In Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky provides the reader a glimpse into the heart and life of the Underground Man, a despicable and depraved human being. This Underground Man lashes out at the advocates of ‘rational egoism’ and refutes their claims that the best life for every person, individually and collectively, can be found through pursuit of self-interest. As James Scanlan posits, however, this critique of ‘rational egoism’ is more than just an emotional outburst but a device Dostoevsky uses to discredit the theory. Dostoevsky, fundamentally opposed as he was to ‘nihilism’ and ‘self-love’, has his own normative theory of the ‘good life,’ one that he seeks to advance in Notes from the Underground. In my presentation, I will examine Dostoevsky’s opposition to rational egoism, his own theories, and also how Dostoevsky’s ideas compare to more modern articulations of rational choice.
In Art as Technique, twentieth-century Russian Formalist critic Victor Shklovsky defines art as the portrayal of objects through unexpected and novel means for new interpretations of the world. The actual course of perceiving the objects is what is different, defamiliarizing them from our ordinary selves and surroundings. Becoming a Native of Berlin studies how the twentieth-century Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov creates such art in A Guide to Berlin after moving to the city. The unidentified fictional narrator describes the city like a Russian foreigner in want of his homeland. Regardless of whether Nabokov is actually homesick, the narrator’s defamiliarization of Berlin through a feeling of homelessness in turn defamiliarizes Nabokov’s relation to Russia.
Becoming a Native of Berlin explains how individually titled segments of A Guide to Berlin mystify ordinary images and scenes to reflect Nabokov as an immigrant. In The Pipes, the narrator transforms an ordinary black pipe into a symbol of sexual desire to reflect a foreigner’s intense longing for his homeland. The Streetcar unusually describes a romance between a male and female trolley to the same effect, but now the narrator writes from a future point of view when people yearn for the outdated streetcars of the past. Time and memory uncover appreciation for lost objects, including departed homelands. Eden represents the Berlin Zoo, around which the immigrant Russian community lived, in two forms. It is both the beloved homeland of Russia and native Berlin from which an immigrant like Nabokov will always feel separated. However, in the last segment, The Pub, the narrator finally expresses that a foreigner becomes part of the city through a Berliner’s memories of him.
Becoming a Native of Berlin concerns the practice of a theory. In A Guide to Berlin, Nabokov demonstrates Shklovsky’s philosophy of art on a multitude of levels. Through the defamiliarization of Berlin, Nabokov is able to re-see himself as well. This study of Nabokov’s piece emphasizes the importance of consistently questioning the perceptions of the world to formulate new conclusions.
Tara Mendola
“A Grey Star: Time and its Relation to Morality in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Ada”In my paper, A Grey Star: Time and its Relation to Morality in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Ada, I attempt to provide a rough outline between Nabokovian temporality and morality. To my knowledge the question is original; few critics deal with Nabokovian morality, and none I have seen with the relation between the two. Three major primary texts are used in the paper, Lolita, Ada, and Speak, Memory. I read the autobiography (Speak, Memory) as the philosophical treatise of the implied author, thus using it to support and explicate three major temporal structures I found in the texts. These three structures (the spiral, spherical, and circular temporal ‘modes’) are then shown to relate to the moral/immoral (although too long for this abstract, precise definitions of what I mean by “morality” and “time” are outlined within the essay) actions of characters within the novels. Moreover, the connection is best seen through the lens of sexual deviance, which has commonly been mistaken for the true ‘immoral’ content of the text. In sum:
In Nabokov’s two novels Lolita and Ada, three specific temporal structures within the texts show a striking relation to the moral/immoral actions of the novels’ protagonists. Moreover, this relation is best perceived through the themes of sexual deviance (incest and pedophilia) within the two novels.St. Petersburg has long been cast as a city ill-disposed toward its inhabitants. The idea that Petersburg is the locus of a disturbing psychological pressure, a trigger for madness, even, seems to lie at the heart of what has been called the Petersburg myth. Narrative strands of this myth spring up almost simultaneously with Peter the Great’s plans for and subsequent construction of the city – which is to say – from its origin discourse surrounding St. Petersburg tends toward imaginative invention. It is specifically in the nineteenth century, however, that a cumulative store of Petersburg personae, plots and locales begin to furnish oral and high literary modes of story-telling alike; and so the Petersburg myth finds expression both in the urban folklore of the 1820s and 30s and in the writings of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Bely. Using selected texts of the aforementioned authors, my paper will read the literary image of St. Petersburg through the Bakhtinian concept of the chronotope. In his discussion of the chronotope, Bakhtin shows how textual images are related to specific modes of time and space. I hope to demonstrate that it is specifically the spatial and temporal incongruities attributed to Petersburg which Russian authors have seized upon in their portrayal of the city as unreal, phantasmagoric, and as a place inducing abnormal psychological states.
