The Tsars and the Orient
Elena Kashina

• Friday 10 June 2016, 5.30PM to 6:30pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
• The Treehouse, Berrick Saul Building, University of York (map|getting to campus)
• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

Explore Russia’s relations with Ottoman Turkey and Iran of the Safavid period during the 16th and 17th centuries with Elena Kashina of the University of York. The talk, which is illustrated by the diplomatic gifts in the Moscow Kremlin Museums’ eastern collection, ranges from the time of the establishment of diplomatic contact until the interruption in the peaceful exchanges by a series of wars in the 18th century.

Join Elena as she analyses the geo-political context in which such contacts were established, as well as the international situation which led to the wars in the 18th century between Russia and Turkey with her new allies.

Moscow Kremlin Museums’ eastern collection represents a precious and extraordinary record of Russia’s relations with her eastern neighbours, with the dazzling objects reaching Russia as diplomatic gifts. Exceptional for their craftsmanship, Elena will explain how they offer a wealth of material on art production of the period, on the paths and mechanisms of cultural exchange, and of inter-cultural appropriations. In addition, the artefacts shine a light on the diplomatic intricacies and expediencies, the contexts in which the exotic and expensive items were used at the court of the Russian Tsars, the realities of the time and a possibility for mutually beneficial co-existence of divergent traditions.

About the speaker

Dr Elena Kashina studied for her MPhil in Mediaeval Viking and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo, following an award of a scholarship by the Research Council of Norway and gained her PhD in the History of Art at Leeds in 2007. Her scholarly interests include changes of traditional iconographies in 16th century Russia, in their political and cultural context, and the history of artistic patronage, with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. 

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