Russian Letters Research Articles

The Menagerie or the Visitor’s Pass? Aleksandra Zrazhevskaia and Praskov’ia Bakunina on Russian Women Writers

This article examines an 1842 literary exchange between Aleksandra Zrazhevskaia (1805-1867) and Praskov’ia Bakunina (1810-1880?) concerning the place of women writers in nineteenth-century Russian literature. It is followed by a translation of the exchange itself. Zrazhevskaia’s “Zverinets” (The Menagerie), a formally innovative work of literary criticism addressed in part to Bakunina, challenged the social norms that discouraged women’s writing, as well as the men literary critics who enforced them. In a verse epistle response, Bakunina repudiated Zrazhevskaia’s ideas, maintaining that Russian men critics will extend hospitality and courtesy to women writers who comport themselves as guests in the men’s club of Russian letters. The exchange raises questions about the critical reception of women writers in mid nineteenth-century Russia, women as literary critics, and the gendering of nineteenth century literary movements and aesthetics, which are discussed in relation to the wider pan-European literary climate of the time.

Anna Lisa Crone and Jennifer Day. My Petersburg/Myself: Mental Architecture and Imaginative Space in Modern Russian Letters. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2004. x, 385 pp. $29.95 (paper).

"Anna Lisa Crone and Jennifer Day. My Petersburg/Myself: Mental Architecture and Imaginative Space in Modern Russian Letters. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2004. x, 385 pp. $29.95 (paper)." published on 01 Jan 2007 by Brill | Schöningh.

An Example of Statistical Investigation of the Text Eugene Onegin Concerning the Connection of Samples in Chains

This study investigates a text excerpt containing 20,000 Russian letters of the alphabet, excluding $\Cprime$ and $\Cdprime$, from Pushkin's novel Eugene Onegin–the entire first chapter and sixteen stanzas of the second.

Russian Literature 1995-2002: On the Threshold of a New Millennium (review)

Reviewed by: Russian Literature 1995-2002: On the Threshold of a New Millennium David MaCfadyen (bio) N.N. Shneidman . Russian Literature 1995-2002: On the Threshold of a New Millennium University of Toronto Press. ix, 209. $55.00, $27.95 [End Page 459] In recent years a pronounced need has developed for book-length, English-language overviews of new Russian literature. N.N. Shneidman's study, addressing such a (rarely gratified and thus irksome) need, will - I hope - be appreciated by educators. His manuscript should serve both North American students and scholars well as a solid, dependable guide for initial forays into the murkiest of cultural (and so often uncultured) waters. Russian Literature 1995-2002 shies away from overtly subjective or over-theorized assessments of the last decade in Russian letters, tending instead towards a more standoffish 'documentary' or encyclopedic format. As such, it will be more useful as a reference text than as a reader-friendly or simply linear narrative of cultural development. Shneidman, thankfully, does not stress 1991 as a year of sudden, sweeping change. Almost half of the publication is given over to writers whom he refers to as the nation's bookish 'seniors' (Chingiz Aitmatov, Victor Petrovich Astaf'ev, Fazil' Iskander, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for example) or Russia's 'mature generation' (Viktor Erofeev, Evgenii Aleksandrovich Evtushenko, Kirillovich Vasin Kim, Eduard Limonov, or Vladimir Makanin). This categorization of storytellers both before and after 1991 will be of great benefit to students in that it underlines both the enduring relevance and struggle of often-forgotten (and less modish) personalities, together with the appearance of younger authors - who themselves must struggle against the background of the 'elders' recognized canon. By building the chronological range of his book from 1995 onwards, yet including writers who began penning tales of nationwide repute long before, Shneidman has done much to steer students away from easy equations of political and literary output. More current rubrics, later in the study, are dedicated to writers who emerged during perestroika (such as Aleksandr Kabakov, Mikhail Kuraev, Viktor Pelevin, Viacheslav P'etsukh, Aleksei Slapovskii or Vladimir Sorokin), women writers (Liudmila Petrushevskaia, Tatiana Tolstaia, Liudmila Ulitskaia and others), the champions of conservative or partisan policy, and those penning the most popular genres, such as detective fiction - who are likely to displace all the names mentioned from shelves of most provincial bookstores. Entries within generational rubrics are arranged alphabetically; most authors are afforded a couple of pages, on occasion slightly more. Hence my suggestion that this book succeeds more as a reference tool than a cultural history to be read in one sitting; it is a text for libraries more than bedsides. And yet at a time of budding English-language scholarship on the younger writers here (especially as they start appearing as translated paperback fiction), Shneidman's approach is perhaps the most sensible - a succinct and solid guide for young scholars stuck in the middle of virgin territory. [End Page 460] A broader, overarching context for this literary cartography is provided by a most useful introductory chapter, interweaving tendencies in modern storytelling with sociocultural processes since the late 1980s. Economic, financial, and political pressures are clearly and convincingly outlined, particularly regarding two problems: the role of cash in today's somewhat self-congratulatory culture of literary prize-giving and the enduring presence of conservative (if not jingoistic) curmudgeons behind the scenes of contemporary popular media. There is a slight irony here, for the author himself is not terribly happy with much of today's literary output and at times his observations are a tad grumpy. The work of stylistically adventurous authors is dismissed as an exit from 'reality' and 'truth,' while the plethora of recent literary awards 'erodes the criteria established for good literature.' Of Aleksei Slapovskii, for example (known better today as a TV screenwriter, perhaps), we read that 'his plots are inventive and he is not afraid to experiment with style and substance. It would be helpful, however, if he were to concentrate on analysis rather than description, and if he worked more closely within the confines of a particular genre.' The occasionally proscriptive air to this book along with its rare enthusiasm for much of today...

