Like many conference-based anthologies, this volume's diversity of topics represents its charm as well as its potential weakness. Although each chapter is short (eleven to fifteen pages), several go into remarkable detail about topics such as rendering fish guts into isinglass, or the local characteristics of limestone. Not all readers will wish for this level of detail on every topic; therein lies the potential weakness. Yet many will find themselves unexpectedly intrigued by a fresh look at materials such as limestone that are usually “invisible in their ubiquity,” and yet “transform the world around them” (Alison Smith, 35), or by the “thick” meanings of textiles, which Katherine Pickering Antonova reminds us were “so well understood” before industrialization that “describing the technical details of their production or function was like describing breathing” (88).
The purpose of this anthology is to expand notions of material culture to encompass all stages of objects, from conceptualization to materialization, from use to disuse or preservation in memory or exhibit. Each stage changes cultural value, perception, and meaning. The focus on objects’ life cycles undergirds the book's structure, with chapters divided into “Transforming,” “Making,” “Touching,” and “Preserving Things.”
Even more cohesive than this structural format are several thematic threads tying the disparate chapters together. The strongest lies in many of the authors’ compelling arguments for approaching objects from their own cultural context, successfully undermining assumptions about Russian backwardness vis-à-vis western Europe. Audra Yoder shows that samovars, once seen as frivolous western products (the tea urn was a passing fad of the eighteenth century in the west), became household fixtures in Russia due to the material context of Russian versus British kitchens. The open fireplaces of British homes, followed by stovetop cooking, made the kettle a better appliance for boiling water there. Closed Russian stoves, for all their utility in heating homes and slow cooking, were less efficient for heating water than table-top tea urns. The difference is not one of progress versus tradition, but simply the best “fit” for the material contexts.
Erika Monahan similarly questions the dismissal of eighteenth-century Russian cartography as backward in her rich analysis of Semen Remezov's atlas of Siberia. Lacking longitude and latitude, it has been seen as a primitive work, and yet Monahan convincingly shows the suitability of Remezov's maps for travelers’ purposes in early modern Siberia. These maps contained vital information such as distances, best modes and expected times of travel, and demographics of settlements. In the context of Siberia, Remezov's atlas offered far greater utility than more modern western cartography of the time. Aligned with this critique of western superiority, Antonova's article demonstrates that the mechanization of textile production did not necessarily mean advancement of quality, or even efficiency, depending on the type of fiber. And a simple, portable spindle was more useful than a spinning wheel for women fitting spinning into moments between other household tasks.
Other chapters supporting this theme include those by Claire Griffin and Matthew Romaniello. Griffin analyzes traces of apothecary ware to argue for the existence of early modern Russian science despite the lack of western-style printed works. Romaniello shows how Russia's early monopoly on knowledge of how to make isinglass, a substance derived from fish guts and used for straining beer and wine, made the country a target of industrial espionage by Britain.
A second theme of the volume is the erosion of perceived divisions between wealthy consumers of luxury goods and poverty-stricken commoners left out of such pleasures. Tricia Starks's article on Fabergé cigarette cases is an excellent example of this approach. Fabergé eggs are, of course, recognized worldwide as emblematic of Russian imperial privilege, and yet the company's most pervasive and popular products were in fact a wide range of cigarette cases. Copied in humbler versions by other firms and homemade by soldiers out of shell casings, the cases became an intrinsic aspect of tobacco consumption across all classes.
Sugar is another example of ubiquitous consumption, but Charles Steinwedel shows that its pervasiveness required state intervention against sugar industrialists who wanted to maintain the normirovka, or “norming” of high prices instituted to control earlier market volatility. Political leaders promoting sugar consumption as “fuel for the empire's workers and peasants” finally won out in 1910, bringing sugar within reach for everyone (104, 113).
A third major theme lies in the relationship between people and objects. Brandon Schechter's vivid description of the emotional ties Soviet soldiers felt to their tanks during WWII shows how closely the Soviet trope of man merging with machine could materialize in such times (161). On the other side of that war, Ulrike Schmiegelt-Rietig's intriguing article on Nazi art appropriation offers a case study of a Nazi ideologue whose prejudices about Russian culture are fractured by the “power of the image” in his encounter with Novgorod's icons (220).
Russian scholars demonstrated their own blinders in exploring native Siberian cultures. Marisa Karyl Franz decries the separation of anthropological objects from their owners in her analysis of the life cycle of a Chukchi shaman's threadbare coat—statedly more valuable in his eyes because of its condition, yet relegated to a storeroom in favor of flashier examples for a museum audience. The relationship between people and underground material is central to Ann Komaromi's chapter on samizdat. In stressing its fragility and flexibility, she states, “Only the social activity around it could sustain its precarious existence” (52). Komaromi's discussion of avant-garde artists shows that non-conformists learned to live creatively within the Soviet regime, contrasting with Alexei Yurchak's exploration of ways in which conforming citizens found space for personal expression (Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, 2005).
Each of these chapters demonstrates admirable depth of research—a tantalizing tip of the iceberg in knowledge of their fields.
