Воинский похоронный церемониал в символической политике Российской империи конца XVIII - начала XIX вв.

Вестник Омского университета. Серия: Исторические науки. 2027. № 1.

Shurinova A.

This article examines military funeral ceremonies as an element of the symbolic politics of the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Based on military regulations, ceremonial documents, contemporary descriptions, and biographical works, it analyzes the funerals and reburials of Grigorii Potemkin, Pyotr Bagration, Mikhail Kutuzov and Michael Barclay de Tolly. The article argues that the nature of military funerals was determined not only by the rank of the deceased or military regulations, but also by the political context and the need to attach special symbolic significance to the death of the military commander. Although the military regulations introduced under Paul I codified the general order of military burials, they did not eliminate flexibility in ceremonial practice. The comparison of the selected cases shows different strategies of memorialization. Potemkin’s burial localized his memory in Kherson; Bagration’s reburial at Borodino retrospectively included him in the imperial pantheon of war heroes; Kutuzov’s funeral turned him into the central figure of the memory of the victory over Napoleon; and Barclay de Tolly’s burial remained largely detached from the symbolic geography of the War of 1812. The article concludes that military funerals constituted one of the mechanisms through which the imperial government selectively incorporated military leaders into official memory and shaped the imperial pantheon of war heroes.

Keywords: Российская империя, символическая политика, symbolic policy, похоронный церемониал, funeral ceremony, The Russian Empire, the War of 1812, война 1812 года, military rank, war heroes, воинский чин, герои войны

Publication based on the results of: War and Post-War Peace in the Russian Empire and the USSR (2025)