Cosmopolitanism and “Faux-Populism”

Abstract

This chapter offers a detailed analysis of the debates on nationalism in art among the members of the first Russian modernist group, the World of Art, in the early period of its existence (1898–1904). The significant role played by this group in forming the aesthetic platform of Russian modernist culture is well known. However, no systematic study has hitherto been done on the connection between competing aesthetic agendas within this group and debates on the choice of tradition, imperial (westernized) versus pre-Petrine (indigenous). The chapter then shows that the clash between aesthetic “cosmopolitanism” and “faux-populism” in the debates within the World of Art reflected the moment of equilibrium between the two tendencies in early Russian modernism, which would soon give way to the dominance of the latter. It also looks at the strategies of emancipating the modernist archaistic aesthetic in a nationalist vein from associations with “state leanings” and “retrograde political pigheadedness,” which turn out to be particularly instrumental in the aftermath of the first Russian Revolution and during the subsequent decade.