The Russian Court after Peter the Great (1725-1730). A History of Political Culture

• Applicant: Dr. Lorenz Erren
• Subject Area: Early Modern History ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2016 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284164659

The resolute reformer and powerful Tsar Peter I. was followed by several rulers who, according to contemporaries and historians qualified as weak or incapable, resulting in their reign being called the 'age of palace revolutions'. The research will focus on the period between 1725-30, during which four rulers followed each other and aristocracy made an attempt 'to limit autocracy'. The period of investigation was limited in order to facilitate a 'thicker' description (Clifford Geertz). Within these years, virtually everything changed: Rulers, dynasties, systems of alliances, and the seat of the government. Two of four rulers were females. It is supposed that studying the behaviour of the political elite under such circumstances grants deeper insights than usual. The research will focus on the political culture of the intervening period: How was a political will formed? Who formed it, did he meet with resistance whatsoever, and by which means did he try to overcome it? How did players try to legitimize their actions?Which kind of expectations and strategies have to be seen as typical, which were original? These are the main questions, and they shall be examined by a two-sided approach: On the one hand, political events will be analysed on a micro-level; on the other side, attention will be given to all religious, legal, dynastic, and other discourses, by which players' actions could be legitimized. This research aims to trace back the contemporaries' subjective world-view, or, to put it in the words of Reinhart Koselleck, their 'realm of experience' and their 'horizon of expectations', as well as the difference between the former and the latter. Carefully avoiding teleological interpretation, this research will pay as much attention to endeavours that failed as to those which were met by success. Instead of offering premature explanations of why some courtly intrigues were successful and others were not, it will be examined on which assumptions players had built their (disappointed) hopes in advance. It will be assumed that contemporaries in many cases did not put their expectations in explicit words, as they saw them as 'self-evident', as 'suggested by common sense', and therefore can be retraced only by ethnological observation. Instead, it will be attempted to re-establish, by meticulous puzzle-work, circumstances, connections, motives and plots that have been overlooked, forgotten or misinterpreted by previous historiography.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Jan Kusber