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How Tolstoevskii Pleased Readers and Rewrote a Russian Myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Abstract

Jeffrey Brooks argues that Fedor Dostoevskii and Lev Tolstoi drew on and recast a particularly Russian mythology of doomed rebellion in order to explore issues of free will, self-fulfillment, and redemption. The literary giants employed narrative structures similar to popular formulas. They imagined their work and even their lives in terms of an opposition between freedom and order, echoing themes of Aleksandr Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol'. By linking Tolstoi and Dostoevskii to mythologies of banditry, Brooks illuminates the interaction between high and low cultures. He locates their work in the context of social and cultural transformations of the liberal postreform era, showing how readers' expectations changed in a fluid society. Readers increasingly wanted freedom to triumph over the myth's earlier doom, but censors remained vigilant. He shows how Tolstoi and Dostoevskii satisfied both censors and readers by framing tales of adventure and romance with moralistic beginnings and endings conforming to the format of the long serial novel. The formulaic sandwich that frustrated the censors was used with similar effect by N. I. Pastukhov, author of Russia's first modern popular novel, The Bandit Churkin, which was serialized in Moskovskii listok in the early 1880s. Brooks affirms the mastery of Tolstoi and Dostoevskii that transcends time and place, but shows the roots of their work in Russian preoccupations with freedom and order.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2004

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References

1 I thank Karen Brooks, Georgii Cherniavskii, David L. Cooper, Caryl Emerson, Donald Fanger, Richard Flathman, Sean Greenberg, Diane Koenker, Jean Laves, Anne Eakin Moss, Ken Moss, Lary May, Inessa Medzhibovskaya, Liz Papazian, Scott Shane, Elena Smilianskaia, William Mills Todd III, and my anonymous reviewers for comments, and also my student Patryk Babiracki. The Kennan Institute and the Woodrow Wilson Center provided support in 1999–2000. The essay stems from the conference on “Shaping Memory, Shaping Identity in Russian History” honoring Terence Emmons at Stanford University in 2003. Given the scope of the topic, I can barely touch the vast secondary literatures and must ignore some secondary themes. Dal', Vladimir, Poslovitsy russkogo naroda: Sbornik V. Dalia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1984), 2:277–79.Google Scholar The Russian word used is volia.

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9 A copy of the picture can be found in Dzhivelegov, A. K., Mel'gunov, S. P., and Picheta, V. I., eds., Velikaia reforma: Russkoe obshchestvo i krest'ianskii vopros v proshlom i nastoiashchem, 6 vols. (Moscow, 1911), 2:4849.Google Scholar Sud Pugacheva dates from 1875. An undated sketch, also in the Tret'iakov Gallery, shows Pugachev more fully as a bandit.

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82 William Mills Todd III translated the response of Prince Vladimir Mikhailovich Golitsyn to the different parts of the novel. Golitsyn, who detested Anna's depravity, preferred the first and last installments, that is, the ball and Anna's death. William Mills Todd III, “Reading Anna in Parts,” Tolstoi Studies Journal 8 (1995–1996), 125–28. See also Mandelker, Framing Anna Karenina, 49-51, on Anna's “heroinism.“

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