In terms of cultural accomplishments, the nineteenth century was Russia’s greatest century. Despite political, social, and economic problems, or perhaps because of them, imperial Russia witnessed an unprecedented expansion of its cultural frontier. Above all, it acquired “taste” through the development of a “high culture.” The literate section of Russian society expanded appreciably, and from its ranks emerged an impressive array of bureaucrats, critics, writers, musicians, and artists whose impact has been felt beyond Russia ever since. It is quite common to refer to Russia in the nineteenth century as having gone through two “Golden Ages” of literature or, if one would put it more modestly, a golden age that covered most of the nineteenth century and a silver age that describes the literary and cultural scene during the reign of the last tsar. As has been frequently observed, the Russian national consciousness formed in the eighteenth century acquired philosophical underpinnings during the nineteenth, largely through this spectacular growth of a “high culture.” Institutions of higher learning multiplied, training an increasing number of students throughout the century, and cities became cultural as well as political centers and symbols. Cosmopolitanism, or reaction to it—the result of study or travel abroad, the learning of foreign languages, especially French, and the impact of wars and European imports—was taken for granted among the educated elite.

In this great cultural experience, the first half of the nineteenth century, especially the reign of Alexander I (1801-25), claims a place of prominence, and its impact on the rest of the century is readily discernible. But, as we have been repeatedly reminded, there is little wisdom in periodizing history, especially Russian history, into neat chronological centuries. Thus the roots of all this cultural activity in the nineteenth century can easily be traced to the eighteenth, Russia’s crucial century, if not earlier. Peter the Great’s attempts to modernize Russian society and institutions, whatever their limitations, had the effect of energizing and educating that society first in the art of war and gradually in the arts themselves. Modernization to a certain degree meant Europeanization or, better still, a confrontation with Europe in political, social, and cultural matters. Devoid of cultural inhibitions, Peter, the tsar soldier, met the European challenge. Above all, he expanded Russia’s political, geographical, and cultural frontiers and set the pattern that, with some deviations, was followed by his successors, especially Catherine the Great, who dominated the last part of the eighteenth century as Peter had dominated the first. The emergence of Russia as a major European power constitutes one of the most significant political events of the eighteenth century. Yet Russia closed its eighteenth century in a state of cultural confusion, resulting chiefly from an imprudent assimilation, sometimes a slavish imitation, of Western, especially French, models of high culture. The nineteenth century sought, among other things, to modify this cultural confusion in imperial Russia and to replace it as much as possible with a comprehensive national cultural identity. The Russian government, that is to say the governments of the five tsars who reigned in the nineteenth century, was central to this process. In other words, despite the persistence of a certain cosmopolitanism or internationalism, Russia in the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of cultural as well as political nationalism.

The essays in this book consider several manifestations of this cultural process in nineteenth-century Russia. They are divided into two categories. The essays in the first category treat the broad perspective of nineteenth-century Russian culture through the examination of significant issues such as the nature and role of the Russian intelligentsia, this period’s cultural barometer; the rise and role of the cities, especially St. Petersburg and Moscow as cultural symbols; Russian literature, concentrating on the “Russianness of the Russian novel”; and accomplishments in the field of music, with special emphasis on the relationship between the development of the “native song and national consciousness.”

The second category of essays concentrates on the relation between art and society during this period. The opening essay in Part Two addresses itself directly to that question, and while its emphasis is on the first half of the century, many of the arguments apply to the century as a whole. It is followed by a series of essays that elaborate many of the points mentioned therein, such as the evolution of Russian painting; the contacts of Russian painters with Europe, especially Italy, where they went for training and in “pursuit of light”; the attitude of the Russian intelligentsia toward art; architectural taste in nineteenth-century Russia as revealed in the buildings of Moscow and St. Petersburg; the enrichment or embellishment of these cities and private homes with sculpture; the state of the decorative arts; the growth of the Russian graphic arts, especially caricature; and the nature of Russian folk art and its relationship to “high” art. This remarkable growth of culture and the interrelationship between art and society in nineteenth-century Russia have long fascinated historians and critics, who tend to view them as points of departure for the analysis and greater understanding of Russian history and institutions as well as for philosophical and existential inquiries of universal relevance.

