Slavic Review 877 One big topic all the chapters touch on in one way or another is the way the six trau- matic years between 1939 and 1945 irretrievably changed Soviet Jewry—a multi-faceted transformation symbolized by the contrast between the large quantity of Jewish “enthu- siastic supporters” of the Soviet order in the interwar period and the burgeoning Jewish exodus from the USSR in its last three decades (xii). The authors of this important book can only discuss this great shift in passing. Undoubtedly, the completion of the series will bring into focus the long-term consequences of 1939–45 as the hinge period in the history of Soviet Jewry. Ed. Valerie Kivelson, Sergei Kozlov, and Joan Neuberger. Picturing Russian Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. xxxiii, 556 pp. Appendix. Notes. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $49.99, paper. Sergei Kan Dartmouth College, USA Email: sergei.a.kan@dartmouth.edu doi:10.1017/slr.2024.534 Picturing Russian Empire goes a long way to demonstrate how we imagine and view the Russian empire(s). It consists of fifty-six essays authored by scholars of art, literature, film, history, and related fields, which collectively produce a fascinating overview of the peoples, landscapes, representations, and ideologies of the Russia’s empire from the early medieval Rusˊ to Vladimir Putin’s post-Soviet Russia. The book represents an innovative look at Russian history and culture from the perspective of visual studies, a scholarly field that views seeing as an embedded practice and hence instead of simply illustrating, inte- grates images into historical and cultural analysis. The key theoretical construct underlying these essays is “pictosphere,” defined as “the space of the visible world represented in images made by human hands or technologies” (4). The images discussed in this volume help the reader understand how Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet empires were created, rep- resented, experienced, and challenged. In the words of its editors, Picturing Russian Empire offers the reader “a visual tour of the lands and peoples that constituted the Russian empire and those that confronted it, defied it, accommodated to it, and shaped it at various times over more than a millennium of history” (1). Taken together these essays convincingly demonstrate how malleable and multivocal the meanings of visual images often are. In other words, they challenge any simple interpretation of the meaning of the images in question, even when the meaning might appear quite obvious. In addition, being non- verbal visual images often have a stronger emotional power than written texts. The pictorial objects discussed here, represent a wide range of media. In addition to paintings, illus- trated books, manuscripts, newspapers, postcards, posters, and photographs contributors to the volume examine films, embroidery, wine labels, statues, dioramas, and pixels on the screen. In the spirit of the recent efforts to “decolonize” Russian studies the book aims at avoiding Russocentrism by shedding light on the diversity of depictions of the imperial Russian multiethnic population. In fact, many of the essays focus on the ways in which