A Perception of the Imperial Order by a Russian Élite Woman in the 19th Century Caucasus: A Concise Analysis on Propaganda Authored by Vera Zhelikhovskaia on the Russo-Ottoman War, 1877-1878

In the history of the Russian Empire, women played various roles. Along with Turkish historiography on Turkic Muslim women, current studies on the Russian Empire as a multi-ethnic, multi-religious polity and current studies on Russian women’s and gender history are unified from the 2010s, after the multi-ethnic/multi-religious nature of the Russia Empire became the theory based on more lucid legal/administrative regulations. The newly unified current indicates the imperialistic practices of Russian Women and the gendered nature of the Russian Empire. This article, to contribute to the new current, examines propaganda, Naşi Voinı Pravoslavnıe (Our Orthodox Soldiers), by one of the famous female authors, Vera Zhelikhovskaia (Jelihovskaya), who had lived in the Caucasus for several decades, not à priori but critically considering the social meaning of “femininity”. By intersectional analyses of gender-ethnicity-denomination-subjecthood, this article attempts to elucidate how a Russian woman recognised and represented the polity of Russia and various people in Russia during the Russo-Ottoman War, 1877-1878. The hierarchy, in which Russian men are on the top, Russian women submitting to and caring for Russian men come after, non-Russian/Orthodox subjects are the second-class compatriots, and the “Turks” are completely disdained and excluded, finally almost without any non-Russian/Orthodox women.