An important vehicle for literature and literary-philosophical debate were journals, of which 500 or so existed in the 1780s, subscribed to overwhelmingly by nobles. In i769 the first issue of About This and That appeared, containing anonymous articles by Catherine herself. It sparked a debate about the nature of satire, whether it should be aimed at human vices in general, as the empress believed, or against named persons. One of the participants was Nikolai Novikov (1743-1820), whose own journals such as The Painter and The Drone took the debate further. In the 1790s Novikov's Freemasonry activities and writings earned him Catherine's disfavour and a spell of imprisonment.[56]
Eighteenth-century Russia's finest poet was Gavrila Derzhavin (i743-i8i6), who first won favour with 'Felitsa' (1782), a mock ode in praise of Catherine. Derzhavin took a flexible approach to genre, injecting a strong personal element into his work. His philosophical poems 'The Waterfall' and 'God' and lighter subjects such as 'Life at Zvanki' are among the most original works of eighteenth-century Russian literature. Derzhavin was at the heart of an extended literary circle frequented by most of the leading figures of his day, including Anna Bunina (i774-i829), Russia's first professional woman writer. A number of women wrote and even published poetry, albeit usually with the support of male mentors.[57] The popularity of 'light' genres at the end of the century and the vogue for Sentimentalism, for example the work of M. N. Murav'ev (1757-1807), have been associated with the increase in female readership. Russia's most successful man of letters, Nikolai Karamzin (17661826), was a leading voice in Russian Sentimentalism and one of the creators of the modern Russian literary language. His story 'Poor Liza' (1792), about a peasant girl who drowns herself after being abandoned by her noble suitor, remains one of the best-known works of all eighteenth-century Russian literature. Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveller (1791-7) and History of the Russian State, written in the i8i0s-20s after he became official historiographer, also enjoyed great success.[58]
In the Soviet canon it was not Derzhavin or Karamzin, but Aleksandr Radishchev (1749-1802) who earned the loudest accolades. His novel in letters A Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow, published privately in about six hundred copies in 1790, became notorious for its advocation of emancipation and revolution.[59] 'The purpose of this book is clear on every page: its author, infected with . . . the French madness, is trying in every possible way to break down respect for authority, to stir up the people's indignation against their superiors and against the government,' wrote Catherine. As she famously jotted in the margin of her copy: 'He is a rebel worse than Pugachev.' Only thirty copies of the Journey reached readers before the print run was confiscated. Radishchev was sentenced to death, commuted to ten years of exile to Siberia. Later he was hailed as the forerunner of the Russian intelligentsia, but it is misleading to speak of an eighteenth-century 'intelligentsia' in the nineteenth-century sense of a body of privileged, radical opponents of the system. By and large, the small, literate, largely noble public shared the empress's belief in a combination of autocracy 'without despotism' and serfdom 'without cruelty', adorned with Westernisation. It had no time for alternative systems or values, still less for revolution. Rather, in the spirit of German Enlightenment, it favoured rational improvement of the status quo. Opposition, when it occurred, tended to come from conservatives, who believed that Westernisation had gone too far. For example, in an unpublished work Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov (1733-90) lamented the corruption of morals among the Russian nobility, when 'man's natural voluptuousness and luxury' (encouraged by the bad example of the imperial court) led to dissipation and the ruination of families.[60]
Conclusion
The 'dilemma' of eighteenth-century Russian culture was succinctly expressed by Karamzin. A fervent admirer of Peter I in his youth, later in life Karamzin was influenced by new thinking about national identity and spirit. In his view, without Peter, Russia would have needed 600 years to catch up with Western Europe, but accelerated 'progress', he believed, had been bought at a high price: 'We became citizens of the world, but ceased in certain respects to be citizens of Russia.'[61] In this, of course, Russia was not as an aberration, but only a late-comer, its cultural development conforming with the general pattern throughout eighteenth-century Europe and North America, where a small educated elite 'kept up' with international trends, and technical brilliance was more prized than brilliant originality. All the same, eighteenth-century Russian culture was more a follower than a leader and languished in the shadow of later national achievements. Almost the only eighteenth-century Russian play to remain in the repertoire is Fonvizin's The Minor. Hardly any eighteenth- century Russian novels are still read today. No eighteenth-century Russian painters, writers or composers are much known outside Russia.
