The play of ideas in Russian Enlightenment theater

Abstract

How did educated 18th-century Russians view society? And how did they reconcile their professed ideals of equality with the monarchical political structures in which they lived? In this study, historian Elise Wirtschafter turns to literary plays to reconstruct the social thinking of the past and to discover how Russians of the Enlightenment understood themselves. The book opens with a discussion of the development and social meaning of theatre in 18th-century Russia. Examining more than 260 plays written during the last half of the century, Wirtschafter shows how drama for the stage represented and debated key questions - the identification of civil society and the common good, the patriarchal household, the duty of monarchs and the role of the individual in society. Highlighting problems of social consciousness, the author asks what Enlightenment Russians thought about social experience, and how their thoughts related to actual social relationships in a society organized around serfdom and absolute monarchy. In the process, she portrays Russian Enlightenment culture on its own terms and sheds light on broader problems of social order and political authority.