, witchcraft, sorcery, even vampirism. The folk believed that the earth would refuse to accept the bodies of suicides, murderers, victims of murder, people improperly buried, blasphemers, heretics, apostates, people who trafficked with the Devil, and many others. Their bodies would not decompose, and they would become vampires, doomed to feed on the blood of the living.26 Late seventeenth century confirmation of this comes from the Church Council of 1666-67, which advised the faithful to be very cautious in interpreting uncorrupted remains: And also dare not to honor newly found uncorrupted bodies without trustworthy verification and conciliar commands: for there are many whole and uncorrupted bodies that are not so from holiness, but who have died excommunicated by episcopal or priestly curse, or are whole and undestroyed because of their violations of divine rules and laws. And if you wish to honor someone among saints, it is proper that you investigate and verify such bodies that have been found before the great and perfect council of bishops (Bushkovitch 92). Interestingly, the suspects most likely to end up on an anatomists table are also those whom Russians would consider at greatest risk to become vampires after death. These would include: unclaimed corpses, murder and suicide victims, those born with physical abnormalities, women who die pregnant or in childbirth, drowning victims, and others who had not received a proper burial.27 Further, from the point of view of Slavic traditional beliefs, many other aspects of the typical anatomical cabinet of curiosities would be fraught with danger. For example, while it was commonly believed that one should not meet the gaze of a dead person (Oinas 435), many of Ruyschs anatomical preparations stared directly at the viewer.28 Finally, there is a curious belief among the Slavs that a dead person could return to fetch individual body parts left behind (Barber 30-58). All of this suggests that rather than seeing the Kunstkamera as an outpost of the new secular arts and sciences or as an element of the new Baroque style of St. Petersburg, Russians of the Petrine period saw it as a frightening and dangerous place, a place where the dead,

denied their rightful Christian end, might plausibly return to exact their vengeance upon the living. A place to be avoided at all costs.29 But while much of the preceding discussion has been theoretical and speculative, there is evidence that Russians of the Petrine age reacted very negatively to all aspects of anatomical art and display. Although embalming was regularly performed on court grandees and even members of the Royal family (Bruce 241-45; Weber 1: 177), we know that the more observant members of the Royal Family insisted on being buried according to the traditional Orthodox ritual, without embalming (Bruce 174). In fact, there are reports in the interrogations of the Preobrazhenskii prikaz of prisoners who saw Peters interest in embalming corpses as one of the signs that he was doing the devils work (Hughes 1998, 450). In addition, there are many anecdotes relating the revulsion and disgust of members of Peters entourage who were forced to observe and sometime participate in public dissections or autopsies (Klyuchevsky 27). Further, there is ample support of a consistently negative attitude towards dissection, autopsy and anatomical display in Russian culture of the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries. A case in point concerns a governmental review of the academic program at the University of Kazan in 1818, fully 101 years after Peters original purchase of Ruyschs anatomical collection. In his final report, the inspector advised the government to curtail dissection and close the anatomical museum of the university because, as he wrote, "it is loathsome and impious to anatomize the human body, which is made in the image of God" (Grmek 312).30 In other words, despite the influence of a Baroque paradigm in the many aspects of the culture of eighteenth century St. Petersburg (Morozov 56-66), Russian culture resisted the aesthetics of death transfigured and transcended through anatomical art. In the space that remains, I will suggest that the key to Peter's Russian Kunstkamera can be located in a conceptual shift from redeeming death through art to reforming monstrosity through the art and

sciences associated with the Kunstkamera and its step-parent, the Russian Academy of Sciences. One of the central scientific polemics of early modern European biological science concerned the mechanisms of conception, birth, and human development (Pinto-Correia, Blyakher 35-41). The two leading protagonists in this debate in the eighteenth century were the preformists and the epigeneticists. According to preformism, all of the parts of an animal or plant already existed in miniature form in the germ cell, sperm or egg, and development involved nothing more than a simple increase in size.31 The preformists assumed that, at Creation, God had placed some finite number of perfect miniature, preformed homunculi within the sperm of Adam or the ovary of Eve, and that every succeeding generation is derived from that initial miniature population.32 The epigeneticists thought, correctly, but, as it turned out, for all the wrong reasons, that the complex adult form developed gradually in the embryo. Russian scientists, scholars and literary men like Tatishchev, Kantemir, and Radishchev all took part in these discussions, most of them adhering to preformist positions (Blyakher 25-8, 45-7). Because of the difficulties in explaining birth defects, what in the eighteenth century were called monstrous births, teratological collections, that is, collections of malformed animals and humans, were of particular importance to eighteenth century anatomists and theorists interested in the problem of conception. It comes as no surprise, then, that the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera, which, thanks to Peter's purchase of the Ruysch collection, possessed one of the largest anatomical and teratological collections of all of Europe, became a center of scientific research and theoretical speculation on alternate models of conception. In fact, it was as a result of work done on the teratological collections of the Kunstkamera that Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1734-94) was finally able to demonstrate the validity of epigenesis, and make possible the birth of embryology as a modern science.33 Wolffs argument for epigenesis had two parts: the first

