The Nationalization of Patriotism in Russian Literature during the Crimean War: Institutions, Everyday Nationalism, and Images of Peasants

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the issue of Russian imperial nationalism in the early phase of its formation, namely the nationalization of patriotism in literature during the Crimean War, 1853–56. Using historical studies and theories of nationalism, the author shows how and why an acute discourse of a nationalistic experience of community uniting the elite with the common people arose in St. Petersburg society, theater, and literature. Drawing on many published and archival materials, the article describes the institutions of escalating nationalism (thick journals, newspapers, the Maritime Ministry, theater, salons, and circles), everyday rituals (wearing “Russian” clothes), and the images of peasants, who in the fiction of Aleksei Potekhin, Aleksei Pisemskii, Ivan Gorbunov, Ivan Turgenev, and Dmitrii Grigorovich acted as bearers of authentic “Russianness.” The growing popularity of these writers’ texts can be explained by the fact that they demonstratively linked the psychology and subjectivity of peasant characters with their ethnic identity. Contrary to official propaganda that portrayed peasants as loyal to the tsar, faith, and Fatherland, the new representation satisfied the demand of the elite and socially diverse theater audience for images of unity within a single national community and compensated for the disappointment of defeats at the front.