This volume’s assessment of Russian “high culture” in the nineteenth century begins with a discussion of the emergence and nature of that most heterogeneous and undefinable, though identifiable, group—the Russian intelligentsia. Besides contributing substantially to the growth of Russian culture, the Russian intelligentsia was itself a cultural phenomenon of considerable interest and crucial signficance. Its members articulated passionately Russia’s frustrations and aspirations, and, as Nicholas Riasanovsky points out in his essay, “once an intelligentsia had been formed there was no turning back.” Definitions of the intelligentsia abound, furnished with narcissistic generosity by its own members as well as by subsequent generations of historians. But what is worth repeating is that the intelligentsia was one of the by-products of Russia’s drive for modernization. It was, in fact, the creation of the Russian state, on which in many ways it remained dependent up to the middle of the nineteenth century. This creation was partly the result of secular education, which accompanied modernization, and partly the result of the development of a spirit of inquiry, which ultimately led to the development of a critical stance, the indispensable characteristic of a true intelligent. It was not until the 1860s with the so-called new Enlightenment and its emphasis on materialism and social utilitarianism, that the peculiar type of the Russian intelligent, as usually defined and appreciated in the West, was formed. Until then, and in some cases, one could argue, up to the end of the century, the attitude of the Russian intelligentsia toward political authority and cultural orientation was at best ambivalent.

The history of the emergence and nature of the Russian intelligentsia is intrinsically fascinating, but more significant perhaps is the fact that it chronicles the deep involvement of the Russian government in the development of educational and cultural institutions, ranging from the building of entire cities, universities, and printing presses, to centers for the fine arts. While serving the needs of the educated section of Russian society, these cultural institutions contributed to the further growth of the intelligentsia itself. Any way one looks at this phenomenon, and despite abundant self-criticism, members of the intelligentsia were the first to point to Russia’s beauty and unique destiny. Whether Slavophiles or Westernizers, they were all in their own ways nationalists, and they concerned themselves with Russia’s improvement and its role as a political and cultural catalyst on a national and global scale. Inasmuch as possible, it is important to appreciate the complexity and versatility of the intelligentsia’s profile, since many of the Russian cultural phenomena of the nineteenth century reach us through its perceptions. Members of the intelligentsia in fact became cultural symbols themselves as well as transmitters of perceptions about culture in general and about art and its social relevance in particular.

Perhaps the most imposing cultural symbols of imperial Russia were its cities. The building of big symmetrical cities, symbols of political and cultural power and prestige, was part and parcel of the Enlightenment, which Russia borrowed from Europe in the eighteenth century. St. Petersburg, erected as the new Russian capital by Peter the Great, in time surpassed Moscow as the political and cultural center of the empire. The city that brought the West physically and with force into Russia, St. Petersburg symbolized all Western intrusions and challenged the traditional style of Moscovite life. As might be expected, then, that section of the Russian intelligentsia referred to as the Westernizers would have claimed St. Petersburg as the embodiment of Russia’s greatness and the Slavophiles would have endorsed Moscow with equal enthusiasm. In some ways they did. But despite their respective senses of topophilia, it was characteristic of the ambivalence of the Russian intelligentsia that their attitudes toward these cities as cultural symbols were quite complex. In his essay “St. Petersburg and Moscow as Cultural Symbols,” Sidney Monas traces manifestations of this fascinating and significant symbolism, from the first formal ode to St. Petersburg in 1718 by Buzhinsky to Solzhenitsyn’s reaction upon visiting the same city in the 1960s. To be sure, these two cities symbolized distinctive life styles, but they also reflected the increasingly complex nature of Russian society in the course of the nineteenth century. Both cities, while symbolically antithetical, became emblems of national prestige, as expressed in the rebuilding of Moscow after the Napoleonic invasion in 1812 and the defense of St. Petersburg-Leningrad during the Second World War.

