The authors explain the source peculiarity of medical statistics in Russia between the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries and identify the possibilities and limitations of its use for studying social history and the history of science. The features of the quantitative evidence at that time – them being fragmented, heterogeneous, and expressed in absolute numbers – prompted the authors to turn to the history of the organization of statistical studies in the Russian Empire. The estimation of information value and the discursive nature of health and morbidity statistics were performed based on the analysis of administrative documents (Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov – Complete Collection of Laws, ministerial prescriptions), accounts of medical administrations, uyezd doctors, and medical professors (military-historical and historical archives of Astrakhan, Moscow, Riga, and Vilnius). Based on the presumption that target setting, i. e. the purpose of quantitative indicators, determined the organization of the collection and processing of the data on morbidity, and they, in turn, determined the content of statistical knowledge, the authors reveal the possibilities of the health statistics of the time in question. This approach makes it possible to determine what can and what cannot be judged based on statistical data on health, general and infectious diseases. The authors conclude that medical statistics of that time describe the pathogenicity of landscapes and the state of public healthcare, but not the state of the residents’ health. Medical officials collected data on sick patients, distributed them by disease, and calculated how many lives each disease claimed. Although state doctors were not interested in healthy patients, the enlightened bureaucracy claimed that by doing so, the government was studying and preserving “public health.” The digital indicators collected do not make it possible to scrutinize the citizens’ health of the Russian Empire. But then the changes in the principles of collecting statistical data, their processing, and their use allow researchers to follow the process of the Russian state’s modernization. The participation of doctors in the collection of data on morbidity has two long-term consequences – the formation of aggregated thinking, which included the concept of “public health”, and the growing interest in the daily lives of Russians.
{"title":"Medical Statistics in Pre-Reform Russia: Intentions, Degree оf Reliability, Informative Value","authors":"E. Vishlenkova, S. Zatravkin","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.2.802","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.2.802","url":null,"abstract":"The authors explain the source peculiarity of medical statistics in Russia between the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries and identify the possibilities and limitations of its use for studying social history and the history of science. The features of the quantitative evidence at that time – them being fragmented, heterogeneous, and expressed in absolute numbers – prompted the authors to turn to the history of the organization of statistical studies in the Russian Empire. The estimation of information value and the discursive nature of health and morbidity statistics were performed based on the analysis of administrative documents (Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov – Complete Collection of Laws, ministerial prescriptions), accounts of medical administrations, uyezd doctors, and medical professors (military-historical and historical archives of Astrakhan, Moscow, Riga, and Vilnius). Based on the presumption that target setting, i. e. the purpose of quantitative indicators, determined the organization of the collection and processing of the data on morbidity, and they, in turn, determined the content of statistical knowledge, the authors reveal the possibilities of the health statistics of the time in question. This approach makes it possible to determine what can and what cannot be judged based on statistical data on health, general and infectious diseases. The authors conclude that medical statistics of that time describe the pathogenicity of landscapes and the state of public healthcare, but not the state of the residents’ health. Medical officials collected data on sick patients, distributed them by disease, and calculated how many lives each disease claimed. Although state doctors were not interested in healthy patients, the enlightened bureaucracy claimed that by doing so, the government was studying and preserving “public health.” The digital indicators collected do not make it possible to scrutinize the citizens’ health of the Russian Empire. But then the changes in the principles of collecting statistical data, their processing, and their use allow researchers to follow the process of the Russian state’s modernization. The participation of doctors in the collection of data on morbidity has two long-term consequences – the formation of aggregated thinking, which included the concept of “public health”, and the growing interest in the daily lives of Russians.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41538792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In terms of environmental history, the First World War represents one of the most significant information gaps of the Anthropocene, where the type of warfare and the fall of empires intensified the destructiveness of the interaction between people and nature, changing the geological and cultural characteristics of Central and Eastern European landscapes. The collision of mass armies with foreign landscapes and militarized natural environments left an indelible stamp on personal accounts of the Great War. The imagery of nature, both as an uncontrollable force and as an object of impact, abounds in a broad diversity of textual and visual sources, which range from official documentation to private correspondence and from propaganda newsreels to personal photographs. It appears that pictures of