Andrew Fink
“Trade, Law, Liberty, and Novgorod. The Russian Venice”The merchant city state is a phenomenon found all over the world. Medieval Novgorod and its sister city of Pskov demonstrate a very common tendency in merchant cities, namely the development of “constitutional” codes to augment the already existing common law tradition (in this case, the Russian Pravda). The new legal code established complex legal rules and developed judicial offices which were more than servants of a prince but rather served as arbiters among equals. These complex judicial regulations are what allowed places like Venice, Syracuse, and Novgorod to develop their very respected traditions of liberty and freedom.
Spencer Willig
“Notes of a Russian Nationalist: A Study of the Russian and the Foreign in Karamzin’s Travelogue”Nikolai Karamzin has taken an enormous amount of flak over the past two hundred years for his alleged Western sympathies. Often characterized as a European among Russians, Karamzin has had his loyalty to Russia and Russianness called into question by critics from Shishkov to modern scholars. They’ve been missing the forest for the trees.
First offering a quick study of Karamzin’s youth and development as a writer, I highlight Karamzin’s early distaste for the French and his preference for relatively conservative, backward looking thought; for Moscow over St. Petersburg. Significantly, Karamzin’s taste for German literature and philosophy fuels his sense of nationalism, allowing him to assign national characteristics to countries based on the people he meets.
Making use of the first complete English translation of Notes, I examine Karamzin’s treatment of those foreign people Karamzin’s semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical traveler/narrator encounters during his trip. It soon becomes clear that, a few often quoted shouts about universal brotherhood aside, even Karamzin’s favorite countries are given their share of warts. All suffer from unfavorable comparisons with Russia and Russians. Taken together, especially considering the significance of Notes to Karamzin’s oeuvre and the long period of time over which it was written and published in installments, the instances of criticism of the foreign and glorification of the Russian in each nation appear strikingly comprehensive.
Finally, I put Notes into the context of Karamzin’s later career, briefly demonstrating its compatibility with and often anticipation of his later work as a writer, publisher and historian.
Thus I suggest that Karamzin’s motives and behavior were consistently nationalistic, including the stylistic choices so criticized by Shishkov. Though arguably sugar-coating his work by incorporating foreign words and even catering to the society men and women that made up his audience, Karamzin was merely working to make his message of Russian superiority easier to swallow. The substance of his work does not see Russia bent to fit European standards, but rather places Russia beyond – and above – all available foreign models.
My paper, “Russia’s Eighteenth-Century Conflict: Modernization, Unification, or Both?” explores the complex and ever-changing relationship between Russia and the West throughout the eighteenth century. More specifically, the essay examines Russia’s continuous struggle to embrace aspects of the European way of life while still creating its own distinct and original Russian identity. To determine the early Russian attitudes towards Europe, I used three renowned Russian travelogues: Peter Tolstoy’s travel diary from his trip to Venice in 1697, Denis Fonvizin’s published Letters from My Second Journey Abroad written in the mid-eighteenth century, and finally, Nikolai Karamzin’s published Letters of a Russian Traveler from 1790. While these personal accounts certainly differed in style, purpose, and specific content, when analyzed collectively, they reflect the changing nature of Russia’s views of the West.
To examine the progression of Russian opinions about Europe within the 1700s, I used only the three aforementioned travelogues as supporting research since each narrative is essentially representative of a specific time period within the eighteenth century. Tolstoy’s travel diary represents one of the earliest Russian travelogues ever written, and was compiled, upon the order of Peter the Great, specifically to promote the transfer of “modern” ideas and practices from Europe to Russia. Remarkably, Peter the Great’s reign and Tolstoy’s contemporaneous voyage represent the first attempts at developing an advantageous relationship between Russian and Europe. Particularly, the diary reveals Russia’s initial admiration and subsequent imitation of European traditions and innovations. Denis Fonvizin’s critical letters document the progression and complexity of establishing such a link deemed satisfactory by both modernists and traditionalists. Fonvizin largely criticized Russia’s blind emulation of France, condemning France as an inappropriate model lacking substantive virtues. Finally, published at the end of the eighteenth century, Nikolai Karamzin’s travelogue reflects a tenuous reconciliation of the competing desires to imitate others as well as remain true to one’s own country. Karamzin’s diary reveals Russia’s more recent ability to benefit from already-established European models and simultaneously cultivate its own national identity.
