Formation of “Moscow text” in Leningrad’s second culture

Abstract

Leningrad’s “second culture” primarily created an alternative image of the city’s culture, constructing its genealogy as a continuation of the highest achievements of Russian Art Nouveau. The Moscow text seems marginal to this culture, not essential for interpreting the vicissitudes of the twentieth century. A close examination of the institutions of the second culture yet shows that in it, the Moscow text was fabricated. The Moscow origin was understood as a metaphysics of culture, different from the mystical-ecstatic programs of the figures of independent art in Leningrad, as a readjustment of optics rather than an experiment with corporeal and spiritual principles in art. The pinnacle of this understanding was B. Groys’s conception of Moscow romantic conceptualism as a variant of Russian cosmism. Even before that, though, in the 37 journal, the central publication of Second Culture, Moscow art was constructed as both mystically sensitive and mythologically saturated, consisting of cultural images from different epochs and equating artistic endeavor and artistic topicality. Using the evaluation of Olga Sedakova’s work and the editions of Yury Tynyanov’s heritage, this paper demonstrates how the critique of the Moscow concept of culture as neo-mythological, partly anachronistic, and capricious-individualistic was transformed into the recognition of the merits of Moscow independent authors who, above all, more accurately and more diversely specified the modes of symbolic production.