Authors

Discussion

In 1704 Peter the Great granted a new ceremonial seal for the Don Cossack Host. According to the royal degree, it had to depict «a naked man, sitting astride a barrel, with a gun in one hand and a pipe in another». Documents clarifying the reasons for the choice of this enigmatic image and its meaning remain unknown. However, in the 18th-20th century number of prominent Russian scholars tried to offer interpretations of the seal. Their conclusions are politicized and may be divided in 2 groups: critics of the Peter I political course tended to believe that it depicted a drunk cossack, who gambled all his possessions except the gun in the tavern, while the supporters of the westernization suggested that the brave cossack was smoking upon a barrel full of gunpowder after the battle. Significantly, their research was based not on the analysis of the original seal but on its graphical reproduction of the 19th century. 

In this paper I will present original prints of this seal preserved on the cossack documents of the 18th century from the Russian State Archive and try to show that its origin goes back to the autochthonous Netherlandish iconography of Bacchus. I will also trace the ways this image was used for political purposes in the visual culture of the Peter the Great Russia.