The international character of eighteenth-century culture and Russia's 'junior' status in the cultural pecking order created a particular headache for Soviet scholars obliged to emphasise national originality (samobytnost'). Some took comfort in the discourse that Russians 'selected only the best' from Western culture, discarding anything alien to indigenous tastes. Foreign prototypes were ignored or glossed over.[62] The lack of comparative perspectives was caused not only by ideological constraints, but also by restricted access to Western scholarship and texts, so that sometimes simple ignorance lay behind the exaggeration of Russian 'originality'. Western histories of European culture, on the other hand, were apt to omit Russia from the picture altogether.
The limited social range of the eighteenth-century Russian public and the overarching influence of the court also seemed to distinguish Russia from more developed Western societies. Some writers observed that true culture was incompatible with despotic government and that the arts could never flourish if 'enforced by the knout'.[63] In the realm of high culture there were few opportunities for independent literary or cultural activity outside the provisions made by the state. If you were a writer, the only place you could publish was with state presses, apart from a brief period in the i780s-90s. And the potential readership was tiny. For aspiring architects, painters and sculptors the only institution that offered rigorous training, including study trips abroad, was the Imperial Academy of Arts, which also oversaw commissions. This is not to say that the imperial establishment deliberately set out to restrict, censor and repress, rather that a significant private commercially oriented sector failed to develop much beyond the nobility. As has often been observed, the bourgeoisie was missing. And there were few dissenting voices. By and large, when Russian writers praised monarchs, painters and sculptors flattered them and architects provided grandiose backdrops for their ceremonies, it was because of a genuine commitment to the values they represented. From the 1760s the doctrines of Enlightened Absolutism provided a theoretical and philosophical underpinning to such support.
Such alarming events as the Pugachev revolt periodically reminded the consumers of high culture that their alien ways could provoke popular wrath, but such instances of the violent polarisation of the 'two Russias' were the exception rather than the rule. The binary models developed by the Tartu school of semioticians has proved exceptionally fruitful for exploring the tension between 'old' and 'new', 'west' and 'east' in Russian culture,[64] but the distinctness of elite and popular, urban and rural culture should not be exaggerated. Peasants as a social group were not confined to the countryside, as Peter I recognised when he imposed a fine of half a kopeck on bearded peasants entering towns, while Russian nobles raised by peasant servants and resident on their country estates in summer could hardly avoid contact with the 'other Russia'.[65] In towns, puppet theatres, peep-shows and fairgrounds attracted diverse audiences. Russian traditions of church singing provided common ground for all classes, while the scores of Russian comic operas were based on folk songs orchestrated in a classical idiom. All social classes had access to handwritten literature, often on topics or genres on which Westernisation had made little impact, such as lives of saints, popular tales, riddles, songs and devotional works. Noblewomen and merchants' wives alike enjoyed books on fortune-telling and the interpretation of dreams.[66] Although Western fashions remained de rigueur for everyday wear for the elite, Catherine II introduced a style of female court dress based on loose-fitting traditional Russian robes. Conversely, popular art absorbed motifs from high art. Ladies and gentlemen, even peasants in Western dress appear in popular wood prints; neoclassical ornaments mingle with traditional ones on carved and painted wooden objects.
56
See W Gareth Jones,
57
S. Shaw, '"Parnassian sisters" ofDerzhavin's acquaintance', in WOR,pp. 249-56; Catriona Kelly (ed. and trans.),
58
A. G. Cross,
59
See Andrew Kahn, 'Sense and Sensibility in Radishchev's
60
M.M. Shcherbatov,
61
R. Pipes (ed.),
62
For late Soviet examples, see B. I. Krasnobaev (ed.),
63
See Gianluigi Goggi, 'The Philosophes and the Debate over Russian Civilization', in
64
For a seminal work, see Iu. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspenskii, 'Binary Models in the Dynamic of Russian Culture to the End of the Eighteenth Century', in A. D. Nakhi- movsky and A. S. Nakhimovsky (eds.),
65
This argument provides the thread of Orlando Figes,
66
See Faith Wigzell,