Jonathan Stone, “The Literal Symbolist: Solov’ev, Briusov, and the Reader of Early Russian Symbolism”
Despite their focus on an audience unequipped to understand the basic precepts and vocabulary of a new aesthetic, the venerable thick journals of the 1890s were precisely the locale in which the foundation was laid for the appearance of Symbolism in Russia. They witnessed the movement's first encounter with the Russian public and functioned as a forum for demonstrating its struggle to find a proper reader. This article examines the concerted efforts made by Vladimir Solov'ev and Valerii Briusov to delineate Russian Symbolism's readership. Solov'ev mediated between the small and exclusive group of Symbolists and the wider literary public accustomed to a nineteenth-century tradition and hostile to the new art. I read his three reviews of the Russkie simvolisty collections (1894-5) as demonstrative of the deft maneuvers necessary for constructing the role of a critic who simultaneously admonishes and advocates Symbolism. Briusov polemicizes with Solov’ev’s readerly ambiguity by constructing his own ideal audience--the Symbolist reader. Consequently, Briusov underscores the unwavering distinction between friends and enemies of Symbolism. Present from the moment of Symbolism’s introduction to Russia, this rigid dichotomy would remain a persistent facet of the movement’s public face. The discussions Solov’ev and Briusov provoked at Russian Symbolism’s outset are fundamental in establishing a theoretical stance of how the Symbolist must interact with his or her reader.
Michael Wachtel, “Vladimir Solov’ev on Symbolism and Decadence”
Vladimir Solov’ev occupies a puzzling place in the history of Russian Symbolism. On the one hand, he is known for his devastating critiques of Valerii Briusov’s Russian Symbolists. On the other hand, he played the role of mentor to Vyacheslav Ivanov and was viewed by Ivanov, Aleksandr Blok, Andrei Belyi--and even by Briusov himself--as a proto-Symbolist. Using Solov’ev’s rarely read essays on literary criticism as well as a few archival documents, I trace the evolution of Solov’ev’s thinking on Symbolism from 1895 to 1899.
Gitta Hammarberg, "Sartor Resartus: Gogol’s Overcoats"
Dandyism in Gogol has been routinely noted by scholars, but never deeply scrutinized in its proper European context. Using contemporary theories of dandyism, this article examines Gogol’s life and his texts within the context of dandyism in Regency England. Using his correspondence, comments by contemporaries, as well as subsequent scholars, it relates key features of Gogol’s personal dandyism to his European peers. Gogol uses these signal features of dandyism to construct Akakii Akakievich in “The Overcoat” as a minus-dandy, whom he kills off. Gogol and his text, in all their originality, are thus manifestations both of dandyism and dandy bashing in the European mold. The article proceeds to closer comparisons to British dandies and dandy bashers (Bulwer-Lytton, Thackeray, and Carlyle) and demonstrates closer textual connections between Gogol and his European fellow dandies/dandy writers than have previously been apparent. While Gogol ostentatiously displays both his own and his characters’ dandyism, he equally forcefully takes a stand against the phenomenon, especially in his final texts. The article concludes that the definition of dandyism may well need to be expanded to imply its own demise.
Aaron Beaver, “Brodsky and Kierkegaard, Language and Time”
Brodsky’s relationship to Kierkegaard has been examined mainly with reference to a small group of poems written between 1963 and 1970. This essay, by contrast, argues for an affinity which pervades Brodsky’s corpus, centered around two of Kierkegaard’s key (interrelated) themes: repetition and the irresolvable dialectic between time and eternity. In Brodsky these themes emerge in connection with his ideas about the special status of poetic language. The essay proceeds in four parts, first examining the relationship of Kierkegaard’s writings to Brodsky’s work and arguing for a linguistic existentialism detectable in Brodsky’s early poetry. Next the essay considers the parallels between Kierkegaard’s and Brodsky’s searches for repetition. In part three repetition is coordinated with the time/eternity dialectic and examined in two of Brodsky’s longer poems, “Strofy” (1978) and “Litovskii noktiurn.” In the final section it is argued that Brodsky’s Kierkegaardian themes are reflected in a number of poetic devices central to his work, such as the special role of nature in preserving poetic speech and the metaphysical significance of prosody.
