Reflecting today's acute need for a critical approach to cultural stereotyping, The Contradictions in Vereshchagin's Turkestan Series: Visualizing the Russian Empire and its Others is an examination of the ties between images of Russia's 'Oriental' subjects and the construction of the nation's identity as an imperial power. Focusing on the apparent contradictions found in the 'Turkestan Series' by the Russian realist, Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904), it explicates the effects of colonialism on Russian art, and the role that visual imagery played in the imperialist project. I argue that while one of Vereshchagin's goals was to portray the 'truth' of war by representing its horrors, the series as a whole reinforced the orientalist stereotypes of exoticism, despotism, and general depravity of the 'Other.' The dissertation builds upon recent publications in Russian Studies, draws from theoretical insights from scholarship on other modern European empires, and presents an historically-specific account of Vereshchagin's complex and ambiguous imagery. Moreover, I propose a framework of a Janus-faced Russian orientalism---driven to look both east and west---as a new framework for the investigation of Vereshchagin's art.

Beginning with the artist's sojourns in Central Asia as a "participant observer" for his Turkestan Series, Chapter One highlights a seeming incongruity between Vereshchagin's personal humanist perspective and the strictly ethnographic project he was hired to develop in pursuit of the State's imperialist agenda. Chapter Two provides a close visual and contextual analysis of the battle scenes and genre paintings respectively, and considers the reasons for the particular power of Russian orientalist discourse, exploring the Janus-face of Russian orientalism. While focusing on the end of the Turkestan Series saga---the exhibitions and its final sale---Chapter Three looks at the broader historical and political events occurring at that moment, examining the impact of the Series within the foreign and domestic spheres. Overall, the dissertation contributes a unique case study to the contemporary critical discourse on culture, nationalism and artistic agency by addressing such pertinent issues as imperial propaganda, otherization of the enemy, militarism and identity, and the artist's role within these social processes.