Male Same-Sex Relations and the Court of Peter I: Turning Muscovite (Genders and Sexualities in History)

By: Hanna Filipova

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Synopsis: This book explores Peter I&’s same-sex relations, men&’s sociability and male favoritism at the royal court in the context of the Petrine myth, scenarios of power, propaganda and othering. The first part is devoted to sources, historiography, the theory of the topic, and the question of why there is still no research on the male same-sex relations of Peter I. The second part explores early modern Russian discussion of male same-sex relations. The third part examines how the motif of Russian male same-sex relations was used during the Great Northern War, 1700–1721 as a tool of German-Swedish anti-Russian propaganda. This book brings a Russian perspective and Eastern European sources into the field of European queer studies and discusses the possibility of considering the topic of non-normative sexuality of the monarch and elites in Petrine Russia in a global context, which has not been done before.