landscapes destroyed or transformed by war (as well as the related epidemiological and climatic threats) contributed to shaping combatants’ existential experience to the same degree as short military operations. Unlike the universalized experience of the Western Front countries in the available literature on the environmental and spatial history of the First World War, the multiple ways in which mobile belligerent landscapes of the Eastern Front were experienced and perceived are yet to be addressed documentarily as well as methodologically. The article aims to reconstruct the horizons of expectation and environment construction strategies in combatants’ individual narratives and to identify the meaning of belligerent landscapes in the formation of specific behavioral strategies and practices on the Eastern Front of the world’s first industrial war. The analysis of ego-documents (letters, diaries, and memoirs) left by participants of WWI has identified a diversity of models for anthropomorphizing environmental objects and phenomena on the Eastern Front, which range from romanticization to demonization. The author aims to establish the way the perception of belligerent landscapes depends on the cultural baggage, prior experience of warfare, military branch, and the density of contacts with civilians populating the militarized spaces. One of the key messages of this study is the suggestion that the militarised environment’s signification through religious, literary, epidemiological anti-Semitic and other lenses contributed to the normalization of combatants’ mortal terror of war, their negative military experience, mourning, and nostalgia for the lost life-worlds.
{"title":"Romanticization and Demonization: Galician Landscapes in Russian Combatants’ Narratives During the Great War","authors":"A. Likhacheva","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.2.808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.2.808","url":null,"abstract":"In terms of environmental history, the First World War represents one of the most significant information gaps of the Anthropocene, where the type of warfare and the fall of empires intensified the destructiveness of the interaction between people and nature, changing the geological and cultural characteristics of Central and Eastern European landscapes. The collision of mass armies with foreign landscapes and militarized natural environments left an indelible stamp on personal accounts of the Great War. The imagery of nature, both as an uncontrollable force and as an object of impact, abounds in a broad diversity of textual and visual sources, which range from official documentation to private correspondence and from propaganda newsreels to personal photographs. It appears that pictures of landscapes destroyed or transformed by war (as well as the related epidemiological and climatic threats) contributed to shaping combatants’ existential experience to the same degree as short military operations. Unlike the universalized experience of the Western Front countries in the available literature on the environmental and spatial history of the First World War, the multiple ways in which mobile belligerent landscapes of the Eastern Front were experienced and perceived are yet to be addressed documentarily as well as methodologically. The article aims to reconstruct the horizons of expectation and environment construction strategies in combatants’ individual narratives and to identify the meaning of belligerent landscapes in the formation of specific behavioral strategies and practices on the Eastern Front of the world’s first industrial war. The analysis of ego-documents (letters, diaries, and memoirs) left by participants of WWI has identified a diversity of models for anthropomorphizing environmental objects and phenomena on the Eastern Front, which range from romanticization to demonization. The author aims to establish the way the perception of belligerent landscapes depends on the cultural baggage, prior experience of warfare, military branch, and the density of contacts with civilians populating the militarized spaces. One of the key messages of this study is the suggestion that the militarised environment’s signification through religious, literary, epidemiological anti-Semitic and other lenses contributed to the normalization of combatants’ mortal terror of war, their negative military experience, mourning, and nostalgia for the lost life-worlds.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43999952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The author discusses some of the dominant assertions in the literature on Russian history. One of them is the disqualification of the myth of the benevolent tsar as “false”. This disqualification is accompanied by the formulas “naïve or popular monarchism”, which designate the “pre-scientific illusions” that would have guided the collective movements of resistance to autocracy. Given the importance of collective representations of the tsar and power in Russian history, the theoretical premises on which the above-mentioned disqualifications are based affect the general interpretation of this history, for example the conception of the Russian people as “passive”. The author proposes to abandon this positivist scaffolding and approach the sources from other theoretical perspectives, in particular conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), to pose a radically different question: what truth is contained in the myth of the benevolent tsar and to reconstruct, against the essentialist and teleological vision, the historicity of the collective resistance to power in Russia. The first part studies the genealogy of the expression samozvan/ets/stvo (self-appointment), its original meaning – individual initiative against divine appointment – and its functions in the autocratic political paradigm. The lack of heuristic value of the formulas of “popular, or naïve monarchism,” the logic of which is to deprive the most oppressed segments of the population of their culture and language, is emphasized.