English-Russian language contacts

The paper reveals the beginning and development of English-Russian language and culture contacts generated by social history. Nine stages of the contact development characterized by different intensity and depth (starting from the sixteenth century until present) have been overviewed. An overview of the history of cultural interactions between Russia and English-speaking countries shows that neither the Russian language nor the English language has been immune to this process. In the case of Russian, the impact of exposure to English culture on the language has gone through various phases. Until recently, English was never the preferred foreign language in Russia, but it has come into and gone out of fashion with the ebbs and flows of Russian (and Soviet) relations with English-speaking nations. At the high tides of cross-cultural contact, linguistic borrowing has occurred in every imaginable field, from literature and finance to science and pop culture. The low tides have never been so low as to completely eradicate the influence of English on the Russian language. In the following pages, we explore briefly the history of these contacts. The history of Russian and British contacts dates back to the mid-sixteenth century when the British ship Edward Bonaventure was anchored in the mouth of the Northern Dvina River on August 24, 1553 1 (Aristova, 1978: 14). Russian Czar Ivan IV (''Ivan the Terrible'') granted an audience to Richard Chancellor, the captain of the ship. Chancellor handed the czar a letter from King Edward VI. The objective of Chancellor's expedition was to open a new market for British merchandise. Both Russia and Great Britain were interested in trading with each other. Improved economic and cultural ties with Western countries would help Russia strengthen its internal and external credibility. Ivan IV supported Russian-British trade by awarding free entry and freedom of movement, as well as tax-free trade, to British merchants from the Moscow Company. This trading company was established in London in 1554. In Russia, British merchants found a vast market for sugar, paper, cloth, weapons, medicine, spices, jewelry, and other imports. Additionally, entree into Russia opened trade routes to the Near East, Central Asia, and India. British and Russian merchants brought the first English words to Russia. These were primarily words the Russian language lacked: mester (<Mister), lord, aldraman (<alderman), etc. The words were transcribed by means of Russian letters according to their sound in oral speech. Thus,many words had a number of graphicand phonetic variants:ser,sar,sor (<sir); erl, erl', ell', er (<earl). Although few Russians visited Britain in the sixteenth century, many British people came to Russia. The Russian government encouraged British professionals - doctors,

Латиница или Кириллица: Проблема Выбора Алфавита в Белорусском Национальном Движении во Второй Половине ХIX – Начале ХХ Века

SUMMARY: An important feature of the Belarusian national movement at the beginning of the 20 th century was the use of two scripts – Cyrillic and Latin – in newspapers and books. The newspapers Naša Dola and Naša Niva , as well as many book editions, were published in both scripts, despite significant financial costs. This situation was rooted in the particular confessional division in Belarusian society – Orthodox Belarusians used Cyrillic and Catholics used the Latin script. In 1912, circumstances compelled Naša Niva to use only one script: the majority of its readers supported the use of Cyrillic. An essential role was played by historical argument – ancient texts in the Belarusian language used Cyrillic. Moreover, a majority of the literate population in Belarus at the beginning of the 20 th century used “Russian letters.” But books based on the Latin script also had a reading audience, primarily in Catholic villages. Therefore, the periodicals of the Christian Democrat wing of the national movement continued to use the Latin script.