In addition to being symbols, Moscow and St. Petersburg were centers of political, social, and cultural activity. As such, they contributed to, as well as figured prominently in, the most readily identifiable cultural achievement of the Russians in the nineteenth century, their national literature. The content of Russian literature has remained central to the thinking of many readers and critics ever since it established itself as a major tradition or, as some have described it, as a social institution. This particular orientation may have been forced upon us chiefly because of the way the Russian novel emerged. As Donald Fanger explains in his essay, “On the Russianness of the Russian Nineteenth-Century Novel,” “The rise of fiction in Russia . . . went in tandem with the rise of a special readership, the intelligentsia—that self-conscious minority of Russians who enjoyed the privilege of literacy and sought justification in seeing it as a means to the fulfillment of a moral duty.” They expected something specific from their writers, and the writers obliged by concentrating on relevant themes of importance. Without abandoning this aspect of Russian literature entirely, Fanger articulates the view that the “form,” that is to say the author’s management of his narrative, rather than the content, is the peculiar characteristic of the Russian novel. He illustrates this thesis by examining three well-known classics—Pushkin’s novel in verse, Eugene Onegin; Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time; and Gogol’s Dead Souls — although he also finds this concern with form persisting in the works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoi, and Chekhov, with whom he concludes his analysis. He views these giants of Russian literature as writers who, by employing “a special variety of fictional discourse,” lent a universality to the cultural enterprise of the Russian nineteenth century that would otherwise have been either inconceivable or at best short-lived.

About the time that new literary forms were taking shape in imperial Russia, Russian music was coming into its own, with the emergence of a nationalistic school of composers. A crucial turning point was the composition in 1836 of the first Russian opera, Mikhail Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar. The trend reached its high point by the end of the century with the works of Balakirev, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and others. Yet, as Malcolm Brown reminds us, the foundations of this national music, as is true of so many other fields of artistic expression in nineteenth-century Russia, were laid during the reign of Alexander I. These developments in turn grew out of the musical accomplishments of the eighteenth century, when Russia, undergoing Westernization, had gradually witnessed the rise of a secular musical culture. The rise of a national consciousness rested on the discovery, preservation, and active use of native cultural ingredients. Native musical sources came from the musical heritage of the Orthodox church and from Russian folk songs. In his essay Brown traces the major role played by folk songs in the development of national music in Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The native song, from European as well as from Asiatic Russia, proved a most congenial genre for self-expression and gradually invaded a variety of musical compositions and performances. It became a versatile tool in the hands of Russian nationalist composers, and it elated the Russian public as well as the intelligentsia, who saw in its new usage a source of national cultural strength and an expression of national genius.

The triumph of the native element or, better still, the healthy synthesis of Western musical borrowings and native elements in nineteenth-century Russian music, is part of the story of Russia’s cultural maturity during the last two centuries—from imitation and imprudent assimilation to a critical evaluation. The same trend or evolution may be observed in the ballet, in the theater, and in literature. Elements borrowed from the West were transformed in Russian style and exported to an amazed Western world by the beginning of the twentieth century.

