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This book is the first comprehensive treatment in any language of the most consequential work of art ever to be executed in Russia-the equestrian monument to Peter the Great, orThe Bronze Horseman,as it has come to be known since it appeared in Alexander Pushkin's poem bearing that title. The author deals with the cultural setting that prepared the ground for the monument and provides life stories of those who were involved in its creation: the sculptors Etienne-Maurice Falconet and Marie-Anne Collot, the engineer Marin Carburi, the diplomat Dmitry Golitsyn, and Catherine's \"commissar\" for culture, Ivan Betskoi. He also touches upon the extraordinary resonance of the monument in Russian culture, which, since the unveiling in 1782, has become the icon of St. Petersburg and has alimented the so-called \"St. Petersburg theme\" in Russian letters, familiar from the works of such writers as Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Bely.

Schenker discusses the linguistic and cultural boundaries of the American Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages, focusing on the formula \"Slavic and Eastern European.\" Slavic is a language-dependent term, which means that its identity rests on objective, hence falsifiable, linguistic parameters. Eastern European, by contrast, is a language-neutral term whose definition is based partly on geography and partly on such time-specific and largely subjective criteria as history, politics and ideology.

The matter of casting thePeter the Greatwas left open in the contract drawn in Paris by Prince D. A. Golitsyn and Falconet. The first clause specified merely that Falconet was being charged “with the composition and execution of the monument which will consist principally of an equestrian statue of colossal dimensions.”¹ The question of who would choose the founder and decide on the details of casting was left to the good sense and good will of the participating parties, a presumption which, as it turned out, was all too optimistic. The omission of an explicit mention of casting

Etienne-Maurice Falconet came from a family of simple artisans of very modest means.¹ How plain his origins were can be seen from an entry for February 12, 1714, in the register of the church of Notre-Dame de la Bonne Nouvelle in Paris, where his parents were married. According to the church records, his father, Maurice, and his uncle Pierre Falconet were journeymen joiners; his paternal grandfather, Claude Falconet, was a peasant from Savoy; his maternal grandfather, Nicolas Guérin, was a cobbler, and his uncle François Falconet was a servant. The newlyweds settled in a modest lodging on rue de Bourbon-Villeneuve,

A Karelian forest in the dead of winter is the essence of peace and quiet. No motion but for a wisp of snow floating down from a branch. No sound but for an occasional crackle of wood snapping in the cold air. An immense spider web, a nostalgic leftover of the summer, glistens in the first rays of the sun. Stretched between two branches and surrounded by a dense growth of pines, spruces, aspens, and white birches, it seems freshly spun, for no gust of wind can reach it and disturb its perfect symmetry. Whiteness and stillness all around. One

Catherine had good reason to gloat over Falconet’s arrival. She had a habit of treating architects and artists as skilled employees, whose usefulness ended with the completion of the project at hand. But Falconet was different. He was clearly much more than a craftsman coming to execute a commissioned work. The empress knew that she was hosting not only a major European artist but also an envoy from the land of the Enlightenment, aphilosophe,anami de l’âmeof Diderot, and a contributor to theEncylopédie.She also realized that Falconet’s intellectual interests and social and professional contacts could

By the beginning of the seventies, Marie-Anne Collot had become the most sought-after society portrait sculptor in St. Petersburg. Young, good-looking, and by then independently wealthy, she could have struck out on her own if she had wished to do so. She preferred, however, to live and work by the side, and perforce in the shadow, of hermaîtreand companion. The intimate nature of their relationship must have been common knowledge in St. Petersburg. Yet, if there were voices in St. Petersburg criticizing or gossiping about the informality of the joint ménage, they are yet to be discovered. Diderot

Before Falconet’s monument to Peter the Great, there was only one freestanding bronze equestrian monument with a rearing horse, Pietro Tacca’sKing Philip IV of Spain(1640) in the royal park of Buen Retiro near Madrid. Being the first of a genre is, however, its only distinction. With an oversize tail hanging straight down and reaching the pedestal, the horse rears at a forty-five-degree angle, in a pose that resembles the mezair in equitation exercises. The rider is stiff and ramrod-straight in the saddle, and the baton in his outstretched right hand looks more like the equilibristic aid of a