Culture and political thought in Russian empire from Cambridge history of Russia, volume 2

Historians often speak of a virtual absence of Petrine 'literature', on the grounds that scarcely any fiction, poetry or drama appeared in print.[24] Generally this shortage is explained by the practical priorities of government- sponsored publishing (no Russian presses were in private hands until the 1780s) and by a lack of leisure for private reading among Russia's small, literate (but still not very cultured) elite. Modern anthologies tend to highlight publicistic writings by churchmen such as Feofan Prokopovich (1681-1736), who praised Russia's progress through the literary forms of panegyric verse and sermons. Prokopovich's oration at Peter's funeral remains one of the best-known works of the era still in print.[25] If, however, we consider texts available in manuscript, including popular religious works, a livelier picture of literary culture emerges. Readers continued to enjoy the lives of saints, tales of roguery, picaresque stories and romances inherited from the previous century.[26] The two best-known examples of manuscript fiction assigned to the Petrine era, the tales of the Russian sailor Vasilii Koriotskii and the valiant Russian cavalier Alexander, continue this tradition, although neither of these texts can be reliably dated. Both fuse travellers' tales, love interest and exotic detail with contemporary elements. Alexander, for example, longs 'to enjoy foreign states with his own eyes' and to study their 'polite manners'.[27]

With regard to non-fiction, historians have identified a 'print revolution' in Peter's reign. Between 1700 and 1725 one hundred times more printed material was produced in Russia than in the whole of the previous century. Instructions issued in February 1700 to an Amsterdam publisher set the tone: 'to print European, Asian and American land and sea maps and charts and all manner of prints and portraits and books in the Slavonic and Dutch languages . . . for the glory of the great sovereign and his tsardom [and] for the general usefulness and profit of the nation and instruction in various crafts'.[28] From 1703 Russia's first newspaper, Vedomosti (Gazette), carried information about military and diplomatic affairs. Analysis of the subject matter of 1,312 titles published in Russia in 1700-25 indicates that laws and regulations accounted for 44%, official notices - 14.6%, religion - 23.5%, military affairs - 7.9%, calendars - 1.8%, Vedomosti - 1.8%, primers and language - 1.7%, history and geography - 1.5%, technology and science - 1.1%, secular philosophy - 0.5% and belles-lettres - 0.2%.[29] The demand for new books was uneven and many remained unsold. There are no reliable statistics for literacy rates in Peter's reign, but estimates for 1797 of 6.9% in the population as a whole suggest low figures indeed for the early 1700s.[30] Even so, state- and church-sponsored projects, such as the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation, educated new readers and the reading primer First Lesson to Youths (1720) by Prokopovich was a bestseller.[31]

A publishing landmark was the introduction of a new typeface, the so- called civil script (grazhdanskii shrift). After several revisions through 1708-10, thirty-eight Cyrillic letters based on modern designs for Latin characters were approved, with redundant letters from church script (kirillitsa) excluded.[32] The first schedule of new books (1710) included works on letter-writing, geometry, artillery, the capture of Troy and descriptions of triumphal gates. The first books actually to be printed in the revised typeface were translations from Ernst-Friedrich Borgsdorf's works on siege warfare and fortification. Despite such evidence of secular trends, one should treat with caution the notion of the secularisation of publishing in Peter's reign. Civil script did not replace church script. Religious literature published in the latter still accounted for over 40 per cent of volumes (as opposed to titles) published, in fact, more religious books were published in Peter's reign than in the seventeenth century. At the same time, a third of the titles printed in church script were secular in content, for example laws and manifestos.[33] It is hard to agree that the two 'opposing' typefaces were 'linked with the opposition of two cultures, Petrine and anti-Petrine' in an entirely consistent way.[34] It is also misleading to make a sharp distinction between the secular ('progressive') and the sacred ('unprogressive') printed word. Religious literature and writers also served the state. Sermons, prayers of thanksgiving, allegorical prints combining biblical and mythological motifs provided the essential theological underpinnings of autocracy. Prokopovich's play Vladimir (1705), about the christianisation of Rus in the tenth century, features a group of ignorant pagan priests, whose resistance to the new religion mimics that of Peter's unenlightened opponents. Even an apparently 'secular' work like the behaviour book The Honourable Mirror of Youth (1717) emphasised faith, piety and obedience.[35] The Church retained considerable control over the printed word. In February 1721 most presses were placed under the direction of the Holy Synod.[36]