In this context, the introduction to Part Two of this volume, “Russian Art and Society, 1800-1860,” by S. Frederick Starr, takes on special meaning. As Starr traces the manifestations of Russian secular art during the first half of the nineteenth century, one is struck by its complexity, which reflects the variety of borrowings from Europe throughout the eighteenth century. Architects, sculptors, painters, conductors, play directors, scholars, craftsmen, and objects of art had come to Russia from the breadth and length of Europe. Russia’s polychromatic European mask persisted into the nineteenth century even though native colors were gradually becoming dominant. When Russians visited Europe for inspiration and enlightenment, they roamed widely. During the first half of the nineteenth century Russian artists and patrons of the arts flocked to Italy, where they lived and learned, a topic elaborated in Joshua Taylor’s essay, “Russian Painters and the Pursuit of Light.” Starr’s essay provides the setting for the remaining chapters, which deal with a variety of related topics such as the attitudes of the intelligentsia toward art; city design and building; sculpture and the decorative arts; the graphic arts; and finally the realm of folk art. Starr also offers an insightful commentary on the question of partronage of the arts. In essence the state exercised a monopoly in the development of the arts until later in the century, when individual patrons from the merchant class emerged to challenge the state’s domination. State monopoly, in determining the artistic climate of the period, expressed itself chiefly through the Imperial Academy of Arts, the official arbiter on the subject. The role and impact of the academy on the development of Russian art is controversial, but one is impressed by its accomplishments, especially since most of the important painters were trained under its auspices and worked within its jurisdiction despite occasional displays of resentment and resistance. The situation changed dramatically during the second half of the nineteenth century, when a more conscious effort was made by artists to free art from the restriction of the academy and to engage it actively in social causes.

During the second half of the century Russia made extraordinary progress in art and, in the opinion of some critics, had caught up with the West and was about to overtake it. John E. Bowlt’s discussion of the evolution of Russian painting is set in the context of cultural and social events, many of which were affected dramatically by Russia’s confrontation with Napoleon in 1812 and by the political climate of the 1860s. Bowlt maintains that “an adequate appreciation of nineteenth-century Russian art can be achieved only on the basis of the realization that, by and large, the Russian artist was (and is) concerned with the tendentious and transformative purpose of art and not simply with formal or esthetic qualities.” In dialectical fashion, Bowlt traces the development of major trends in painting. The introduction of secular artistic techniques and themes with an imposed discipline, as championed by the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, serves as the thesis, which was sustained by such great masters as Kiprensky, Briullov, and Ivanov. Antithetical to this European dimension is the national ingredient, which became quite assertive in the life and accomplishments of painters such as Venetsianov, Soroka and Krendovsky. The national trend reached its high point in 1863, when thirteen artists left the Imperial Academy and encouraged the development of realism in Russian art. In Russian realism, which dominated the second half of the century, Bowlt sees the synthesis of Russia’s artistic experiment. This synthesis, in turn, generated its own antithesis with the emergence of the Russian avant-garde artists at the beginning of the twentieth century. The struggle between established norms and spontaneity, between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, is at the heart of the central question of nineteenth-century Russian culture, which developed geographically and esthetically on the borderlands of European civilization. Russia remained a sort of Janus, gazing with equal perplexity both East and West as it strove to achieve a distinct cultural identity.

Quite naturally, the state and purpose of art in general, and of Russian art in particular, interested the Russian intelligentsia profoundly. Part of their role as “the conscience of the nation” was to seek to understand and direct the cultural explosion of their time. Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier discusses this question in “The Intelligentsia and Art.” Concentrating on the second half of the nineteenth century, Valkenier expands on Riasanovsky’s consideration of the emergence and nature of the intelligentsia. The expectations of the Russian intelligentsia with regard to art were similar to those with regard to other spheres of Russian culture—the search for a genuine expression of national spirit. In this search they asked crucial questions—about the “specificity” of Russian life and culture during the 1840s; about the nature of Russia’s institutions during the 1860s; about the relationship of Russian culture to society in the 1870s; and about “national peculiarities and accomplishments” during the 1880s. Following this outline, Valkenier studies representative critics such as Stasov and painters such as Fedotov and Perov, who reflected the prevailing definition of “Russianness.” Despite differences, the majority of the intelligentsia and the painters under consideration endeavored to liberate art from classicism, the style imposed on it by imperial patronage and the rules of the academy. In the context of the political and social changes of the second half of the nineteenth century—reforms, revolutionism, and populism—Russian art caught up with literature and music in becoming a truly national institution.