{"title":"Towards a Conceptual-Historical Critique of the Essentialist and Teleological Interpretations of Russian History. Part 1","authors":"Claudio Ingerflom","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.2.812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.2.812","url":null,"abstract":"The author discusses some of the dominant assertions in the literature on Russian history. One of them is the disqualification of the myth of the benevolent tsar as “false”. This disqualification is accompanied by the formulas “naïve or popular monarchism”, which designate the “pre-scientific illusions” that would have guided the collective movements of resistance to autocracy. Given the importance of collective representations of the tsar and power in Russian history, the theoretical premises on which the above-mentioned disqualifications are based affect the general interpretation of this history, for example the conception of the Russian people as “passive”. The author proposes to abandon this positivist scaffolding and approach the sources from other theoretical perspectives, in particular conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), to pose a radically different question: what truth is contained in the myth of the benevolent tsar and to reconstruct, against the essentialist and teleological vision, the historicity of the collective resistance to power in Russia. The first part studies the genealogy of the expression samozvan/ets/stvo (self-appointment), its original meaning – individual initiative against divine appointment – and its functions in the autocratic political paradigm. The lack of heuristic value of the formulas of “popular, or naïve monarchism,” the logic of which is to deprive the most oppressed segments of the population of their culture and language, is emphasized.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47727512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines an underexplored episode in the history of the cholera riots – the ‘hunt for the poisoners’ which happened in St Petersburg in June 1831. This relevance of the topic is determined by the importance of studying the population’s behavior during an epidemic crisis, challenging both the authorities’ ability to stabilize the situation and the possibility of dialogue between them and society. Based on newly-introduced archival sources, the paper attempts to reconstruct the events of June 24–25, 1831 – essential for an understanding of the subsequent developments in Russia, but which have been overshadowed by the cholera riots of June 21–22, 1831, well described by contemporary sources. The cholera outbreak in the imperial capital in mid-June 1831 sparked popular discontent with anti-cholera measures, culminating in attacks on the city’s cholera hospitals. After a temporary respite following the events of June 22 on Sennaya Square, the riots erupted with renewed vigor but with a change in form and substance. On June 24 and 25, instead of attacking hospitals in large crowds, the rioters sought out alleged ‘poisoners’ detaining and handing them over to the authorities on suspicion of having poisoned food and water. Amongst part of the population, this poisoning was considered the real cause of the deaths attributed by doctors and the authorities to cholera. These events of June 24–25 have received little attention from researchers. But it was the St Petersburg ‘hunt for poisoners’ that provided a model for Russia’s ‘cholera panic’ of July 1831, during which the population sought to battle the alleged malicious poisoners. The panic caused a series of mass riots in the European part of Russia. The most violent events during the unrest were the bloody mutinies of military settlers in Novgorod province. The events of June 24–25 in St Petersburg played a significant role in the emergence of the cholera panic in Russia in the summer of 1831.
