Russia: the 1880s

A generational change

1880 Pushkin Monument

• Speeches by Dostoevsky, Turgenev

• The myth of Russian literature, with Pushkin as its foundation, takes shape

• Pushkin is seen as “narodnyi” – national poet, creator of the Russian literary language

9 February 1881 Dostoevsky dies…

Ivan Turgenev… … dies at Bougival outside Paris 3 September 1883

Turgenev’s remains transported to Russia…buried at the Volkov Cemetery in St Petersburg

Of the great novelists, only Tolstoy remains

• Tolstoy goes through religious crisis, renounces his early writings

• Espouses a radical Christianity based on poverty, non-violence, anarchy

(Painting 1887 by Ilya Repin)

Repression

• Age darkened by the assassination of Alexander II in 1881

• Police state strengthened, trials of suspects

• Pogroms break out in the areas of Jewish settlement

• Education system changed to emphasize classical studies rather than natural sciences

• Repin: “They did not expect him” (1884)

Intellectual shifts: after positivism

• Turning away from the optimism and belief in progress of the previous age

• Radical socialist ideas: terror or communism, strikes

• Pessimism promoted by Schopenhauer’s philosophy, interest in Buddhism, abnegation of will

• beginning of the ennui of the turn of the century

Deep divisions

• The intellectual world becomes divided as the industrial age reaches its peak

• Naturalism: harsh leftist vision of the sufferings of people in the industrial age: prose

• Art for art’s sake: a new aestheticism, themes from ancient Greece, symbolism, belief in a transcendent world, mysticism: poetry

Changes in the social landscape: the new reader

• Accelerated urbanization and industrialization of Russia

• Greater literacy• Need for doctors, engineers, educators • New, classless reader • Cheap mass-produced magazines and journals

catered to lower-class tastes• The short form comes to the fore: the short

story, anecdote, sketch

Vsevolod Garshin (1855-88)

• Father committed suicide in front of him when he was 7

• Fought in the Russo-Turkish war (1877-1878)

• Suffered from mental illness, committed suicide

Garshin’s work

• Left a collection of short stories• Focusses on the inner life of the individual under

extreme stress, the subconscious world • Highly compressed stories with a grimly ironic twist • “Red Flower” – about a madman who believes the

evil of the world is concentrated in three red poppies growing in the mental hospital garden; he contrives to defeat his wardens and destroy them and dies in a bout of nervous exhaustion