The importance of popular exhibition culture in shaping perceptions of power and foreign policy in pre-revolutionary Russia remains understudied in modern historiography. This article attempts to examine this issue using the example of panopticon museums and the ethnic exhibitions held there. Particular attention is given to the M. A. Schulze-Benkovskaya Panopticon Museum, which toured St. Petersburg in the winter of 1896—1897, and to the “Samoan Beauties” exhibition held there. Based on surviving printed catalogues of the Panopticon Museum, the composition of its collection in the mid-1890s is reconstructed, and the specifics of its organization are revealed through comparison with other Russian and German panopticon museums. The museums collection is oriented toward Prussian examples, even down to the presence of a “hall of fame” similar to the one found in the Berlin and Cologne panopticons. At the same time, attention is drawn to the juxtaposition of exalted images of sovereigns, heads of government, and military leaders alongside figures with scandalous reputations, as well as to the presence of sections in the museum devoted to murder, torture, and physiological pathologies, particularly in the sexual sphere. All this created a special context for the display of “Samoan beauties”, distinguishing this ethnic exhibition from similar ones held in zoos or as part of art and industrial exhibitions. It is concluded that although the exhibition was not a deliberate tool of foreign policy propaganda, the context of its presentation imbued it with certain political implications. Thus, not only the sexualized images of Samoan beauties, but also the pathological sections of the panopticon museum became means of understanding and imagining contemporary politics.
Evgeny Savitsky (Wed,) studied this question.