Newly energized citizens partaking of expanding political and cultural activity throughout Europe in the last half of the nineteenth century sought out and found positive images of themselves in the literary marketplace. They also contrasted their evolving self-images with portrayals of minorities, colonial subjects, and foreigners. The recasting of the national self and the "other" took place against the backdrop of European imperialism and the scramble for Africa. Russia with its contiguous empire was no exception to this phenomenon, although its imperial ambition stayed closer to its national borders.During the last third of the nineteenth century enterprising Russian publishers flooded the country with new representations of citizens and subjects in works that ranged from the humble lubok -the cheap often crudely hand colored prints that circulated at urban stands, rural markets, and through colporteurs -to illustrated weekly magazines sold by subscription to a general readership and themed publications for women, children, hunters, and even hairdressers. These publications put into play images and descriptions of the nation that initially differed markedly from the varied notions of Russianness, the peasantry, and the non-Russian peoples of the empire held by the cultural elites at the time, though eventually these images tended to converge. This essay concerns two invented empires of the visual imagination in the era following the 1861 Emancipation of the serfs; the empire of the lubok and that of the illustrated magazines, including humor magazines.The imaginative empires emerged as part of a broadly based pictorial and textual revolution. Russia shared in a pan-European transformation of communications and transportation that contributed to the commercialization of urban life. A new commercial nexus arose between publishers and consumers according to which publishers issued what they considered appropriate with an eye on the censor, and consumers purchased what they liked with an eye to their interests and pocketbooks. Technological improvements in printing, papermaking and the reproduction of pictures and photographs together with improvements in the means of distribution increased the availability of images. News and information about