The Bronze Horseman: Falconet's monument to Peter the Great

This is a comprehensive treatment of the most consequential work of art ever to be executed in Russia - the equestrian monument to Peter the Great, or The Bronze Horseman, as it has come to be known since it appeared in Alexander Pushkin's poem bearing that title. Schenker deals with the cultural setting that prepared the ground for the monument and provides life stories of those who were involved in its creation: the sculptors Etienne-Maurice Falconet and Marie-Anne Collot, the engineer Marin Carburi, the diplomat Dmitry Golitsyn and Catherine's commissar for culture, Ivan Betskoi. He also touches upon the extraordinary resonance of the monument in Russian culture, which, since the unveiling in 1782, has become the icon of Petersburg and has alimented the so-called St. Petersburg theme in Russian letters, familiar from the works of such writers as Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gogol and Bely.

Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism

Introduction The Problem Engendering Empire The Consolidating Vision: War and Peace as the New Core Myth of Russian Nationhood The Central Asian Narrative in Russian Letters Imperial Desire in the Late Soviet Period Scholarship and Empire Deconstructing Empire: Liudmila Petrushevskaia Selected Bibliography Index

Faces of Protest: Yiddish Cartoons of the 1905 Revolution

This article turns to an unexplored genre of Russian letters—the Yiddish cartoon—in order to consider how the most popular Russian Jewish newspaper of the early twentieth century participated in the Revolution of 1905-07. By exploring cartoons published in Derfraynd (St. Petersburg, 1903-1913, renamed Dos lebn February-July 1906) Sarah Abrevaya Stein reflects on how the Yiddish press reflected and shaped evolutions in Russian Jewish popular opinion: in particular, the temporary shift away from nationalist and toward opposition and socialist politics. This article also considers why the revolution ended in the world of Yiddish letters some months earlier than it did in the Russian, in the wake of the Bialystok pogroms of June 1906. This event, Stein demonstrates, catalyzed a redirection in the aesthetic and political tenor of popular Yiddish sources, prompting the cartoon to be replaced with the photograph and the politics of opposition with nationalism.

Evoked potentials of the cerebral cortex during the comparison of visual stimuli

Visual evoked potentials (EP) were recorded when the test subjects accomplished the tasks of a comparison of a current stimulus with the previous one, the stimuli being presented in a continuous sequence. In the first task, rare repetition of two stimuli (Russian letters) in the continuously changing flow of stimuli was relevant, and the test subject had to press the button when it happened; in the second task, the relevant stimulus was a rare change in the flow of stimuli. The influence of the stimulus repetition/change factor on EP was analyzed. The processes related to the comparison of the current and previous stimuli were most manifest in four time intervals: 120–140, 180–210, 260–280, and 350–370 ms. The occipito-temporal component of EP revealed in the interval of 180–210 ms, which we denoted as the negative component of visual mismatch (NCVM), proved a special component, differing in its functional and temporal characteristics from theN 2b component. WhereasN 2b is modulated by the factor of stimulus probability, the NCVM by that of stimulus repetition/change.

Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism

Introduction The Problem Engendering Empire The Consolidating Vision: War and Peace as the New Core Myth of Russian Nationhood The Central Asian Narrative in Russian Letters Imperial Desire in the Late Soviet Period Scholarship and Empire Deconstructing Empire: Liudmila Petrushevskaia Selected Bibliography Index

Resetting the Margins: Russian Romantic Verse Tales and the Idealized Woman

Before the 1840s, when prose began its hegemony in Russian letters, Romantic poets such as Evgenij Baratynskij (1800-1844) and his great contemporary Aleksandr Puskin (1799-1837) wrote verse tales which were intended to elevate literature to a philosophical world-view. This work examines the two writers' principal narrative poems, including Puskin's Eugene Onegin. Through a rigorous semiotic investigation, it breaks new ground in the perceptions of Romantic irony and Romantic idealism in Russian literature. Of crucial importance is the linking of the masculine narrator's voice with the feminine ideal omnipresent in these types of poems. The empowering ability of voice is seen as bound to the inherent de-constructing and re-constructing ability of Romantic irony.

