На идеологическом фронте Крымской войны: образ России во французской литературе и публицистике

The concept of ‘Russophobia’ was introduced by British radicals in 1836. In Germany 1830-1840 s, the ‘Russophobia’ debate took on a much clearer ideological connotation than it was in England. The dividing line was between democrats and national liberals, on the one hand, and conservatives, on the other; and the image of Russia was very different for both. The following words were used as synonyms for ‘Russophobia’: RussenhaB (hatred of Russians), Russen-Scheu and Russenfurcht (fear of Russians), Russenfeindschaft (hostility towards Russians), Russophagie (Russophagy), Russenfresserei (Russian-eating). First two words appeared during the Polish uprising of 1830-1831 and were usually used in connection with the Polish question. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the above designations were encountered in a foreign policy context and referred not to Russians as a nation, but to the Russian autocratic state. After the Crimean War, the topic of ‘Russophobia’ in the liberal and conservative press fades into the background. The French threat is highlighted; “Russian-eaters / Russophobes” are now called Democrats-Republicans, many of whom ended up in exile. Since the Eastern Crisis in the late 1870 s, the bulk of references to ‘Russophobia’ in the German press have been associated with Anglo-Russian relations, and the word ‘Russian-eating’ is practically out of use.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the British socio-cultural perception of Russia and the domestic political life of Russians in the early 1960s of the 19th centuries and to clarify the specifics of the British mentality. The author draws attention to the fact that the Russian and British empires were one of the main actors in the international arena in the 19th century. Much attention is given to the relationship between the two powers that was quite complex. A special attention is paid to the analysis of allied relations during the Napoleonic Wars from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1850s.They were replaced by a confrontation between the two sides within the aggravated Eastern Question, which ended with the Crimean War (1853-1856). As a result, the author draws conclusions that the British have always been interested in Russia, its history, domestic and foreign policy especially after the end of the war and the accession of the new Emperor Alexander II. His reform policy and Russian public attitude to it were the center of British public attention All this were the top stories on the pages of British newspapers which generated anti-Russian sen-timents and image of Russia in the British society.

This study is dedicated to the analysis of the reception of the amnesty for the Decembrists in 1856 in the British press in the context of the geopolitical consequences of the Crimean War and the ongoing reassessment of the international position of the Russian Empire. The focus is on the perceptions of British newspapers regarding the nature of Alexander II's political course and the significance of the amnesty as a symbolic step reflecting the transition from the repressive policies of the Nicholas era to a more flexible model of autocratic governance. Special attention is given to how the amnesty for the Decembrists was interpreted by the British press as an indicator of internal transformations in Russia, affecting the realm of civil liberties, the state's relationship with opposition elites, and the regime's willingness to make partial concessions to liberal expectations. The study examines the amnesty not only as an act of clemency but also as an important element of the international-political and informational positioning of the Russian Empire on the European stage. The methodological framework of the research includes comparative-historical and discourse analysis, applied to materials from British (“The Guardian,” “The Times,” “Daily News”) and Russian periodicals (“Moscow News,” “Saint Petersburg News”), systematizing mentions of the amnesty and Alexander II's coronation, identifying key semantic oppositions and contextual factors. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the comprehensive consideration of the amnesty for the Decembrists as a media and political event simultaneously, through the prism of comparing British and Russian newspaper narratives. For the first time, based on a systematized corpus of publications from 1856-1858, it is demonstrated that the British press interpreted the amnesty as an ambivalent gesture: on one hand, as a triumph of liberal ideas and a symbol of the departure from the repressive nature of the Nicholas regime, and on the other hand, as an incomplete measure that exacerbated the social marginalization of the Decembrists due to the non-return of confiscated property. The Russian press, constrained by censorship, constructed the image of the amnesty as a step towards national reconciliation and future reforms, cautiously hinting at the need for deeper transformations. It is shown that both interpretations, despite their differences, converge in recognizing the high historical significance of the amnesty for the transformation of Russia's image both domestically and in the eyes of Europe, as well as for rethinking the relationship between power and society at the beginning of Alexander II's reign.

The Crimean War (1854–6) was, in the words of Eric Hobsbawn (2010), ‘the nearest thing to a general European war between 1815 and 1914’. Whereas it figures large in the national mythologies of Britain and Russia, in France it remains very much a footnote. This is despite the fact that it is the only nineteenth-century war the French ultimately won. But in the view of many, to quote Jules Michelet (1857), ‘La conquête du lama est dix fois plus importante que la conquête de Crimée.’ It would seem that the Crimean War has no place in the canon of culturally retained historical events that define modern French identity. Though news of the war in the contemporary press and popular literature was ubiquitous, it does not figure in the canonical literature of time. This paper considers how the Crimean War was and was not represented in French literature in the second half of the nineteenth-century.

