Anglophilia with An Angler’s Tackle: The English Roots of the Sport of Angling in Russia

Abstract

The article takes up the topic of recreational angling in order to investigate the impact of English culture on the development of leisure in Russia. The paper surveys materials in Russian and foreign angling periodicals as well as archival materials related to the work of such Russian popularizers of recreational angling as Pavel Cherkasov, Anatoly Shemansky, Nikolai Lieberich and others. The author examines practices and models of leisure by employing the “new cultural history” methodology, which includes the history of leisure and historical anthropology as it applies to the history of everyday life with particular emphasis on commonplace discourses and practices. The author demonstrates that English influence on amateur angling in Russia extended beyond the adoption of tackle and fishing techniques. It affected the culture of fishing by favoring a particular style and a certain kind of behavior and even clothing. The advent of modern English angling tackle during the middle of the 19th and early 20th centuries was an invasion of the Russian recreational landscape that did not proceed without a struggle. Opponents of “English tackle,” which referred to a modern rod, usually a telescoping reed with an inertial (Nottingham) reel, would sometimes portray it as a superfluous artifact - a tangible embodiment of discrimination and an attempt by some anglers to assert their superiority over others. The foes of English tackle felt that it was “technical garbage” useful only under certain conditions and that its adherents were merely kowtowing to fashion. Its supporters, on the contrary, saw themselves as agents of innovation, advocates of progress, and the vanguard of the fishing community. They also sought to make a clear distinction between amateur and sport angling with the latter taken to mean exclusively spinning and fly fishing.