The eighteenth century accounts of Tolstoy, Fonvizin, and Karamzin provide insight into the earliest interactions between Russia and the West. The processes of cultural diffusion and creation of national unity, addressed in each of the diaries, are ongoing ones, influenced by historical events and continuously changing attitudes. Russia strives still today, in the twenty first century, to strike a balance between nationalism and appreciation of other cultures, a conflict which significantly, can be traced back to these invaluable personal travelogues.
This paper seeks to outline the creation of an officially-sanctioned, patriotic Soviet Ukrainian national history during World War II and in the immediate post-war period. The victory over the Nazi invaders became a touchstone both for an all-Union Soviet patriotism as well as a specifically Ukrainian patriotism. In this context, I will examine the relationship between official Russian and Ukrainian historiographies – including their respective takes on Ukrainian Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky – and analyze the role of local Ukrainian party officials in creating this newly-valorized version of history. It will argue against the totalitarian model of cultural production, where ideology was made at the center and any dissent violently suppressed. In arguing for the relative autonomy of Ukrainian cultural figures in enunciating a Soviet Ukrainian nationhood, I argue for the primacy of the World War II experience as a source of legitimacy within the Soviet context. Finally, I will comment on the lasting legacy of the national histories forged during the late Stalinist period for subsequent Soviet history and for post-Soviet Russo-Ukrainian relations.This paper examines the growth and development of civil society in post-Soviet Russia. Using Robert Putnam’s reliance on group membership and participation as an indicator of the level of civil society this paper examines the growth of civil society over the previous decade as well as the continuing challenges facing Russian civil society. This paper’s analysis begins with the end of the Soviet Union because there was no recognizable civil society during the Soviet period. While Soviet-era Russians were members of groups it is clear that these groups were not always voluntary and their purpose was not to affect social change – characteristics of true Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).
There has been tremendous growth in the formation of civil society groups (referred to here as NGOs) in the post-Soviet era. The number of NGOs in Russia is currently approximately 600,000. Russian NGOs perform a variety of functions, from consumer cooperatives to issue-advocacy. It was only in the past several years that Russian NGOs became active in issue advocacy. They have addressed such issues as environmental protection and fair taxation.
While NGOs have become more politically active, they have had only limited national success. The most important victories for Russian NGOs have been at the regional and municipal levels. Organizational and financial difficulties as well as the legal environment account for the greater success at local as opposed to national levels.
There have been many positive developments in Russian civil society since the end of the Soviet Union. Russians have demonstrated there ability to organize and form groups with the capacity for affecting social policy on at least the local level. NGO support centers have emerged to provide training and funding to the nascent Third Sector. Challenges and obstacles, however, remain. The lack of popular support for NGOs, particularly in the smaller cities and towns, remains an impediment to civil society development. The current political and legal environments characterized by restrictions on the independent press, consolidation of political power in the President and laws which discourage philanthropy are a significant roadblock to the development of a vibrant, active and effective Third Sector in Russia.
Dan Corren
“The Khram and the Hymn: State Symbols in Post-Soviet Russia”The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 represented more than the end of an economic and political regime after nearly seventy five years of uncontested rule. Though not as important in the short term as economic development and political stability, an emerging problem for the new government was a way to represent the new Russian state to its citizens. Any attempt to establish a new and coherent set of state symbols faced a plethora of questions related to their appropriateness in the new political context and whether or not they accurately represented the new Russian identity. The twentieth century saw three distinct regimes rule over Russia divided by two revolutions. The regimes of Yeltsin and Putin needed to reach back into a tumultuous century in an attempt to establish a set of state symbols that could accurately represent and inspire the spirits and imaginations of new Russian citizens.
I will discuss two specific examples of state symbols that have undergone dramatic changes. The first is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and how religious symbols played a part in the formation of the new Russian identity. The second is the national anthem which took on six different forms during the twentieth century.
