ABSTRACT
The message to the domestic audience was of Russia's social harmony and its capacity for producing elegant and technologically advanced objects—despite the country's autocratic rule. This chapter discusses the All-Russia expositions that took place during the reign of Nicholas V. Riasanovsky I and its focus is on the four largest fairs—those of 1870 in St. Petersburg, of 1872 and 1882 in Moscow, and of 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod. In sharp contrast to the country's exhibition policy at international expositions, the domestic fairs aspired to portray a different Russia, a country whose unique cultural legacy was in concert with its position as an industrialized leader. The reviewers made a special point of citing foreign observers, who expressed their astonishment at the extent of Russian industrial accomplishments. Iron-and-glass exposition architecture attracted the interest of Russian intellectuals almost immediately after the Great Exhibition.