{"title":"Fighting Against the ‘Poisoners’ in Cholera-Stricken Petersburg","authors":"A. Egorov","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.2.803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.2.803","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines an underexplored episode in the history of the cholera riots – the ‘hunt for the poisoners’ which happened in St Petersburg in June 1831. This relevance of the topic is determined by the importance of studying the population’s behavior during an epidemic crisis, challenging both the authorities’ ability to stabilize the situation and the possibility of dialogue between them and society. Based on newly-introduced archival sources, the paper attempts to reconstruct the events of June 24–25, 1831 – essential for an understanding of the subsequent developments in Russia, but which have been overshadowed by the cholera riots of June 21–22, 1831, well described by contemporary sources. The cholera outbreak in the imperial capital in mid-June 1831 sparked popular discontent with anti-cholera measures, culminating in attacks on the city’s cholera hospitals. After a temporary respite following the events of June 22 on Sennaya Square, the riots erupted with renewed vigor but with a change in form and substance. On June 24 and 25, instead of attacking hospitals in large crowds, the rioters sought out alleged ‘poisoners’ detaining and handing them over to the authorities on suspicion of having poisoned food and water. Amongst part of the population, this poisoning was considered the real cause of the deaths attributed by doctors and the authorities to cholera. These events of June 24–25 have received little attention from researchers. But it was the St Petersburg ‘hunt for poisoners’ that provided a model for Russia’s ‘cholera panic’ of July 1831, during which the population sought to battle the alleged malicious poisoners. The panic caused a series of mass riots in the European part of Russia. The most violent events during the unrest were the bloody mutinies of military settlers in Novgorod province. The events of June 24–25 in St Petersburg played a significant role in the emergence of the cholera panic in Russia in the summer of 1831.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47443089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
During the First World War, the Russian army was faced with the task of developing areas captured from the adversary and sought to integrate the new territorial acquisitions into the Russian economy while simultaneously adapting them for effective warfare. At the time of its occupation by the Russian troops, Austrian Galicia already existed as a fully-formed industrial landscape dominated by private and state-controlled oil fields and refineries. The environmental situation in Galicia had remained extremely problematic over several decades preceding the First World War due to intensive oil extraction and manufacturing of petroleum products. The Russian administration which largely ignored the environmental issues (or, rather, exacerbated them) attempted to resume oil mining in Galicia and organize the production and distribution of petrol, kerosene, and fuel oil to supply the urban centers as well as the army and railways. However, the 1915 Gorlice – Tarnów offensive by the German army prevented Russia from taking full advantage of the Galician oil production capacities and prompted the Russian commandment to apply the scorched earth tactic. Special military units were ordered to destroy most drilling rigs, oil reservoirs, and refineries around Boryslav and Drohobych. Official reports and testimonies by eyewitnesses provide a striking picture of demolition on a vast territory to the west and southwest of Lviv. The documentary and historiographical sources lack consensus as to the actual number of facilities destroyed and the overall damage caused to the country’s economy during the retreat of the Russian troops in April–May 1915. This study aims, firstly, to identify the key features of these events, and secondly, to explore the development of the Galician combat landscape, whose elements morph into “combat formations”, equally fit for productive activity and total (self-)destruction during warfare.
{"title":"Oil Fires of the First World War: Military Use and Destruction of Galicia’s Fuel Industry","authors":"Iaroslav Golubinov","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.2.807","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.2.807","url":null,"abstract":"During the First World War, the Russian army was faced with the task of developing areas captured from the adversary and sought to integrate the new territorial acquisitions into the Russian economy while simultaneously adapting them for effective warfare. At the time of its occupation by the Russian troops, Austrian Galicia already existed as a fully-formed industrial landscape dominated by private and state-controlled oil fields and refineries. The environmental situation in Galicia had remained extremely problematic over several decades preceding the First World War due to intensive oil extraction and manufacturing of petroleum products. The Russian administration which largely ignored the environmental issues (or, rather, exacerbated them) attempted to resume oil mining in Galicia and organize the production and distribution of petrol, kerosene, and fuel oil to supply the urban centers as well as the army and railways. However, the 1915 Gorlice – Tarnów offensive by the German army prevented Russia from taking full advantage of the Galician oil production capacities and prompted the Russian commandment to apply the scorched earth tactic. Special military units were ordered to destroy most drilling rigs, oil reservoirs, and refineries around Boryslav and Drohobych. Official reports and testimonies by eyewitnesses provide a striking picture of demolition on a vast territory to the west and southwest of Lviv. The documentary and historiographical sources lack consensus as to the actual number of facilities destroyed and the overall damage caused to the country’s economy during the retreat of the Russian troops in April–May 1915. This study aims, firstly, to identify the key features of these events, and secondly, to explore the development of the Galician combat landscape, whose elements morph into “combat formations”, equally fit for productive activity and total (self-)destruction during warfare.