Russia: the 1880s

1
Russia the 1880s

• A generational change

2
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

3
9 February 1881 Dostoevsky dies
4
Ivan Turgenev dies at Bougival outside Paris 3
September 1883
5
Turgenevs remains transported to Russiaburied
at the Volkov Cemetery in St Petersburg
6
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)

7
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)

8
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 Schopenhauers philosophy,
  interest in Buddhism, abnegation of will
• beginning of the ennui of the turn of the century

9
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 arts sake a new aestheticism, themes
  from ancient Greece, symbolism, belief in a
  transcendent world, mysticism poetry

10
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

11
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

12
Garshins 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