Finally, and perhaps most important, Solov'ev had a profound impact on the remarkable artistic revival of the silver age. Solov'ev was one of the pioneers in the rediscovery of the joys of poetry. Although his own poems are, for the most part, not masterpieces, his idea that the world is but a symbolic reflection of a more vital ideal world all around us gave poets a new impulse to discover and proclaim these higher beauties and harmonies. Solov'ev's cosmological theories revived the old idea of prophetic poetry common to Schelling and Saint-Martin. His philosophy was as important in calling forth the poetry of the silver age as had the philosophy of these earlier romantic figures been in inspiring the poetry of the golden age a half century earlier. The rediscovery of poetic beauty, of viewing the sensual world as an avenue to a higher spiritual world, came as a welcome relief from the increasingly dry prose of realism in decline. The art of social utility and photographic naturalism had held the stage for several decades; but with the decline of the thick journals, whose critics had consistently shouted down all believers in art for art's sake, the way was being opened for fresh artistic approaches. With the acquisition of The Northern Herald by Solov'ev and several other religiously oriented poets in 1891, the idea that beauty has a meaning of its own gained a new mouthpiece. The publication of Dmitry Merezhkovsky's "Symbols" in 1892 and his "On the Present Condition of Russian Literature and the Causes of Its Decline" the following year gave new popularity to the idea that the real world is only a shadow of the ideal and that the artist is uniquely able to penetrate through the former to the latter.
Solov'ev's poetic references to a mysterious "beautiful lady" were both a symptom and a cause of the new turn toward mystical idealism. The beautiful lady was in part Comte's goddess {vierge positive) of humanity, in part the missing madonna of a revived romanticism, and in part the divine wisdom {sophia) of Orthodox theology and occult theosophy. Although Solov'ev died earlier than either Plekhanov or Miliukov, his immediate posthumous influence in early-twentieth-century Russia was probably as great as the living impact of these other figures. Solov'ev appealed to
visionary impulses which were still very much alive in Russia. He offered Russia, so to speak, one last chance to transcend the world of the ordinary and immediate, the "conglomerated mediocrity" (posredstvennosf) that so repelled the intelligentsia. The political and economic thought of Ple-khanov and Miliukov influenced those who contended for power in an age of revolutionary change; but the extraordinary cultural revival of the early twentieth century was born under the brilliant if evanescent star of Solov'ev. The change in artistic styles from populist realism to the idealism of the silver age may be likened to the change in drinking tastes from the harsh and colorless vodka of the earlier agitators and reformers to the sweet, ruby-colored mesimarja, which became popular among the new aristocratic aesthetes. Mesimarja was a rare, exotic drink, extremely costly and best appreciated at the end of a large and leisurely meal. Like the art of the silver age, mesimarja was the product of an unnatural, half-foreign environment. Mesimarja came from Finnish Lapland, where it was distilled from a rare berry that was ripened by the midnight sun during the brief Arctic summer. The culture of early-twentieth-century Russia was equally exotic and superlative. It was a feast of delicacies tinged with foreboding. As with the mesimarja berry, premature ripeness carried with it the promise of rapid decay. Sunlight at midnight in one season led to darkness at noon in the next.
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THE UNCERTAIN COLOSSUS
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The Twentieth Century
i. Crescendo
The cultural explosion amidst war and revolution during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Music as the dominant art form in an age of passionate liberation and liberated passion. The Prometheanism of the revolutionary "God-builders" and of the attempt by Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) to transform the world by synthesizing the arts. The ascent into outer space through the rockets of Constantine Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) and the "suprematist" art of Casimir Malevich (1878-1934). The concurrent descent into sensualism and diabolism. Apocalypticism in art and life: the poetry of Alexander Blok (1880-1921); the prose of Eugene Zamiatin (1884-1937); the politics of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940).
The March and November revolutions of 1917, and the debt of Lenin (1870-1924) to the traditions of the Russian intelligentsia. A quarter century of catechistic totalitarianism under Stalin (1879-1953) from the beginning of the first Five-Year Plan in 1928 to his death in 1953. The complex roots of Stalinism in both the tsarist and the revolutionary traditions, in the Leninist conception of an authoritarian party, but, above all, in the need to provide an appealing mass culture for a primitive peasant people. The revenge of Muscovy on St. Petersburg, the site of the Revolution and the symbol of cosmopolitanism during the psychotic purges of the Stalin era. The Stakhanovites as "flagellants" and party apparatchiki as "Old Believers" of Muscovite Bolshevism. The metamorphosis of luminous icons, ringing bells, and consoling incense into lithographs of Lenin, humming machines, and cheap perfume.
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) and Dr. Zhivago (1958) as both a last echo of the mystical, poetic culture of late Imperial Russia and a prophetic interpretation of the Russian revolution and the Russian future. Old and new themes in the cultural ferment of the Khrushchev era (1953-64). The restless new generation "of the sixties." The recurring ironies and future possibilities of Russian culture.
Ihe revolutions of 1917 occurred in the midst of a profound cultural upheaval which Bolshevism had not initiated and did not immediately curtail. Between the late 1890's and the "great change" (perelom) effected by Stalin during the first Five-Year Plan (1928-32), Russian culture continued to sputter and whir through what might be called its electric age.
Like electricity-which spread through Russia during this period- new currents of culture brought new energy and illumination into everyday life. The leading revolutionary rival of Lenin and Trotsky later complained of the "electric charges of will power" that they imparted in 1917; and those leaders in turn sought to move from power to paradise by defining Communism as "Soviet power plus electrification." Many assumed that the bringing of light and energy to the intellect was equally compatible with Soviet power. Just as amber, long thought to be merely decorative, had revealed the power of electricity to mankind, so the theater was "destined to play the part of amber in revealing to us new secrets of nature."1 Just as raw electricity often ran wildly through new metal construction in the rapidly growing cities of early-twentieth-century Russia, so these new artistic currents broke through the insulation of tradition to jolt and shock the growing numbers of those able to read and think. As with electricity, so in culture it was a case of old sources for new power. Man had simply found new ways of unlocking the latent energy within the moving waters and combustible elements of tradition. Thus, the new, dynamic culture of this electric age was, in many ways, more solidly rooted in Russian tradition than the culture of the preceding, aristocratic era.