When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 by Jeffrey s> Brooks (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 969 Brooks, Jeffrey. WhenRussiaLearnedto Read: Literacy and PopularLiterature, I86I-I9I7. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2003. xxxii + 450 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography.Index. fI.50 (paperback). OF the works selected for re-issue in the Northwestern series 'Studies in Russian Literatureand Theory',JeffreyBrooks'shistoryof popular readingis surelyamong the most deserving.This is a book that ought to be prominently placed in most reading lists on Russian social and cultural history. First published in I985, it has stood the test of time well. Not only that, it has done -and continues to do much to shape the way Russianistswrite the history of the late imperial era. As with most classic worksof scholarship,its methods and argumentsnow seem imposinglyuncontroversial.Butwe should not lose sight of the other reason for according classic status to WhenRussia Learned toRead:the fact that, when it firstappeared, the book's methods and source base appeared anything but obvious and mainstream. In his new introduction to the 2003 edition, Brooksreminds us that, when he was doing his research at the Lenin Libraryin (presumably)the late 1970s, it was only by chance that he was made awareof the fullscope of the commercialpopular literature of pre-revolutionaryRusssia. The assiduity then required to gain access to thismaterial and, of course, to make sense of it -was of a degree almost unimaginableto the followinggeneration of historians. By now even the more praetorian custodians of library collections in Moscow and St Petersburgare unlikelyto have problems understandingwhy researchers might call up lubkiand kopeck novels. Professional historians, moreover, are altogether disinclined to pass over this kind of material. Brooks'swork provided a significantpart of the impetus for twenty years of high activity in the study of Russian popular culture of various eras. This already emerging field was given a huge boost by the collapse of the Soviet system. As Brookspoints out in his 2003 introduction, there are definite and thought-provokingresemblances between the I990S and the I89os or i9oos. Both before the onset of the Soviet period and afterit came to an end, Russian culture escaped the control of disapprovingintellectualsand found common cause with an unruly and dynamic capitalism. In both eras the relationship between the individualand the collective, and the problem of social disorder, loomed largein popularfiction. But, for all the plausible analogies we might draw, the great strength of Brooks's work is that it is focused on a single period and a single (if very substantial) corpus of material. The four thematic clusters that Brooks identifies in prerevolutionarypopular literature ('Bandits:Ideas of Freedom and Order', 'Nationalism and National Identity', 'Science and Superstition', and 'Success') derive from a study of hundreds if not thousands of populartexts. The storyhe tellsis one of culturalconvergence between Russia and the West, but one that takes account of the complexities and specificities of 'mass'culturein a stillpatrimonialandpeasant-dominatedsociety.Brooks's ultimate goal is to shed light on popular mentalities at a time of enormous social change. Many scholarsagree that this is an important area of inquiry, but it will surely always be a highly problematic one. On a second or third 970 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 readingof When RussiaLearned toRead,it stillseems thatVasiliiChurkin,Anton Krechet and Nat Pinkerton are among the best guides we have to popular beliefs and values in late imperialRussia. Department ofHistory STEPHEN LOVELL King'sCollege London Borrero,Mauricio. HungyMoscow:Scarcity andSociety in theRussianCivilWar, I9I7-I92I. Studies in Modern European History, 4I. Peter Lang, New Yorkand Oxford, 2003. Xi+ 228 pp. Tables.Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?45.00? IN this well-researched monograph, the author aims to provide a better understandingof the impact on the residentsof Moscow of the chronic food shortageswhich afflictedRussianurbansocietyduringthe revolutionsof 19I7 and the subsequent civil war. Much of the author's success in achieving this aim is due to the approachhe takesto the topic. Leavingaside the question of the ideology behind the Bolshevikgovernment'sfood provisioningpolicies, he confines himself to examining the survival strategies devised by individuals and organizationsin Moscow to overcome the food supplyproblem, and how these strategies affected the implementation of government policies. The elimination of ideology makes for a much clearer and more convincing exposition of the processes at work in the...