Classicism, or neoclassicism, determined Russia’s taste in “high culture,” especially in architecture and sculpture, as it had for the rest of Europe in the eighteenth century, where a conscious effort was made to turn to the classical world of Rome and especially of Greece for inspiration and taste. To be sure, the Russians came to appreciate the classical rule chiefly through France in the eighteenth century and through Italy during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Russian Academy of Art reflected these influences, too, and it was natural to send its students to Italy, where, as Joshua Taylor points out, “Russian painters, sculptors, and artisans proved themselves no less capable than others of abiding by the classical rule of taste.” But once in Italy, Russian painters experienced a liberation from the control of their own academy. The brilliant Italian light had a lasting impact on Russian painters from Matveev, Shchedrin, and Kiprensky to Briullov and Ivanov. They, and by extension Russian art, became part of a cosmopolitan venture by virtue of the Italian exposure, as earlier in the eighteenth century Russian artists had experienced something similar by virtue of the French connection. Both the French and Italian experiences of Russian artists contributed to the national synthesis that emerged during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Classicism or neoclassicism found its visible and in some ways most lasting expression in the Russian architecture and sculpture identified primarily with the design and buildings of the new capital, St. Petersburg. But even Moscow, the “Slavophile capital,” had many of its prominent sections rebuilt in the new style after 1812. Albert Schmidt’s essay on architecture in nineteenth-century Russia considers the philosophy, justification, and actual building of these two imposing cities in the context of both European tastes in architecture and Russian realities. Political and economic considerations accounted for the flourishing of these cities in the classical era as well as their temporary decline during the second half of the nineteenth century. The growth of the Russian population and its increasing social and economic diversity contributed to the decline of classicism, as architects sought to accommodate the industrial and materialistic mood of the nation. But as Schmidt points out, the classic mode in architecture reemerged at the turn of the twentieth century and again in a rather monstrous form during the Stalin era. It may be argued that the monumentality of Russia’s cities, impressive in size and rational and ordered in design, has historically corresponded in spirit with the political greatness claimed or aspired to by Russian political leaders, tsarist and Soviet.

A vital feature of the neoclassical architectural landscape was sculpture of the same type, the subject of Janet Kennedy’s essay. Neoclassical sculpture came to Russia along with the other elements of Westernization and also developed under the careful scrutiny of the Academy of Arts. The academy sent able Russian students such as Ivan Martos to study the craft in Italy in the midst of classical antiquities; out of this experience came the works of sculpture that graced squares, gardens, public buildings, cemeteries, and private houses.

Although sculpture developed and indeed persisted as a permanent feature of the Russian landscape, it faced the assault of romanticism and, more specifically, of nationalism. Classical sculpture was regarded as unresponsive in terms of personal esthetic concerns or national objectives. It eventually came into competition with icon painting and other religious and national forms of art that witnessed a revival in the second half of the nineteenth century as part of the assertion of Russian consciousness.

Closely connected with Russian architecture and sculpture and sharing their pattern of growth and decline were the Russian decorative arts, which also flourished during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. As Paul Schaffer points out, Russian decorative arts produced during the first half of the nineteenth century were often of higher quality than those produced before or after. During this period one finds a creative blend of European influences and Russian responses to them. In the case of porcelain and glass, for example, the Russians effectively utilized Western technical innovations and vastly improved the quality of decorative objects. At the same time, certain native arts such as lacquer, bone, and steel work maintained their distinctly Russian character.