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part was based on a microscopic investigation of the development of the intestines of chicken embryos, the second was philosophical: God would not allow the creation of preformed monsters (Blyakher 89-104). Knowledge of the preformism/epigenesis debates of the period provides a key to Peters unusual, but hardly unique, passions for giants, dwarfs, malformed humans and animals, even his love of arranging carnivalesque weddings and funerals for his various monsters (Massie 616-19; Hughes 1998, 257-60). Of course, it is not just Peters own personal interests that we are discussing; giants, dwarfs, mental incompetents, even exotic foreigners had served as jesters and servants for centuries at European courts. Jesters, buffoons, and fools of God were a standard accessory of the Muscovite court, their antics serving to dispel the boredom and gloom of medieval court life, especially in the isolated womens quarters, as a memorist of Empress Annas court informs us: It was an ancient custom in Russia for every one in easy circumstances to keep at least one buffoon. Of course the court was well provided with them, and it is only since the regency of the princess Anna that they have been entirely done away with; for the present empress could not bear them. As for the first Peter, he had quite a passion for them, and often kept as many as a dozen, or even more (Cross 190). Although Peter grew up surrounded by dwarfs, he grew to hate these familiars of the Muscovite court. He considered them cheats and freeloaders, assumed their afflictions to be a simple dodge to avoid work, and, according to Nartov, favored exorcising them with a knout, the knouts tail being longer than the devils (Hughes 1998, 191-92). Peters objections were political as well, reflecting the fact that most of the hangers-on at the Muscovite court were allied with the traditional, religious opponents to his reforms. So he replaced them with new jesters, dwarfs, and giants who were to play specific roles in the new westernized social life at Peters court (Hughes 1999). For example, Peter traded exceptionally tall soldiers with other European monarchs interested in the spectacle of regiments of equally tall soldiers on parade.34 While Peters jesters might serve as informants and participants in carnivalesque anti-rituals of the 11

Petrine court, his dwarfs and giants would also serve the scientific project of the Academy Kunstkamera (Hughes 1998, 256-60, 424-25). The social and cultural context for Peters selective breeding of dwarfs and giants can be glimpsed in the following excerpt from the memoirs of F. C. Weber, a secretary at the English Embassy in St. Petersburg for six years during Peters reign: That month a woman dwarf was brought to bed, and added a new member to the society or species of those diminutives of mankind, whom they take particular care in Russia to propagate by marrying them together, so that there is scarcely a man of quality but keeps a man or woman dwarf for his lady (Cross 159).

While eighteenth century European monarchs did not need ulterior scientific motives to keep, or to mate, giants or dwarfs,35 Peters passion for arranging marriages between his dwarfs and giants, including the aforementioned Bourgeois and his Finnish fianc, can only be fully understood in the context of the European debates, polemics, and practices surrounding preformism and epigenesis. For example, in comparing Bourgeoiss children to their parents, Peter was, in fact, performing a typical eighteenth century experiment to test preformist and epigeneticist theories of human generation (Pinto-Correia 154-59). Peters interest in scientific and medical questions concerning human generation and development involved the Kunstkamera and its professional staff in collecting and studying a wide range of malformed humans and animals. In the first two decades of the eighteenth century, Peter issued numerous ukazy prohibiting the killing of deformed children and animals and ordering instead that provincial municipalities send such marvels to the museum in St. Petersburg. In his catalog of marvels that he wanted sent to the Kunstkamera, Peter included: "misshapen infants, extraordinary stones, human and animal bones, as well as bones of fish and birds, old inscriptions on stones, on iron or on copper, as well as old and remarkable weapons, plates and dishes and so on, especially what was extremely old and extraordinary" (Staniukovich 1953, 29). For living humans with defects, Peter was willing to pay 100 rubles, but only 15 rubles if dead, while the 12