The new culture was very unevenly distributed. Concentration of the cultural experiment in St Petersburg reduced the availability of craftsmen and materials for the rest of Russia, where there was little attempt to impose foreign styles. For important buildings outside the capital the 'Moscow Baroque' style remained popular for several decades, while for routine construction, even in the back streets of St Petersburg, wood remained the standard material. The spectacular wooden church of the Transfiguration at Kizhi was completed in 1714 as Trezzini's thoroughly Western Peter and Paul cathedral got under way. Everywhere icons, in both traditional and 'Italianate' styles, were in far greater demand than portraits, as were lubok wood prints, sold on the streets by vendors. Several lubki have themselves become 'icons' of the Petrine era, notably the print of a scissors-wielding barber attacking an Old Believer's beard, and 'The Mice Bury the Cat', a seventeenth-century subject that became associated with opponents' jubilation at Peter's death. Popular icon subjects also appeared on lubki.[37]

Private initiatives in high art remained weak. Local artists and architects fully trained in the Western manner were slow to appear, as was a whole range of subject matter in art, including free-standing landscapes, still life, history painting and domestic genre. These anomalies have been explained by the dearth of independent patrons with a taste for secular art, the limited opportunities for Russian artists to assimilate new subject matter, clients' preference for prestigious foreign originals, even by the theory that certain genres were too 'frivolous' for war-focused Russia.⁴⁰ There was as yet no academy or school for the arts, although the Academy of Sciences, whose charter Peter issued shortly before his death, sponsored artistic activities. Even nobles, harnessed to state service andabsent from their homes for longperiods, had few opportunities for collecting and connoisseurship.⁴¹ The typical country manor house was a glorified wooden cabin, perhaps topped with a rustic pediment and with a couple of family portraits in 'parsuna' style inside.⁴²

24

See Gary Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of Intellectual Life inRussia, 1700-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), and 'Publishing and Print Culture', RRP, pp. 119-32. S. P. Luppov, KnigavRossii vpervoi chetverti XVIII v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973). Generally on Russian literature, see H. B. Segal (ed.), The Literature of Eighteenth-Century Russia, 2 vols. (New York: E. P. Dixon, 1967); C. Drage, Russian Literature in the Eighteenth Century (London: published by author, 1978); W. E. Brown, A History of Eighteenth-Century RussianLiterature (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1980); W GarethJones, 'Literature in the Eighteenth Century', inN. Cornwell(ed.), The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 25-35. In Russian, some of the best literary scholarship has appeared in XVIII vek: sbornik (Leningrad/St Peterburg: Nauka), 22 vols. so far. See also SGECRN, 33 vols. so far.

25

Text in Segal, The Literature of Eighteenth-Century Russia, vol. I, pp. 141-8.

26

See M. A. Morris, The Literature of Roguery in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Russia (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000).

27

Texts in G. Moiseeva (ed.), Russkiepovestipervoi treti XVIII veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1965), pp. 191-210, 211-94.

28

PSZ, 4th series, no. 1751, pp. 6-8.

29

Figures in Marker, Publishing, pp. 30-1.

30

B. Mironov, 'Gramotnost' v Rossii 1797-1917 godov', Istoriia SSSR (1985), no. 4: 149. (Figures for urban males: 28%, urban females: 12%; all urban: 21%).

31

M. Okenfuss, 'The Jesuit Origins ofPetrine Education', in J. Garrard (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 106-30; M. Okenfuss, The Discovery of Childhood in Russia:The Evidence of the Slavic Primer (Newtonville: Academic International Press, 1980).

32

A. G. Shitsgal (ed.), Grazhdanskii shrift pervoi chetverti XVlllveka 1708-1725 (Moscow: Kniga, 1981); Gary Marker, 'The Petrine "Civil Primer" reconsidered', Solanus, 1989:

25-39.

33

Figures in Marker, Publishing, passim.

34

V M. Zhivov, 'Azbuchnaia reformaPetra I kak semioticheskoe preobrazovanie', Uchenye zapiski Tartuskogo gos. universiteta 720 (1986): 56, 60-1.

35

See L. Hughes, '"The Crown of Maidenly Honour and Virtue": Redefining Femininity in Peter I's Russia', in W. Rosslyn (ed.), Women and Gender in Eighteenth-century Russia (London: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 35-49.

36

S. P. Luppov, Kniga v Rossii v pervoi chetvertoi XVIII v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973) p. 69.

37

See D. A. Rovinskii, Russkie narodnye kartinki, 5 vols. (St Petersburg, 1881), vol. IV pp. 322-9; vol. V pp. 159-61; E. A. Mishina, Russkaia graviura na dereve XVII-XVIII vekov (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2000), pp. 106-7, 126.