Exile: The Sense of Alienation in Modern Russian Letters

Exile: The Sense of Alienation in Modern Russian Letters

Exile: The Sense of Alienation in Modern Russian Letters (review)

Reviewed by: Exile: The Sense of Alienation in Modern Russian Letters, John Goodliffe Exile: The Sense of Alienation in Modern Russian Letters, by David Patterson; xii & 204 pp. University Press of Kentucky, 1994, $29.95. From the title of this book one might expect its principal focus to be on geographical and/or political exile, exile as punishment, of which there have been many examples in Russian life and letters, both before and after the 1917 Revolution. But David Patterson prefers to interpret the word “exile” in a wider metaphysical and existential sense, so connecting it with the problem of alienation and the question of human identity. His purpose is to demonstrate that “the fundamental problem of meaning in human life is a problem of homelessness; that the effort to emerge from exile is an effort to return meaning to the word and thus the self to the other; and that the exile of the word is an exile of human being” (p. xi). (Incidentally this quotation anticipates the rather curious style of English which the author will adopt, regrettably typical of many academics.) The neurosis engendered by this problem of homelessness is one to which Russians have always been particularly prone, perhaps because their geographical situation on a vast inhospitable plain, stretching uneasily between Europe and Asia, has always generated a feeling of insecurity. So it is not at all difficult to find abundant examples of it in Russian literature. As Patterson makes clear in his preface, there are many Russian writers other than the ones he has chosen who well demonstrate estrangement and alienation. Indeed, one is tempted to suggest that a Russian writer who does not suffer from the neurosis is the exception to the general rule. And, pursuing the idea further, it might be possible to show that any novel, any poem, any piece of writing in any language, contains elements of the problem, since it derives almost inevitably from the very occupation of a creative writer. Thus, from the outset, Patterson runs the risk of making his “exile” definition so wide that the term becomes almost meaningless. It may well be [End Page 514] that his book would have been less diffuse had he kept his definition rather narrower. And since he professes that his aim is “not only to make a point about Russian letters but to draw on these Russian texts in an effort to arrive at a deeper understanding of a much larger, more pervasive problem” (p. xi), Patterson runs the further risk of allowing the texts he uses for his demonstration simply to turn into pretexts for uncontrolled and unstructured digression. It has to be said at once that these risks he proves unable or unwilling to guard against. From the nineteenth century Patterson begins, inevitably, with the well-worn theme of the “superfluous man.” Nothing very original here, as this particular label has been applied so often and so indiscriminately to Russian literature that it has turned into a kind of critical rubber stamp. But at least Patterson does not go over the well-worn ground of the realist novel, preferring to concentrate on Dostoevsky’s non-fictional Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, as embodying its author’s post-Siberian sense of estrangement from Russia and his search for a new identity, brought into focus by his trip to Europe. However, in the case of Tolstoy, Patterson reverts to fiction, concentrating on The Death of Ivan Ilich and Resurrection. In this connection he is perhaps rather less scrupulous than he ought to have been over the distinction between fiction and non-fiction. Noting the comments on Tolstoy, the reader becomes increasingly aware that the book is in many respects a more extended sermon than scholarly analysis. This is confirmed by Patterson’s decision in Part Three to include two early twentieth-century religious thinkers, Florensky and Shestov. Here we are guided through comparatively uncharted territory, but with the uncomfortable feeling that we are plunging into an ever darkening and more oppressive jungle of ideas. The feeling of oppression is not greatly relieved by the author’s somewhat heavy-handed style. The remaining four writers covered are from the “Soviet Period...

Exile: The Sense of Alienation in Modern Russian Letters

The life of a human community rests on common experience. Yet in modern life there is an experience common to all that threatens the very basis of community - the experience of exile. No one in the modern world has been spared the encounter with homelessness. Refugees and fugitives, the disillusioned and disenfranchised grow in number every day. Why does it happen? What does it mean? And how are we implicated? David Patterson responds to these and related questions by examining exile, a primary motif in Russian thought over the last century and a half. By he means not only a form of punishment but an existential condition. Drawing on texts by such familiar figures as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, and Brodsky, as well as less thoroughly examined figures, including Florensky, Shestov, Tertz, and Gendelev, Patterson moves beyond the political and geographical fact of exile to explore its spiritual, metaphysical, and linguistic aspects. Thus he pursues the connections between exile and identity, identity and meaning, meaning and language. Patterson shows that the problem of meaning in human life is a problem of homelessness, that the effort to return from exile is an effort to return meaning to the word, and that the exile of the word is an exile of the human being. By making heard voices from the Russian wilderness, Patterson makes visible the wilderness of the world.