going rate for monstrous animals was appreciably less: 15 rubles for living specimens, 5 for dead ones. The immediate effect of this decree was a sudden jump in the Kunstkamera's collection of misshapen and deformed children and animals, mostly stillborn, but some living. During this period the museum acquired, for example, a sheep with eight legs, a child with three legs, another with two heads, one covered with hair, another child with eyes beneath his nose and legs underneath his neck, several pairs of Siamese twins, Siamese pigs and cats, two-headed calves, and many others (Staniukovich 1953, 30). These specimens would be either preserved in spirits or autopsied, dissected and studied by the anatomists and doctors on the staff of the Academy of Sciences. In an ukaz of 1718, Peter directly addresses the origin of human and animal deformities. In so doing, he expressed with startling clarity the paradoxical and eclectic mixture of modern (scientific) and traditional (religious) reasoning that is characteristic of the Baroque culture of Petrine Russia: Ignoramuses think that such monsters are born from the action of the devil which is, however, impossible for there is only one creator of all creation, and that is God. And the Evil One has no power over any living creatures. For monsters are the result of internal damage, of fear and the thoughts of the mother during her pregnancy, of which fact there are many examples. For example, when the mother is frightened, hurt or injured in any way the child will be influenced (Staniukovich 1953, 29-30). Now the belief that a pregnant woman who suffered a fright, a surprise, or a nightmare, or whose thoughts wandered during the act of conception, was liable to bear an abnormal child was not merely a Russian delusion. In fact, Peter is following in the footsteps of a European tradition that has been traced back through the Renaissance and Middle Ages to Classical antiquity.36 But the truly remarkable thing about this text is how Peters combination of empirical evidence and theological reasoning to explain the origin of birth defects anticipates C. F. Wolffs proof of the validity of epigenesis by some 50 years.37 Like Wolff, Peter explains the etiology of birth defects first theologically (only God has the power to create life, and he wouldnt create

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monsters) and then empirically (the example of pregnant women who gave birth to children with defects after being injured or frightened). While hardly conclusive, such evidence does suggest that one of Peters motivations in mating his giants and dwarfs was an interest in experimental testing of the preformist model of human development. But if Peter was in the mainstream of European thought on the origin of congenital malformations, and ahead of his time in arguing for what looks very much like an epigeneticist position, he was unique in his including live exhibits or living monsters in his museum. And most contemporary visitors agreed that the most shocking element of his museum were these "live exhibits (Bergkholts 153-54). So who were the monsters of Peter the Great? In 1722, three victims of various congenital malformations lived at the Kunstkamera, where they did odd jobs and exhibited their deformations to visitors of the museum. Foma was 4 1 tall, and had something like crab's claws for hands and feet, which, however, didn't prevent him from walking, picking money up from the floor, and amusing the public in various other ways.38 After spending approximately 14 years at the Kunstkamera, Foma died in 1736 and his body was dissected. Several organs were preserved in the collection of pathological anatomy, while his body was stuffed and put on display. Iakov was a hermaphrodite who worked as a blacksmith. Upon his death in 1737, apparently of natural causes, he was autopsied and his body and organs were preserved at the Kunstkamera for further study (Protokoly 1: 379-80). Records do not preserve the exact nature of the disability of the third living exhibit, Stepan, although it is probable that he was the victim of a terrible genital deformity described below. Published proceedings and unpublished archival materials of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as memoirs by contemporaries allow us to glimpse some of the details of the lives of these unfortunates and help us to understand the complex role they played in the evolving culture of the eighteenth century St. Petersburg Kunstkamera. We know, for example, that several of the "living exhibits" were unhappy at being made a spectacle