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43048725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The spatial and environmental dimension of WWI has recently taken the central place in academic debates on the military history of the “short twentieth century”. At present, the large-scale conflict of humanity and nature under totalized warfare is recognized as no less significant to the existential experience of combatants and civilians than actual battles. Functioning as a demiurge, the Great War created and re-molded landscapes, accelerated development trends shaped during the industrial era, triggered the construction and demolition of infrastructure, and determined the resource policy, economic practices, and language constructs of national communities during subsequent historical periods. Textual and visual narratives of the war feature the following three dimensions of the environment: a subject and adversary (sometimes even more dangerous than the real enemy); an object of destruction, invasion, and ordering; and an anthropological construct defining behavioral strategies and the memorial culture relating to the conflict. Modern researchers share a unanimous opinion that the pivotal role of the clash between humanity and the environment during WWI for subsequent historical development is paradoxically at odds with the degree to which the clash has been studied. This may be linked with the fact that the multidimensionality of militarized landscapes would require a research methodology incorporating elements of military history, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, geology (landscape studies), and cultural geography. Such a creative symbiosis has become possible only recently, owing to the adoption of the interdisciplinary approach by military historians. The gradual uptake of innovative study techniques has resulted in the uneven development of the spatial and environmental history of the First World War as a research field: at present, the best-studied locations are confined to the western front and, partly, the colonial periphery. This publication presents a review of the recent conceptual publications by authors developing this research avenue and seeks to identify the heuristic potential of the concepts “Anthropocene”, “belligerent landscapes”, “landscape biographies”, and “layered landscapes”, including their applicability to the history of the Eastern Front of the First World War.
{"title":"Conflict Landscapes of the Great War: The Spatial and Ecological Dimension of Military History","authors":"O. Nagornaia, K. Lingen","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.2.806","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.2.806","url":null,"abstract":"The spatial and environmental dimension of WWI has recently taken the central place in academic debates on the military history of the “short twentieth century”. At present, the large-scale conflict of humanity and nature under totalized warfare is recognized as no less significant to the existential experience of combatants and civilians than actual battles. Functioning as a demiurge, the Great War created and re-molded landscapes, accelerated development trends shaped during the industrial era, triggered the construction and demolition of infrastructure, and determined the resource policy, economic practices, and language constructs of national communities during subsequent historical periods. Textual and visual narratives of the war feature the following three dimensions of the environment: a subject and adversary (sometimes even more dangerous than the real enemy); an object of destruction, invasion, and ordering; and an anthropological construct defining behavioral strategies and the memorial culture relating to the conflict. Modern researchers share a unanimous opinion that the pivotal role of the clash between humanity and the environment during WWI for subsequent historical development is paradoxically at odds with the degree to which the clash has been studied. This may be linked with the fact that the multidimensionality of militarized landscapes would require a research methodology incorporating elements of military history, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, geology (landscape studies), and cultural geography. Such a creative symbiosis has become possible only recently, owing to the adoption of the interdisciplinary approach by military historians. The gradual uptake of innovative study techniques has resulted in the uneven development of the spatial and environmental history of the First World War as a research field: at present, the best-studied locations are confined to the western front and, partly, the colonial periphery. This publication presents a review of the recent conceptual publications by authors developing this research avenue and seeks to identify the heuristic potential of the concepts “Anthropocene”, “belligerent landscapes”, “landscape biographies”, and “layered landscapes”, including their applicability to the history of the Eastern Front of the First World War.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42037521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explores the poetry of Joseph Brodsky. One of the spiritual, semantic, and psychological dominants of the artistic consciousness and poetic work of the Nobel laureate acts as the subject of the analysis, and this aspect has not been considered either specifically or comprehensively so far. The author focuses on a typological, spiritual, and mental condition for Brodsky’s artistic consciousness that permeates all of his work, i. e. fatigue. And it is a peculiar kind of fatigue – culturogenic fatigue – which acts, on the one hand, as fatigue of culture itself, its spiritual content, and psychological forms. On the other hand, it is people’s fatigue from this weary culture and its phenomena. Through the analysis of Brodsky’s poems of different periods, the article shows and interprets the main aspects of fatigue expressed in his poetry: fatigue as a property of world attitude, including the perception of nature, space, and time; as an underlying feature of existence (existences); as a dominant psychological mindset/type of personality; as a spiritual and psychological characteristic of the creative process and attitude to creative work, its language and meaning, its works and their recipients. In conclusion, the author states that in Brodsky’s artistic work, the tiredness of art and its cultural foundations paradoxically go hand in hand with his devotion to art and will to create, his ability to find spiritual strength in it and its language.
