Citing the endurance of sacred foundations of legitimacy: V. M. Zhivov,“The Myth of the
State in the Age of Enlightenment and its Destruction in Late Eighteenth-Century
Russia,”in Boris Uspenskij and Viktor Zhivov,“Tsar and God”and Other Essays in
Russian Cultural Semiotics, ed. Marcus C. Levitt (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012),
239 – 58; Gary J. Marker,Imperial Saint: The Cult of St. Catherine and the Dawn of Female
Rule in Russia(DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007); Ernest A. Zitser,
The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter
the Great(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). On Peter’s use of parody, see
Zitser,Transfigured Kingdomand V. M. Zhivov,“Cultural Reforms in Peter I’s System of
Transformations,”in Uspenskij and Zhivov,“Tsar and God,” 191 – 238.
E. V. Anisimov has written extensively on reigns between Peter I and Catherine II:Empress
Elizabeth: Her Reign and her Russia, 1741– 1761 , ed. and trans. John T. Alexander (Gulf
Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1995) andFive Empresses: Court Life in
Eighteenth-Century Russia(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004). Emphasis on Anna and
Elizabeth as frivolous is discussed in Proskurina,Creating the Empressand reflected in
Anisimov’s two cited works and Michael T. Florinsky,Russia: A History and an Inter-
pretation(New York: Macmillan, 1953).
On Peter III, see Carol Scott Leonard,Reform and Regicide: The Reign of Peter III of Russia
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). On Paul I, see Roderick E. McGrew,
Paul I of Russia, 1754– 1801 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). On continuities of elites,
see John Le Donne,“Ruling Families in the Russian Political Order, 1689–1825,”
Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique28 (1987): 233–322.
On Catherine II, Isabel de Madariaga’sRussia in the Age of Catherine the Great(New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1981) is encyclopedic, while herCatherine the Great: A Short
History(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) is a chronological biography. See also
A. B. Kamenskii,The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Searching for a Place in the
World(Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997); John P. LeDonne,Ruling Russia: Politics and
Administration in the Age of Absolutism, 1762– 1796 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1984) and hisAbsolutism and Ruling Class: The Formation of the Russian Political
Order, 1700– 1825 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Simon Dixon’s excellent study of Catherine the Great in a series entitled“Profiles in Power”
focuses on her strategies for ruling:Catherine the Great(Harlow: Longman, 2001). He is
helpful on the issue of Catherine’s sexuality, as are Brenda Meehan-Waters,“Catherine
the Great and the Problem of Female Rule,”Russian Review34 (1975): 293–307 and
John T. Alexander,Catherine the Great: Life and Legend(New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989). On Krylov’s erotic critiques, see Proskurina,Creating the Empress.Ernest
Zitser dates a set of pornographic images of eighteenth-century Russian rulers to thefirst
half of the nineteenth century:“A Full-Frontal History of the Romanov Dynasty:
Pictorial‘Political Pornography’in Pre-Reform Russia,”Russian Review70 (2011):
557 – 83. M. M. Shcherbatov’s memoir:On the Corruption of Morals in Russia, trans.
A. Lentin (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969).
On pornography as political critique in the Enlightenment, see Lynn Hunt,Eroticism and the
Body Politic(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Larry Wolff,“The
Fantasy of Catherine in the Fiction of the Enlightenment: From Baron Munchausen to
the Marquis de Sade,”in M. Leavitt and A. Toporkov, eds.,Eros and Pornography in
Russian Culture(Moscow: Ladomir, 1999), 249–61; Lynn Hunt,“The Many Bodies of
Marie-Antoinette: Political Pornography and the Problem of the Feminine,”in Dena
Goodman, ed.,Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen(New York: Routledge,
2003), 117–38; Chantal Thomas,The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of294 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801