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for strangers, and wanted nothing better than to be sent home to their families. Part of their dissatisfaction certainly derived from the abject poverty in which they lived: the archives, for example, contain several requests for payment of late wages and for winter clothing which had been promised them, but never delivered. Some of these petitions vividly describe their pathetic struggle to feed themselves and to keep warm during the long, harsh Petersburg winters. While some of them simply ran away, most remained at the Kunstkamera until they died or until the museum decided they were no longer worthy of exhibition (Shafranovskaia 1967, 20-28; Staniukovich 1953, 41-42). In 1737, shortly after the deaths of Foma and Iakov, a nine-year old boy from Tiumen in Western Siberia with deformed hands and arms, Petr Vorobev, arrived at the Kunstkamera. We know significantly more about him because his father accompanied him to Petersburg, where Academy scientists questioned him about his sons birth defect. A report of this interview, published in 1886 in a collection of documents relating to the early history of the Kunstkamera and the Academy of Sciences makes for fascinating reading. This document provides an extraordinary opportunity to observe how Russian doctors approached the question of the origin of human deformities in the first half of the eighteenth century. Much in the manner of modern practitioners, the doctors began with the Vorob'ev family medical history: we learn that his parents were in their late twenties and in good health when Peter was born. Following the birth of Peter, they had three daughters, none of whom had any physical or mental abnormalities. According to his father, the pregnancy and delivery were normal. His wife had not been frightened during the pregnancy or labor, nor had she seen any convicts during her pregnancy.39 Finally, the doctors wanted to know if there were others in the neighborhood where the Vorob'evs lived with similar defects (Materialy 3: 409-11). This episode shows a shifting emphasis in the Academic Kunstkamera's attitude towards "living monsters." Rather than an opportunity for a fascinating and horrifying museum display, Peter Vorob'ev was seen by the doctors of the Academy as an opportunity for scientific research on the origin of human deformities. Although they were ultimately unsuccessful in discovering

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the causes of his birth defects, the Academy doctors were on the right track in considering possible hereditary and environmental influences. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1730s, the curators and scientists of the Kunstkamera appear to lose interest in the deformed children who are still being sent to them by past order of the Tsar.40 But if the Academys evolving approach to monstrous births and the problems of congenital malformations represent a small step in the development of scientific thinking in Russia, it is also related to darker, less familiar themes in Russian culture of the period. The Kunstkameras fascination with the sexually monstrous suggests the need for a serious reconsideration of this aspect of Petrine culture. Foreign visitors to Peter's Kunstkamera described this spectacle of the sexually monstrous in tones composed of equal measures of horror and fascination: here, for example, is Bergkholtss description of one of the living exhibits, whom he observed during a visit to the Kikin Palace in 1721: There is a person without sex organs, but with a kind of mushroom shaped outgrowth or tumor, similar to a cow's udder with a meaty piece, about the size of a coin, in the center, from which a thick stream of urine constantly seeps. A kind of artificial bladder, into which the urine flows, has been attached to this outgrowth in order to help keep his undergarments as clean as possible. All of this is so disgusting that many people simply cannot look at this poor devil. From this you can imagine what his life must be like. On the other hand, he is kept clean and healthy, he cuts firewood and does various odd jobs around the museum. He lives, however, by himself in a separate room because of the unbearable stench from his body (153-54).

In fact, genital deformities and hermaphrodism are two types of human malformation that continued to interest the scientists of the Academic Kunstkamera long after they would routinely reject other kinds of living monsters. In 1742, for example, two pairs of fraternal hermaphrodites from Siberia were sent to the Kunstkamera. Interestingly, the scientists who had custody of them were as interested in their minds as in their bodies. The plan was for them to be taught reading and writing before being sent to a Gymnasium. But one ran away and was never heard from again, while the other three had no success with schooling. While further research is