In addition to an esthetic receptivity toward art objects on the part of Russia’s ruling and educated elites, two major factors contributed to the flourishing of the decorative arts in the empire of the tsars. The first was imperial patronage, as reflected in the various commissions to European craftsmen and, more importantly, in the establishment of the Imperial Factory and other centers where this art began to take native root. The second was cheap serf labor, which was used extensively for this time-consuming occupation. The use of serf labor also explains the decline in decorative arts during the second half of the nineteenth century, when free or cheap labor was becoming a scarce commodity. In this respect the fate of the Russian decorative arts reflects political and social changes as well as shifts of cultural taste.

Related in some ways to the decorative arts are the graphic arts, which also experienced unprecedented growth in the nineteenth century and which reflect trends noticeable in other areas of artistic expression. The graphic arts came late to Russia and developed slowly because of the general backwardness of society, the high rate of illiteracy, and the lack of competent Russian engravers and etchers. As in many other areas, changing conditions in the nineteenth century encouraged the growth of this artistic genre. Within the context of the development of the graphic arts, John Bowlt discusses the emergence of Russian caricature, emphasizing its accomplishments during the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I, in spite of adverse circumstances.

By its very nature, caricature, like satire, is a deviation from established or accepted norms. Religious and artistic canons up to the beginning of the nineteenth century militated against caricature, and throughout the century censorship aimed at stifling it. The Napoleonic invasion of Russia gave Russian caricaturists an opportunity to direct their art not only against Napoleon but also against internal social and political problems. But caricaturists were always treading on thin ice. Still caricature survived, and, as Bowlt points out, “whether as a direct sociopolitical comment or as a critical paraphrase of the fine arts, [it] constituted an alternative and dissident tradition.” In this respect, caricature functioned like some of the finest literary masterpieces of the period, which strove to outwit the censor while carrying a critical message.

The essays thus far have been concerned with aspects of “high culture,” while placing “high culture” within its social context, and above all within the context of an emerging Russian national consciousness. National consciousness, if it is not to approximate artificial intellectualism, must take into consideration the nation’s broader participation in areas of common concern. In this respect Russian artists and patrons of the arts could not ignore the popular arts for long, and a return to these folk traditions constituted a central element of Russian nationalistic expression in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, by the end of the century folk art was recognized as an integral part of the esthetic experience of the nation. It is quite appropriate, therefore, that this volume concludes with Alison Hilton’s essay “Russian Folk Art and ‘High Art’ in the Early Nineteenth Century.” Folk art was partly functional, but it was also decorative. Folk motifs were widely used, and their longevity was remarkable. Hilton discusses the historical evolution of the various types of folk art, from woodcarving and painting on wood to weaving and embroidery, arts that remained virtually free from outside influences until the eighteenth century. As in the case of the decorative arts, patronage and serf labor were instrumental to the development of folk art. The threat to folk art that came with the emancipation of the serfs and the rise of industrialization stimulated an interest in its preservation, and in this respect folk art became a social as well as an esthetic commentary on nineteenth-century Russian conditions.

The main influences that determined the character of the cultural accomplishments of nineteenth-century Russia were the European Enlightenment, romanticism, and realism—all of them secular in their philosophical world view. For this reason nineteenth-century Russian “high culture” was above all a secular culture, or that is the way it is generally presented. But even a secular culture cannot develop in a vacuum. Imperial Russia, despite its modernization and accompanying secularization, was still basically a religious society. Religion, chiefly that of the Orthodox church, continued to leave its mark on the social behavior of Russian society as well as on its esthetic sensibility. And this applied to all strata. In fact, it can be argued that this pervasive religious quality of Russian life served as a major integrative force. After all, during this same period, Orthodox churches continued to be built and icons painted, and from ecclesiastical seminaries emerged bureaucrats, revolutionaries, historians, cultural critics, writers, philosophers, and visionaries. A careful look at some of the lives and works of the individuals discussed in this book attests to the centrality of a religious view of life. In the final analysis, such a consideration makes for a more comprehensive understanding of the challenge that modernization offered and the Russian response to it, especially in the nineteenth century, when imperial Russia effected an amazing synthesis of national culture and consciousness.