{"title":"The Fatigue of Culture and Fatigue from Culture in Joseph Brodsky’s Poetry","authors":"Lev A. Zaks","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.1.780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.1.780","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the poetry of Joseph Brodsky. One of the spiritual, semantic, and psychological dominants of the artistic consciousness and poetic work of the Nobel laureate acts as the subject of the analysis, and this aspect has not been considered either specifically or comprehensively so far. The author focuses on a typological, spiritual, and mental condition for Brodsky’s artistic consciousness that permeates all of his work, i. e. fatigue. And it is a peculiar kind of fatigue – culturogenic fatigue – which acts, on the one hand, as fatigue of culture itself, its spiritual content, and psychological forms. On the other hand, it is people’s fatigue from this weary culture and its phenomena. Through the analysis of Brodsky’s poems of different periods, the article shows and interprets the main aspects of fatigue expressed in his poetry: fatigue as a property of world attitude, including the perception of nature, space, and time; as an underlying feature of existence (existences); as a dominant psychological mindset/type of personality; as a spiritual and psychological characteristic of the creative process and attitude to creative work, its language and meaning, its works and their recipients. In conclusion, the author states that in Brodsky’s artistic work, the tiredness of art and its cultural foundations paradoxically go hand in hand with his devotion to art and will to create, his ability to find spiritual strength in it and its language.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48890580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines literary interviews of Ural authors A. Salnikov and E. Simonova. The narrative analysis of the interview makes it possible to identify how the writer defines the writer’s mission, draw a conclusion about the strategies of public self-perception, its emotional dominants, and aspects of understanding the legitimacy of writing in the current literary process. The narrative about the author has a metatextual character, which is a result of the reconstruction of recurring (repetitive) motifs which are personally (emotionally) or supra-personally (culturally, regionally, nationally) conditioned. The “history of authorship” is enclosed in a narrative frame (the dialogue structure of the interview, non-free speaking). Speech genres of various types (“memory”, “anecdote”, etc.) freely circulate inside the interview. The writers’ narrative is interpreted as part of a “big story” about authorship told by its participants for a wide range of interested persons. The comparative analysis of the selected authors relates to the general moments of the creative fate of the writers (participants of the “Nizhny Tagil Renaissance” and, more broadly, the literary life of the Urals). The narrative frame of their interview depends on the fact of the “second debut” and puts Simonova and Salnikov in a situation of retrospective introspection. The event of entering the world of writers (the effectiveness of the event) is understood as a deviation from the natural course of things (Salnikov). Simonova’s self-perception speaks of a return to normality, to the natural existence of the creator in the world of words. The author makes a conclusion regarding the peculiarities of Salnikov’s and Simonova’s individual and creative self-mythologisation. For Salnikov, it is marginalisation: the writer mythologises the author’s path by crossing the border between the world of “non-writers” to the marginal world of poets. For Simonova, it is ironic casualisation: she deliberately denies poetic insights, giving importance to the ethical symmetry of talent and man through the development of self-depreciation traditional for Russian literature etiquette. The situation of the “second debut” (widely known among the reading public of different types), depending on different factors in each case but equally significant in the manifestation of writers in the public space, demonstrates the stability of the conditions accepted for themselves as authors throughout the creative path, is a way to establish the foundations of personal vitality.