Research Article| January 01 2010 2000: Trauma on the Boulevard Maurice Samuels Maurice Samuels Yale University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Romanic Review (2010) 101 (1-2): 115–122. https://doi.org/10.1215/26885220-101.1-2.115 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Maurice Samuels; 2000: Trauma on the Boulevard. Romanic Review 1 January 2010; 101 (1-2): 115–122. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/26885220-101.1-2.115 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsRomanic Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2010 The Trustees of Columbia University2010 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: The Return to History You do not currently have access to this content.

must be difficult succeed in France where nearly everyone writes (LII 202).Not so well as that. He [Flaubert] begins with a fault. (quoted in JJII 492)1Reading preceding quotes (the first written in Rome and second said in Paris), one can describe Joyce's relation French literature, and specifically nineteenth-century French novel, as one that moved between awe and qualified appreciation. Joyce's attitude Maupassant, conveyed in a 1905 letter from Trieste his brother Stanislaus, provides another example: I agree with you, however, about Maupassant. He is an excellent writer. His tales are a little slipshod but that was hardly be avoided, given circumstances of his life (LII 107). Yet, one lesson of decades of studies is that Joyce's affairs with writers as well as with countries and their national literatures are beyond love and hatred. At dawn of twentieth Joyce's quest for a drove him in direction of French literature (JJII 76): contemporary symbolist movement but also, more significantly roman that was hallmark of previous century.If once mistakenly accused Flaubert of committing grammatical mistakes in Trois Contes,2 he also exhibited a continued imaginative engagement with Flaubertian oeuvre as he overcame difficulties involved in writing well and succeeding within and beyond France-a succes de scandale which grew in a similar way successes of Gustave Flaubert and ?mile Zola.3 This volume of essays on and Nineteenth-Century French Novel examines many previously unexplored facets of intricate Flaubert-Joyce relationship but its analyses also extend both ends of nineteenth-century with contributions on some of Joyce's explicit and implicit responses Alexandre Dumas, Honor? de Balzac, Victor Hugo and ?mile Zola in Dubliners, Portrait, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, and in his life, letters, and critical writings. It would take another volume ? and it is an aim of this work that further research be carried out precisely in such a direction ? investigate further Joyce's relations other French prose writers of 19th Century whom refers such as: Chateaubriand, Daudet, Huysmans, M?rim?e, Villiers de L' Isle Adam, George Sand, Lautr?amont, Michelet, Quinet, Verne, Dujardin, Mirbeau, and, insofar as they wrote prose, Baudelaire and Mallarme.A study of such a multilayered subject as Joyce and Nineteenthcentury French Novel, demands that we first delineate boundaries and intersections of intimidatingly expansive space-times: nineteenthcentury, France, novel. Graham Robb' s recent study The Discovery of France provides us with probably most appropriate basic metaphor in this respect. In Robb's journey into some of physically and conceptually uncharted territories of France, nineteenth-century emerges as a decisive moment in gradual invention of France as a modern nation while some nineteenth-century novelists, namely Balzac, appear as invisible guides along this exploratory journey.4 France's nineteenth-century can be said begin in eighteenth-century, precisely in 1789, with French Revolution and end in 1889, with Gustave Eiffel's construction of monumental tower. In this century, France established some of foundations of novel, which is a modern monument and anti-monument in edificidal visions of Hugo in mid-nineteenth century and in early twentieth century.5 Edificidal thoughts and realities are endemic histories of nineteenth-century France and nineteenthcentury French novel since both were by successive and overlapping revolutions, revolutions of word and world, bringing down political, social, and aesthetic monuments and announcing new that often prematurely died only be revived in other forms in twentieth century. A quick run of some key moments, personalities, and trends highlights this convulsive history: 1789 French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, Bourbon restoration, romanticism, July Revolution, realism, 1848 which marked last Western European revolution in classical urban mode,6 orientalism, Crimean War, photography, Second Empire, to write mediocre well7 and indirect free style, Franco-Prussian war and Paris Commune, naturalism, bourgeois and the people, Haussmannisation of Paris, symbolist movement, film, J'accuse. …

Leo van Bergen, Before my helpless sight: suffering, dying and military medicine on the western front, 1914–1918, transl. Liz Walters, History of Medicine in Context, Franham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2009, pp. ix, 528, £35.00 (hardback 978-0-7546-8553-5).

The article considers the problem of the emergence and development of images of Russia and Russians in the cultural consciousness of Great Britain in the period of the Crimean War of 1853–1856, which played an important role in shaping the national identity of the British through the opposition of “Our” to “Other”. Based on historical and literary analysis, the authors identify the basic components of the myth of Russia and Russians in British literature during the Crimean War: a hostile territory where three very different ethnotypes (Tatars, Cossacks and Russians) exist quite independently, the absolute tyranny of Tzar and the slavish essence of Russians. The created myth of the Crimean War justifies the imperial “moral interventionism” of Great Britain, which implies the protection of the weak from the strong and visually enshrined in the images of the Russian bear. The intensity of the negative assessment of Russia and Russians is dependent on the political situation, nevertheless, Sevastopol stands out in the space of the Russian myth and is represented as topos, which does not receive any negative assessment and evolves to the level of the core of the myth of Russia both past and present.