Sergei Eisenstein: The Artist in Service of the Revolution

IN ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), the classic account of life in the Soviet labor camps of the gulag, two prisoners argue the artistic merits of Soviet film maker Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948). One, a director who was arrested before he could make his first film, maintains that whether or not one agrees with the political ideology of Eisenstein, it is impossible to deny his genius in such cinematic works as Battleship Potemkin (1925). His fellow prisoner begs to differ, observing that the true mark of greatness lies on the moral plane with truth, and Eisenstein, in service of his master Stalin, fails to pass the test. Thus, the most celebrated moralist and novelist of twentieth century Russian letters addressed the problems of artistic life in the Soviet Union. While the choices made by Solzhenitsyn resulted in clashes with the Soviet regime and his eventual exile to the West, Eisenstein celebrated the Bolshevik Revolution as freeing the artist from the restraints of bourgeoisie nationalism. However, the talented film director ended up being at the mercy of Joseph Stalin's system which sabotaged Eisenstein's work and intimidated the artist. Does the political subservience to Stalin deny Eisenstein his position as one of the great artists of the twentieth century as Solzhenitsyn seems to suggest in Ivan Denisovich? Perhaps a brief survey of the life and work of Eisenstein will

27. On the Submissions of Deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and Letters and Telegrams of Citizens Concerning Questions That Arose during the Gathering of Signatures of Voters in Support of Candidates for the Office of President of the Russian Federation at Enterprises and in Organizations of the Ministry of Railways of the

27. On the Submissions of Deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and Letters and Telegrams of Citizens Concerning Questions That Arose during the Gathering of Signatures of Voters in Support of Candidates for the Office of President of the Russian Federation at Enterprises and in Organizations of the Ministry of Railways of the

Avdot'ia Petrovna Elagina and Her Contribution to Russian Letters

Avdot'ia Petrovna Elagina and Her Contribution to Russian Letters

Exile: the sense of alienation in modern Russian letters

Exile: the sense of alienation in modern Russian letters

Sophia Parnok: the life and work of Russia's Sappho

The weather in Moscow is good, there's no cholera, there's also no lesbian love...Brrr! Remembering those persons of whom you write me makes me nauseous as if I'd eaten a rotten sardine. Moscow doesn't have them--and that's marvellous. --Anton Chekhov, writing to his publisher in 1895 Chekhov's barbed comment suggests the climate in which Sophia Parnok was writing, and is an added testament to to the strength and confidence with which she pursued both her personal and artistic life. Author of five volumes of poetry, and lover of Marina Tsvetaeva, Sophia Parnok was the only openly lesbian voice in Russian poetry during the Silver Age of Russian letters. Despite her unique contribution to modern Russian lyricism however, Parnok's life and work have essentially been forgotten. Parnok was not a political activist, and she had no engagement with the feminism vogueish in young Russian intellectual circles. From a young age, however, she deplored all forms of male posturing and condescension and felt alienated from what she called patriarchal virtues. Parnok's approach to her sexuality was equally forthright. Accepting lesbianism as her natural disposition, Parnok acknowledged her relationships with women, both sexual and non-sexual, to be the centre of her creative existence. Diana Burgin's extensively researched life of Parnok is deliberately woven around the poet's own account, visible in her writings. The book is divided into seven chapters, which reflect seven natural divisions in Parnok's life. This lends Burgin's work a particular poetic resonance, owing to its structural affinity with one of Parnok's last and greatest poetic achievements, the cycle of love lyrics Ursa Major. Dedicated to her last lover, Parnok refers to this cycle as a seven-star of verses, after the seven stars that make up the constellation. Parnok's poems, translated here for the first time in English, added to a wealth of biographical material, make this book a fascinating and lyrical account of an important Russian poet. Burgin's work is essential reading for students of Russian literature, lesbian history and women's studies.