{"title":"The Vital Mission of Creative Work in Contemporary Authors’ Ego-Narratives","authors":"E. Selyutina","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.1.781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.1.781","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines literary interviews of Ural authors A. Salnikov and E. Simonova. The narrative analysis of the interview makes it possible to identify how the writer defines the writer’s mission, draw a conclusion about the strategies of public self-perception, its emotional dominants, and aspects of understanding the legitimacy of writing in the current literary process. The narrative about the author has a metatextual character, which is a result of the reconstruction of recurring (repetitive) motifs which are personally (emotionally) or supra-personally (culturally, regionally, nationally) conditioned. The “history of authorship” is enclosed in a narrative frame (the dialogue structure of the interview, non-free speaking). Speech genres of various types (“memory”, “anecdote”, etc.) freely circulate inside the interview. The writers’ narrative is interpreted as part of a “big story” about authorship told by its participants for a wide range of interested persons. The comparative analysis of the selected authors relates to the general moments of the creative fate of the writers (participants of the “Nizhny Tagil Renaissance” and, more broadly, the literary life of the Urals). The narrative frame of their interview depends on the fact of the “second debut” and puts Simonova and Salnikov in a situation of retrospective introspection. The event of entering the world of writers (the effectiveness of the event) is understood as a deviation from the natural course of things (Salnikov). Simonova’s self-perception speaks of a return to normality, to the natural existence of the creator in the world of words. The author makes a conclusion regarding the peculiarities of Salnikov’s and Simonova’s individual and creative self-mythologisation. For Salnikov, it is marginalisation: the writer mythologises the author’s path by crossing the border between the world of “non-writers” to the marginal world of poets. For Simonova, it is ironic casualisation: she deliberately denies poetic insights, giving importance to the ethical symmetry of talent and man through the development of self-depreciation traditional for Russian literature etiquette. The situation of the “second debut” (widely known among the reading public of different types), depending on different factors in each case but equally significant in the manifestation of writers in the public space, demonstrates the stability of the conditions accepted for themselves as authors throughout the creative path, is a way to establish the foundations of personal vitality.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48810834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Old Russian scribes repeatedly tried to refute and devalue the abilities of the sorcerers in works of various genres. However, despite all attempts to instill in people a negative attitude towards sorcery, in the seventeenth century, both commoners and rulers turned for help to magicians, sorcerers, whisperers, astrologers, shamans, etc. at difficult times of their lives. A centuries-old tradition behind such appeals forced preachers to use various poetological and psychological methods of persuasion and suggestion. This article explores the rhetorical suggestive techniques and features of the argumentation system in homilies against sorcery, which are part of Izmaragd, an Old Russian collection of regulatory texts of stable composition. The author refers to The Homily of the Holy Fathers on Sorcery, a part of the 16th-century Izmaragd, and The Homily of St John Chrysostom on Those Who Are Cured of Illness by Sorcery, which is part of the Izmaragd. In 17th-century Izmaragd, The Homily of the Holy Fathers about Sorcery is part of The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery and does not exist separately as an independent text. Therefore, referring to these texts, one can trace how the original suggestive rhetorical devices and argumentation change. The study demonstrates that in comparison with The Homily of the Holy Fathers about Sorcery, The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery, uses a richer palette of rhetorical and psychological methods of influencing the audience. The communicative goal of convincing people to refuse to turn to sorcerers is achieved in different ways. Perhaps due to the brevity of the text itself, The Homily of the Holy Fathers on Sorcery employs simple traditional means, i. e. multiple repetitions and appeal to authority (indirect quotations). The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery employs a different, more subtle technology of speech hypnosis in the form of direct and contextual suggestions. In addition to the rhetorical devices typical of old Russian sermons (repetitions, rhetorical questions, exclamations, appeals, comparison, etc.), the text contains an extensive system of argumentation. Appeals to authority (in particular, its subtype – appeal to fame) combine with examples that are a model of behaviour and an anti-model, as well as with maxims of a different nature (intimidating, containing promises). The two Homilies demonstrate two completely different systems of speech impact on the audience. It is unnecessary to talk about the intentional transformation of original rhetorical suggestive devices and systems of argumentation in relation to these texts. Most likely, The Homily of the Holy Fathers about Sorcery inherits the oral tradition of delivering sermons and therefore is based on simple methods of suggestion easily perceived by the ear, and The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery, conceived as a written text, was created based on old rhetorical schools.