16

necessary before we can interpret this episode with any confidence, it seems clear that this was an experimental test of the cognitive skills of sexually malformed people (Protokoly 1: 751-66; Baer 145-49). In 1746, the Academy stopped supporting living exhibits at the Kunstkamera, and the few remaining hermaphrodites were sent home. Detailed instructions, however, were sent to local doctors that in case of death, the bodies of the hermaphrodites should be immediately autopsied and all the "interesting parts" preserved and sent to the Kunstkamera (Baer 148-49). Indeed, autopsies and dissections of hermaphrodites were common occurrences in the anatomical theater of the Kunstkamera throughout the 1740s and, in fact, ignited a serious polemic between the two leading Academy specialists in anatomy concerning the difference between true hermaphrodism and simple genital deformity (Protokoly 1: 751-66). The medical establishments invention of modern notions of sex is, of course, an issue that has been intensely studied in its European context by Michel Foucault and his disciples.41 Although I know of no evidence that the Russian version of this debate resonated beyond the walls of the Academy of Sciences, further research into the investigations carried out on hermaphrodites by scientists of the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera in the eighteenth century may shed additional light on the construction of Russian sexuality in the Petrine era.42 What tentative conclusions can we draw from this episode in Russian culture of the early eighteenth century? The first has to do with the well-known Petrine fascination with the freakish and the grotesque. Traditionally, Peters love of dwarfs and giants is seen either in the context of the carnivalesque rituals and blasphemous amusements of his court (Hughes 1998, 248-97) or as evidence for the existence of a Russian Baroque (Morozov 59). The history of the Kunstkamera and its teratological collections in the first half of the eighteenth century suggests another explanation for Peters carnivalesque tastes: like many scientists of the period, Peter was interested in the pathological as a key to explaining the central medical mysteries of the time. Hence Peters interest in preformism and epigenesis, in the origin of births defects, and the mysteries of sexual malfunction can help explain his fascination with collecting and displaying so-

17

called freaks of nature. The possibility that the anatomical and teratological collections of the Kunstkamera may have played a more central role in the intersecting spheres of the cultural and the scientific in Petrine Russia than scholars have previously recognized needs to be explored further. Intended as a vehicle to transform Russia into a modern, civilized, European civilization, the Tsars Kunstkamera may actually have contributed to Russian alienation from Europe. Indeed, how could the Kunstkameras display of the monstrous, the diseased, the erotic, and the grotesque have done anything but give rise to ambiguous feelings of fear, loathing and, perhaps, guilty fascination towards the West among Orthodox Russian viewers in the Petrine period? In this sense, the Kunstkamera may be related to the persistent Russian alienation from Western art, culture, and institutions, one of the reasons why the West appears to many Russians, even today, as a frightening combination of the exotic, the erotic, the forbidden, the fascinating, and the horrifying. Finally, if Ruysch's anatomical collection betrays a typically seventeenth century baroque desire to transcend death through art, Peter's Kunstkamera may be read as a visible sign of his desire to transform the monstrous backwardness of Russian life through modern European arts and sciences. Peter's establishment of institutions like the Kunstkamera and the Academy of Sciences dedicated to collecting, studying, and, perhaps, curing Russias monstrosities can be read as a metaphor for the Petrine reforms themselves. In this sense, then, the Kunstkamera should be seen as one in a long tradition of Russian utopian institutions, intended by their founders to remake the Russian people and way of life in a foreign image. Of all of Peters manias, his obsession with collecting freaks of nature is crucial because it suggests the tensions, contradictions, and unintended consequences of his attempt to civilize Russia. More generally, the history of the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera suggests the extent to which any program of social reform is dependent upon the local cultural context. Seen from this point of view, the history of Peters Kunstkamera looks very different from the traditional tale told in Russian and Soviet sources. No longer is it a linear (and progressive) narrative of the

18

creation of an elite scientific institution and class, proof that Russia had taken her place among the leading nations of European culture and science. The new history of the Kunstkamera is important because it suggests so uncannily and powerfully the complexities, ironies, and the unintended consequences of all utopian programs of Westernization for Russia.

For a general description of the contents of this exposition, see Shafranovskaia 1995, 101-10.

The essential sources for the history of the Kunstkamera and its collections, upon which the following account is largely based, are Staniukovich 1953 and Peter the Great and Holland. For shorter summaries of the institutions history and collections in English, see Staniukovich 1970, Neverov, and Peter the Great Museum.
2 3

E.g., Testiculus magnus ex Gallo Bourgeois. Musei Imperialis 1: 180. By comparison, the Tsars librarian received a salary of 400 rubles (Staniukovich 1953,

27).
4

Apparently from a stroke. See letter from Devier to Menshikov, 11 May, 1724, Russkii

arkhiv, 3 (1865), 309-10.

