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The death of the actress Vera Komissarzhevskaia in 1910 while on tour in Tashkent and the return of her body to St. Petersburg and public funeral became an empire-wide phenomenon, demonstrating the tremendous social resonance of female performers and the growing power of the mass circulation press, new conceptions of the public sphere, and the social influence of emotions. This talk will explore ways in which people across the Russian Empire transformed the death of Komissarzhevskaia into an occasion for large-scale public grieving, civic activism, and religious controversy.
Matthew Klopfenstein is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Illinois.