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In this pioneering analysis of diffuse underclass anger that simmers in many societies, Joan Neuberger takes us to the streets of St. Petersburg in 1900-1914 to show us how the phenomenon labeled hooliganism came to symbolize all that was wrong with the modern city: increasing hostility between classes, society's failure to "civilize" the poor, the desperation of the destitute, and the proliferation of violence in public spaces

In 1941, Sergei Eisenstein had a decision to make. Iosif Stalin commissioned him to make a film about Ivan the Terrible, and in the months that followed he vacillated about how to depict the bloody tyrant. The Nazi invasion in June temporarily distracted him from work on the film, but by the time he was evacuated to Alma Ata in October, Eisenstein was committed to making the defiantly unorthodox, transgressive film that we have. What changed? The bombing of Moscow in July compelled Eisenstein to reflect on his public and private responsibilities and on individualism and collectivism in ways that complicated those categories and clarified his determination to make Ivan the Terrible a serious study of political power and violence. His diary from this period contributes a first-hand account of the bombing, and shows us Eisenstein's thinking about the political implications of interior and exterior at this critical stage in his life and work. This text, unpublished and unintended for publication, gives us a voice and a spectrum of positions that we have not heard before on this key set of discourses in Soviet history.

At the beginning of the twentieth century St. Petersburg was gripped by fears of crime. This book is about those fears, the crimes that provoked them, and their role in shaping urban Russian culture in the last years before World War I. Crime of all kinds was on the increase, but it was a peculiar concoction known as hooliganism that made headlines in St. Petersburg and within a few years grew to acquire symbolic stature. Around 1900 the Petersburg boulevard press began reporting an increasing number of cases of annoying public disturbances, rowdiness, drunkenness, rock throwing, shouting of obscenities, and the like. Soon, more serious crimes were added to this list: armed assault, mugging, and brawling.

At the beginning of the twentieth century St. Petersburg fell victim to a wave of petty crimes and violence. Starting around 1900 the press began to report an increasing number of cases of annoying public rowdiness, drunkenness, rock throwing, shouting of obscenities, and the like. Soon more serious crimes were added to this list: armed assault, robbery, and brawling. None of these crimes was new and they seem to have had little in common with one another, yet they were all lumped together and collectively portrayed as a new urban blight.This disparate assortment of offenses was dubbedhooliganism, and the word—imported from England where it recently had been coined—was quickly absorbed into Russian usage. Between 1900 and 1905 hooliganism received a substantial amount of attention in the popular press, where by 1905, it had been transformed from a vaguely defined and relatively isolated phenomenon—one crime among many—into a social problem of serious proportions. Hooliganism had become a sign of urban social disintegration and a symbol of the "degeneracy" and "danger" of the urban lower classes.

"Picturing Russian Empire brings a fresh approach to both Russian and Imperial Studies by centering the visual. In a series of short essays, focused on striking images, the authors reexamine historical encounters and exchanges within the shifting borders of the empire. The book not only offers interpretations of the images but also shows the kinds of work that images themselves can accomplish by changing or solidifying notions of how the world is or should be organized. The book advances the idea of a "pictosphere" in which images from the many visual cultures of the empire interacted. The essays are lively and accessible, crafted to engage the reader. Picturing Russian Empire also provides a historical and visual approach to understanding present-day conflicts in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia"--