Becoming a Romanov. Grand Duchess Elena of Russia and her World (1807}}}1873) [Hardcover]

The Russian Great Reforms of the 1860s were the last major modernizing effort by the Romanov dynasty. From 1855 to 1861, Grand Duchess Elena, born Princess Charlotte of W??rttemberg (1807-1873), acted as the spokeswoman for the reform-minded circles of Russian society, bringing before her nephew Emperor Alexander II a group of civic-minded experts who formed the core of the committee that prepared the greatest and most complex of the reforms, the abolition of serfdom in Russia. The Grand Duchesss involvement in these crucial events in Russian history highlights the considerable influence aristocratic women had in Russian society, quite unlike women of the same class and status in Western Europe. A study of the Grand Duchess Elena of Russia offers a new understanding of Russian and international events of the time, the Romanovs role in them, the degree of autonomy enjoyed by high-born women in Russia and the ways in which new ideas gained ground in the nineteenth-century Russian empire. Based on abundant and largely unused archival sources, published documents and literature of the period in French, Russian, German, Italian and English, this is the first book about Grand Duchess Elena and it expertly interweaves the story of a womans life with that of Imperial Russian high politics.

This welcome volume makes a contribution to Russian studies in two different areas. The book provides the first and long-needed biography of an unusually accomplished woman who figured prominently in the political and social life of Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. And, through an examination of the upbringing and court life of the grand duchess, the chapters add significantly to womens history in the imperial period. As Marina Soroka and Charles A. Ruud summarize, she was able to participate in Russian social, cultural and political life because aristocratic women ... exercised significant control over family and society (p. xi). The volume is especially strong in chartil“€