5 6

For a reproduction of Gsells (1673-1740) portrait, see Peter the Great and Holland 81. Hughess suggestion that by attaching Bourgeois to his person, Peter was trying to

divert attention from the monstrous proportions of his own body seems quite plausible (369).
7

For the history of the construction of the new building for the Kunstkamera, see

Lipman and Bunin. For an illuminating and original study of the relationship between architecture and the social construction of knowledge, see Markus.
8

For a fascinating recent discussion of the role of the city in the creation of modern Russian

culture, see Kagan. 19

For a catalog of the scientific instruments in the Kunstkamera in the first half of the eigtheenth

century, see Musei Imperialis 2. For more about the astronomical observatory and the Great Gottorp Globe, see Breneva and Moiseeva 39-53 and Beliaev 168-71.
10

Nevertheless, in the context of Russian development of the period, it was probably inevitable

that much of the original plan would not be accomplished for many years. For example, numerous astronomical and other scientific instruments lay around unopened and unused in boxes for decades because they were too large or heavy to be lifted or fitted into the rather small space available for scientific instruments in the Kunstkamera. See Lipman 29-30.
11

Titunik 41. According to Morozov, the Kunstkamera is one element of the late

Baroque cultural style of Petrine Petersburg (58).

12

For a fascinating reading of the role of the Kunstkamera in the Cameralist project of

policing, disciplining, and socializing Russian bodies, spaces, and manners in the eighteenth century, see Werrett, 102-24.
13

Perhaps the best example of the disparity between the assumed utilitarian goals of the

scientific collections and their actual use concerns the anatomical collection of the Kunstkamera: e.g., the bulk of the anatomical collection focused on embryology and teratology, and was not particularly relevant for the practical needs of training military doctors and surgeons.
14

For general information on Ruyschs life and works, see Hazen: Gonzalez-Crussi 78-83;

Purcell and Gould. For more complete descriptions of his anatomical collections by professional physical anthropologists, see Ginzburg; and Radziun 1988, 1995A and 1995B. The best cultural approaches to Ruyschs anatomical art are Luyendijk-Elshout, Spilleth, and Hansen. Finally, for a skeptical and satirical look at Ruyschs obsession with death, see Leopardi.

20

15

At least one writer, however, is skeptical of the efficacy of this secret solution and critical of

Ruyschs obsession with preserving fluids. See Baer 112-21 for details.
16

For several beautiful color photographs of Ruyschs anatomical art works, see Purcell and

Gould 13-32.
17

According to one well-known legend, during his first visit to Ruysch's laboratory in 1698,

Peter bent down to kiss such an embalmed child, either thinking that it was alive or, more likely, wishing to pay a complement to Ruyschs art. For various versions of this story, see Venevitinov 136, Hazen 333, and Luyendijk-Elshout 122.
18

Reproductions of these constructions can be found in Ruyschius, Peter the Great and Holland

125, Luyendijk-Elshout 123-24, and Staniukovich 1953, 44-45.

19

Proverbs such as Vita humana lusus; Vita quid est? Fumus fugiens et bulla caduca;

Carpe diem; Volat irrevocabile tempus, were omnipresent in the anatomical theaters of seventeenth century European universities. See Luyendijk-Elshout 121-25.
20 21 22

For example, compare Purcell & Gould, Gonzalez-Crussi, and Hansen. See Schupbach for a similar reading of Rembrandt's Anatomy of Dr. Tulp. See Camporesi for an analysis of how the classical motto Know Thyself became

associated with knowledge of the interior of the human body gained through anatomy.
23

Nancy Vickers asserts that the association of the work of dissection and anatomical

description with the revelation of the beauty of Gods creations [was] a common trope of almost all anatomical treatises of the sixteenth century (7). Katherine Rowe argues that to practice anatomy was to reveal and to perform Gods will in the flesh (288). At the same time, one should not underestimate opposition to dissection in modern Europe. Popular opposition to anatomy was motivated both by religious and folk beliefs about bodily resurrection and by the 21

particular horror associated with grave robbers, who commonly supplied anatomists with corpses. Even Ruyschs teacher, Jan Swammerdam turned against dissection, considering it impious. See Luyendijk-Elshout 121-26 and Hazen 329.
24

See Vucinich 3-37 and Evreinov 33 for more details. Golikova recounts a horrifying

tale from the archives of the Preobrazhenskii prikaz of vivisection used instead of the more usual forms of execution. In 1705, a peasant by the name of Kuzma Zhukov was convicted of plotting to kill the Tsar and sentenced by Romodanovskii to death. When Peter received the report, he ordered that instead of being executed, Zhukov be given to the Tsars doctor for anatomy [dlia anatomii] (Golikova 186). Although we dont know exactly what the doctors did to Zhukov, six days later he was dead.
25

For an interesting comparative analysis of Byzantine, Kievan and Muscovite beliefs about

uncorrupted relics, see Lenhoff.

