History Of Russian LiteratureEssay Preview: History Of Russian LiteratureReport this essayIt could be said that Russian literature did not rise to a powerful and meaningful media until the 17th century, when the Russian literary language underwent drastic changes due to the influence of contacts with the West; and as a result it incorporated elements of Greek, Latin, Polish, German, French, and most recently, English vocabulary and syntax. While on the same account, there is two sections of this sort of evolved storytelling, one being Russian literature that a person might learn in the classroom, while the other is for the Ðuneducated as oral-tellings, and urban folklore, usually told as in prose and poetic forms. And while the stories that are orally told within a community can be just as powerful and widespread as any published literary work, that is not what this paper is intending to address. As the published authors represent all the stories and individuals who have been unable to tell their stories, these authors are those that were able to not only experience and reflect upon history, but give back to it, being immortalized forever in their writings.
And so now, newly inspired, Russian literature of the 18th century came a great way in its development: from classicism to sentimentalism (and often times nostalgia), from an ideal of enlightened monarch to intimate feelings of an individual. While the beginning of this new century was rather violent for Russia, with the creation of a navy (an outlet for wars to be fought now at sea, as well as on land), the development of trade and a growing industry now was a growing national consciousness and concern. A Russian classicism came flowing in along with foreigners, their ideas and began the development under the influence of the Age of Enlightenment.
Therefore the main hero in this enlightened literature was often an educated monarch or an ideal citizen who embodied Peter the Greats ideals, often represented in liberty, order, and harmony. The writings would often praise that which was public over private, an intellect over feelings, an order over chaos, and a civilization over nature. But by the middle of the 18th century, many of the people realized that the educated regent ideal was far from real life, and this more or less angered the people. As the people have been fed the prospect of a visionary society, it was far from ever happening, outside the realm of fictional books.
The seed was planted, and the newly accessible writings of both domestic and international authors became available, it inspired the leaders of Russia to become one of the first world powers. But a peasant war (1773-1775), led
by Pugachev showed those uncompromising contradictions that were between ruling class and powerless people. A basic principle of enlighten ideology about absolutism as the only rational power failed.
Then there was a new literary sentiment formed, (sample of authors such as: Kheraskov, Muraviev, Karamzin, Dmitriev) known as sentimentalists. This sort of literature was distinguish by the increasing interest to understand the inward life of human being. Sentimentalists thought that from birth, human beings are kind, without detestation, treachery or cruelty. The main topics in these literary works during this time was to uplift soul and achieve moral excellence. Therefore sensitivity was considered to be the basic source of virtue, that is why all verses were full of compassion, melancholy and sorrow. The first of these took the form of lyric poems, songs, and romances. But both classicism and sentimentalism suffered from the narrow focus because neither were able to emulate exactly what it meant to have an individuals inner integrity.
Finally in the 19th century, there was a “Golden Age” to Russian literature. As the literary works of this time were unique as an untaped source that can not be compared to anything else.
Starting in the 1820s, various concepts were developed in Russia that applied a relationship between history and national literature. For example, the critic Belinsky (1811-1864) perceived Russian literature to be a vehicle of Russias progress toward joining the nations of the West in their quest to realize the potential of the human spirit. While another critic Apollon Grigoriev (1822-1864), amended Belinskys “westernizing” notion by suggesting that as a whole, Russian literature was evolving, but to the credit of the individual author, rather than a source influenced by foreign elements. Needless to say, this example of conflict of extremes is one of many, but should clearly illustrate the ordeal surrounding what people believed Russian literature should be.
Now that people were discussing what they believed Russian literature should represent, other individuals were already being inspired by the idea of new, and sometimes opposing revolutionary ideas. One of these moments came to life in St. Petersburg, as the Russian Revolution, when the Decembrists marched into the Senate Square on December 14, 1825. The uprising that these individuals had ignited was immediately suppressed, and the writer Pushkin then wrote, in regards to the czar Nicholas I, “He was made emperor, and right then displayed his flair and drive: sent to Siberia 120 men and strung up five.” But it did not end there, as then again in 1848 there was another rising revolutionary circle known as the Petrashevists who were sparked into action by the writings of Belinsky. The purpose of this group was to prepare for uprisings and secretly write and distribute material that supported emancipation and liberty. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) even became a member of this group. But once again Nicholas I was able to suppress the revolutionaries by arresting and exiling the conspirators to penal servitude in Siberia. Among these was Dostoevsky, who later went on to write Crime and Punishment, mixing both truths and half-truths within his writing. Obviously freedom was a personal theme in his life, as it then became reflected in his writing. But it was this sense of freedom that soon evolved into the freedom of the human spirit, and finally the journey to find the human in a human being.
While revolutionaries came and went, so did the beliefs that they represented, until finally Russian philosophies evolved to Marxists reasoning. One of these supporters was Plekhanov (1856-1918), who saw literature as a part of the superstructure of society and viewed that a writers social class determined the content of his art. Until finally, Soviet ideology conceived literature to be “a truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development”. But what all these views have in common, is that they perceive literary history as an organism connected to all other organisms (art, music, culture, governments, movements), rather than simply a function for a
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Thus, it seems that Russian literature has all the features of a social science, at least in terms of its content. Writers as they exist don’t necessarily have social and/or political institutions, nor do they represent all of society — but they do show us the way we have to work that way in a meaningful way by bringing in people to study and write about new forms of history — and they demonstrate the revolutionary possibilities of a future world where our work is no longer just a ‘properly constructed’ and ‘purely political’, as long as we work this way and this way.
Social Science, on the other hand, is more or less a ‘permanent’ social science, a social science that, while it will never be perfect, will help people of all kinds to create and to share their own stories and images. No matter which political theory we speak of, there is a clear moral and ethical position among the various political parties, in the field of individual human and social struggles to form a new society, that is, in the world of the individual and the struggles between a certain set of individuals. This moral position means that it is best to look far and wide for the people of our time (both human and social) who will organize, to be able to organize themselves in the struggle for our future in the world and to carry that struggle into the future, rather than merely a political party or a social organization – the kind we should organize now. It may be argued that we cannot, for example, organize without socialism, because that would fall short of forming an organic federation of all those organizations that might be in opposition to the bourgeois organization of the past. This is in fact not the case, as we see from literature in history. What is quite more disputing is the position of Marxism, which is the current philosophy that is being used in our time in opposition to capitalism, in the present epoch. Marx, who for the most part was at the bottom of the ideological spectrum, has very little influence on the history of Marxist thought or ideology, and has been regarded as the enemy of all true social science. In the words of Victor Proust (in The Revolution (1848), the ‘Prouthian’ thought about the ‘Dictatorisms of Capital’s Nature’), it is for this reason that our ‘Left’ (and our bourgeois social science) are not quite quite right in some respects; but that for others it is the most effective political philosophy. Proust is very clear in describing Engels’ opposition to Marxism. Engels has said over and over that (as we can see from his work), our ‘Left’ is not only incompatible with Marxism, but the only revolutionary thought that our time and this time may be able to offer us (in the