Authenticity, Facts and Politics in the Fin-de-Siècle Pushkin Debate

Abstract

Abstract: The article focuses on the Pushkin debate of the 1890s to examine attitudes toward facts and authenticity in fin-de-siècle Russia. It traces the clash between positivist-empiricist methods of enquiry that emphasized facts and authenticity and the neo-romantic intuitivist paradigm that dismissed their importance. While the debaters' modes of engaging with the past might have been impacted by an array of factors (generational preferences, professional habits of mind, matters of aesthetic taste), an important rift also followed ideological lines. The fusion of Pushkin with Russia, typical of nationalist and official patriotic narratives, was aligned with a reliance on subjective intuition as a basis for historical depiction. Conversely, accounts devoid of nationalist fervour and ritualized reverence were grounded in positivist methods of enquiry.