26 27

For more on the posthumous fate of the body, see Dundes, Oinas, and Barber. Compare Rickelss argument that vampires may be understood as a pathological symptom of

the inability to mourn the dead.

28

Compare with Gogols story Vii, where the hero is destroyed at the precise moment when

he meets the gaze of the monster. Some writers have suggested that the reason for the common Slavic practice of turning mirrors toward the wall when there has been a death in the family has to do with the danger of the deceased persons soul taking up residence in the mirror. Similarly, if one looked into the eyes of a dead person, his or her soul might enter into your body (Barber 49).
29

The two most influential works of twentieth century Russian literature dealing with

the Kunstkamera, Merezhkovskiis Petr I Aleksei (1905) and Tynianovs Voskovaia persona (1932), both contribute to this transformation of the Tsars Cabinet of 22

Curiosities into a something closer to a Chamber of Horrors. Because this topic goes well beyond the boundaries of this article, I will merely note that legends of Peter embalming and preserving the heads of former lovers, favorites and family members (e.g., Mariia Hamilton, William Mons, and the stillborn child of Aleksei) in the anatomical collections of the Kunstkamera lie behind much of the horror that the institution evokes in both Merezhkovskii and Tynianov. For more on the negative image of the Kunstkameras anatomical collections in modern Russian fiction, see Gasiorowska 46-48, 112-13.
30

One can find similar opinions expressed, and not always by Orthodox believers, in

relation to the embalming of Lenin in the 1920s. See, for example, Tumarkin 170.
31

Although such a theory seems risible today, Stephen Jay Gould has defended preformism as

representing "the best of Newtonian science" (205). Gould argues that preformists were, in fact, closer to modern developmental biology than the epigeneticists, who thought that the complex adult form developed gradually in the embryo. The preformists rejected what they considered the unscientific reliance of epigenetics on some kind of mysterious vitalism that could transform undifferentiated organic matter into the perfect structure of adult bodies. Although the epigeneticists were correct in their suppositions, they had absolutely no idea of the actual mechanism of embryological development. See also Goulds introduction to Pinto-Correia.
32 33

The unavoidable comparison is with matryoshki dolls. The best single history of the Kunstkamera's role in the resolution of the scientific debate

between preformism and epigensis in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is still Blyakher.

23

34

According to Rikhter, Peter and Frederick-Wilhelm I of Prussia traded hundreds of tall

soldiers between 1718 and 1720. Interestingly, the Russian giants that Peter sent to Prussia tended to get homesick for Russia and had to be replaced periodically (1: 36-37).
35

In comparison with Europe, Russias interest in selective breeding seems quite

innocent. Robert Darnton, for example, notes the common belief among French intellectuals and writers in the late eighteenth century that Frederick II had produced centaurs and satyrs by experiments with sodomy, as well as the general fear that sex with animals could disfigure the human race by producing hybrid animal/humans (32). For more on the connection between hybridism and monstrosity, see Pinto-Correia 155-59.
36

Marie-Helene Huet traces the history of the notion that monsters may result from a disordered

maternal imagination from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century. Huet shows how the pre-modern literal belief in the power of the maternal imagination to deform the physical image of her child is transformed into a metaphorical association between female imagination and monstrosity which, in fact, motivates much of nineteenth century European art and literature.
37

For a detailed account of Wolffs teratological work and its contribution to the

evolving theory of epigenesis, see Blyakher 89-104.

38 39

For a portrait of Foma, see Staniukovich 1953, 41. For more on the power of the maternal imagination [to] corrupt nature to the point

of producing monsters, see Huet 56-78.

40

In 1739, for example, Fedor Tarasov, an eleven year-old cripple with a hydrocephalic

head, was returned his parents in Siberia (Materialy 3: 848-49).

24

41

For a fascinating account of the role played by scientific and medical debates

concerning hermaphrodites in the social construction of gender differences in sixteenth century France, see Park.
42

As Stephen Baehr shows in his unpublished essay Alchemy and Eighteenth Century

Russian Literature, the hermaphrodite, a common symbol of perfection in alchemistic thought, had a significant influence on eighteenth century Russian thinkers, especially Masons.

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