Self-Immolation as a Metaphor and Act in the Subcultures of the Late Russian Empire

Abstract

This article examines the historical continuity between the self-immolations of the Old Believers and the radical aspirations of Russian revolutionary intellectuals, the aesthetics of sacrifice in the civil poetry of the 1880s, and the Russian modernism and avant-garde of the early twentieth century. The relevance of the article is due to its search for a metaphor that unites different spheres of Russian political and cultural life at the turn of the century. The author analyses self-immolation as a metaphor in the essays of G. Fedotov and D. Merezhkovsky, the paintings of G. Myasoedov and I. Repin, the poems of S. Nadson, K. Fofanov, V. Bryusov, N. Klyuev, V. Ivanov, and A. Blok, and the novels of M. Gorky and A. N. Tolstoy. The extreme symbolism of self-sacrifice united different strata of Russian culture, primarily the subcultures of the narodniks and literary bohemians. The most detailed metaphor of the creative and comprehensive ritualisation of intellectual subcultures is provided in O. Mandelstam’s memoirs The Noise of Time. Virtual self-immolation could become real, as when M. Grachevsky and M. Vetrova committed suicide in prison by self-immolation. The methodology of this article is based on historical and comparative analysis of poetic metaphors, characters, and visual motifs of paintings on historical topics and the socio-psychological attitudes of political radicals as manifestations of a ritual-like self-sacrifice plot. Even though self-immolations among Old Believers had almost completely stopped, the phenomenon was a challenge for Russian intellectuals. It turned into a metaphor in both the aesthetics of Russian political poetry and Russian symbolism. The cult of self-immolation in lyrical poetry found reflection in the extremely intense psycho-emotional and creative sentiments of biographical authors and their characters, where self-immolation is portrayed as the most perfect form of self-destruction. During and after the revolution, Russian philosophers and writers used this metaphor to condemn the Russian mentality and analyse the failure of the Russian intelligentsia’s mission to enlighten the people.