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Gleb Kazakov:Even though early modern Muscovy was never the central focus of attention of Western diplomacies and had very moderate and rather sporadic contacts to the rest of Europe, interest in Russian culture and society grow steadily throughout the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. Starting from the reign of Vasiliy III, when Sigismund von Herberstein, ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire, first came to Muscovy many Western diplomats, merchants and adventurers visited Russia and left different sorts of records. As Muscovy extended its territory after the catastrophe of the Time of Troubles (Smuta), also its internal affairs grew in importance for Western countries. The Smuta itself became a powerful ‘medium of contact’ between East and West, since Polish and Swedish invasions brought many Western influences to Russia: in military technologies, diplomacy, rituals, arts and education.Western European observers were particularly interested in unrests and governmental oppression. Firstly, Russian society with its vertical ties and autocratic rule seemed to Western travelers unusual and exotic. Therefore the relation between tsars and people often attracted writers’ attention. Secondly, rebellions and uprisings happened in early modern Muscovy with a high frequency and sometimes even threatened the very existence of the Russian state or of the ruling dynasty. Rebels and rulers, kings and impostors, executors and criminals were frequent figures in Western media coverage on Russia.In my talk I will take a closer look at the visual representation of Muscovy’s rulers and rebels in Western media of the XVIIth century. Books, newspapers and broadsides allowed a spread of information not only in the form of texts, but also in the form of pictures. This was often intended to make the written text more understandable and appealing, and it sometimes even complemented it with details, that were not put into words. I will concentrate on the entire XVIIth century, beginning with the portraits of False Dmitriy I from the age of Smuta and up to the early reign of Peter the Great. My aim is to demonstrate, how Muscovy and its political culture was visually represented in European media and how the historical destiny and fame of most influential social actors affected ‘visual memory’. Furthermore, I will compare Western images of Muscovy’s tsars and rebels with images that were circulated within Muscovy or with their absence, as the case of Stepan Razin, the head of a mighty rebellion of 1670-1671 who, still in his lifetime, was depicted thrice in European engravings, but never in Russia, as I will show.[audio mp3="http://revolt.hypotheses.org/files/2014/04/gleb_talk_russia_conference_cut.mp3"][/audio]Gleb Kazakov is doctoral researcher at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS), University of Bielefeld and currently associated to the Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University. His research fields are: Early modern history of Northern and Eastern Europe, history of revolts, absolutism and Russian-Swedish diplomatic contacts. His ongoing dissertation project is titled: "Cross-border perceptions and images of revolts in Muscovy, Ukraine and Sweden in the XVIIth century: circulation of knowledge and processes of cross-cultural transfer."