Susan N. Smith, “The Accidental Museum: Expropriating and Appropriating the Past”
Although the expropriation of objects from former landowners, wealthy collectors, and ecclesiastical authorities in the early years of the Bolshevik regime resulted in the rapid growth of a museum network in Russia, unlike the destruction and sale of objects, the preservation of objects, particularly in the provinces, has largely been overlooked by historians. For the fledgling regime and even more so for the struggling museum authorities in Vladimir province, expropriation proved to be a double-edged sword because the logistical difficulties created by expropriation slowed appropriation. Expropriation flooded the prerevolutionary museum of the regional archival commission with objects similar in type to many of those already on display, and, thus, in the short term, reinforced the prerevolutionary efforts of activists in Vladimir to put forth an image of the province as an Orthodox and ethnically Russian one composed of concerned and refined citizens. Expropriation also highlighted the difficulties in getting across such an argument, namely those aspects of pre-revolutionary museum work, such as unsystematic collecting and insufficient training, bemoaned by prerevolutionary museum workers throughout Russia. Because prerevolutionary museum workers provided “expertise” and their museums became the recipients of expropriated objects, frequently taken from their former supporters, the representatives and institutions of the preservation movement implicated themselves in class warfare, and, therefore, the Bolshevik revolutionary and state-building projects. As a result, in the longer term, through expropriation, as a logistical and ideological undertaking, the museum and the nascent museum profession came to embody Soviet means of transformation--involvement, and, therefore, implication, in class warfare, centralization, regulation, propaganda, and mobilization. In some cases, the resulting developments had been desired by prerevolutionary museum workers themselves as they sought greater professionalization of their field.
William J. Chase, “Microhistory and Mass Repression: Politics, Personalities, and Revenge in the Fall of Béla Kun”
This essay seeks to showcase the value of microhistory in enhancing our understanding of aspects of the Stalinist mass repression of 1937-39. In his discussion of microhistory as a method of historical analysis, Giovanni Levi asserts that "the unifying principle of all microhistorical research is the belief that microscopic observation will reveal factors previously unobserved." By changing the scale of analysis and focusing on personal relations within well-defined networks, microhistory permits us to explore people's behaviors, how these people became victims, and the roles of social interaction and agency among accusers and victims, who, in the late 1930s, were often one and the same person. The insights that this study offers differ from macrolevel studies of the repression and from the existing case studies in several notable ways, while at the same time illuminating some of the macrohistorical processes and dynamics that helped define the repression. This essay examines the fall of Béla Kun from political power and its aftermath to illuminate some of the least understood dynamics of the Yezhovshchina--personal animosity, personal conflicts, and revenge. Kun's case is revealing because it involves not simply the fall of a prominent individual, but also how that individual contributed to the destruction of members of his social network. While this study focuses on Béla Kun, it also involves some of the leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party in the 1930s, many of whom lived in emigration in Moscow and were longstanding members of the Comintern and the Bolshevik party as well as key figures in the Communist International (Comintern) and the Bolshevik Party. This story unfolds, therefore, in three distinct, yet interconnected contexts--the Communist Party of Hungary in Soviet emigration, the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), and the Bolshevik party.
Rimgaila Salys, “Gleaning Meaning: Vremia zhatvy”
In documentalist Marina Razbezhkina’s first fiction film an ideological totem (the banner for stakhanovite agricultural achievement) destroys the life of an individual, who suffers a second death through erasure from contemporary memory. The mythological matrix of the film is constructed on the basis of totalitarian, Christian and underlying pagan strata, visual references to the art of Venetsianov and Petrov-Vodkin, folk music and rituals, and mise-en-scène. The destruction of memory is conveyed through the fate of artifacts, cinematic stereotypes of Stalin era films, and the erasure of generational memory. Razbezhkina argues for the superiority of traditional peasant culture (both Russian and Chuvash) over the alien urban values imposed by colonizing Soviet power.