{"title":"Denunciations of Sorcery as Demonic Possession in Old Russian Izmaragd","authors":"O. Tufanova","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.1.773","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.1.773","url":null,"abstract":"Old Russian scribes repeatedly tried to refute and devalue the abilities of the sorcerers in works of various genres. However, despite all attempts to instill in people a negative attitude towards sorcery, in the seventeenth century, both commoners and rulers turned for help to magicians, sorcerers, whisperers, astrologers, shamans, etc. at difficult times of their lives. A centuries-old tradition behind such appeals forced preachers to use various poetological and psychological methods of persuasion and suggestion. This article explores the rhetorical suggestive techniques and features of the argumentation system in homilies against sorcery, which are part of Izmaragd, an Old Russian collection of regulatory texts of stable composition. The author refers to The Homily of the Holy Fathers on Sorcery, a part of the 16th-century Izmaragd, and The Homily of St John Chrysostom on Those Who Are Cured of Illness by Sorcery, which is part of the Izmaragd. In 17th-century Izmaragd, The Homily of the Holy Fathers about Sorcery is part of The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery and does not exist separately as an independent text. Therefore, referring to these texts, one can trace how the original suggestive rhetorical devices and argumentation change. The study demonstrates that in comparison with The Homily of the Holy Fathers about Sorcery, The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery, uses a richer palette of rhetorical and psychological methods of influencing the audience. The communicative goal of convincing people to refuse to turn to sorcerers is achieved in different ways. Perhaps due to the brevity of the text itself, The Homily of the Holy Fathers on Sorcery employs simple traditional means, i. e. multiple repetitions and appeal to authority (indirect quotations). The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery employs a different, more subtle technology of speech hypnosis in the form of direct and contextual suggestions. In addition to the rhetorical devices typical of old Russian sermons (repetitions, rhetorical questions, exclamations, appeals, comparison, etc.), the text contains an extensive system of argumentation. Appeals to authority (in particular, its subtype – appeal to fame) combine with examples that are a model of behaviour and an anti-model, as well as with maxims of a different nature (intimidating, containing promises). The two Homilies demonstrate two completely different systems of speech impact on the audience. It is unnecessary to talk about the intentional transformation of original rhetorical suggestive devices and systems of argumentation in relation to these texts. Most likely, The Homily of the Holy Fathers about Sorcery inherits the oral tradition of delivering sermons and therefore is based on simple methods of suggestion easily perceived by the ear, and The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery, conceived as a written text, was created based on old rhetorical schools.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49182052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In its self-affirmation in the cultural field and its defiance of the extremes of Symbolism, Acmeism insisted on the diversity of its creative possibilities, the preference of the worldly content to the otherworldly, the development of a clear and transparent artistic form, the self-identity of artistic realities, and their balance. All this testified to the tendency to classical artistry, which determines not only the form of works (language and poetic style, composition) but the content (circle of ideas, problems, themes and images, and plot). The author examines how this system comprehends the chaotic and disharmonic that are part of life within its boundaries of cosmographic properties (harmonious, bright, optimistic). Earthly life as a reality declared a priority in the Acmeist paradigm is full of hostility, threats, and danger. Also of interest are the questions of how the negative category of the scary manifests itself and whether its presence testifies to the connection of Acmeism with the non-classical artistry of modernism. Answers to these questions form and represent the problems of this article. Referring to the works of N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, and O. Mandelstam, the author explores the image and artistic understanding of the scary in Acmeist poetry. The article demonstrates a variety of objects, phenomena of reality, life processes, connections, and relationships that cause unpleasant feelings and experiences in poetic perception. On the one hand, the poets’ fears are due to personal characteristics and predilections, i. e., they have an individual nature and, on the other hand, they express the general tendencies of Acmeism. For Gumilyov, the dangers are associated with his love of travel. Hence the presence of a spatial component in the adventurous topic of his poems: the characters participate in battles with the sea, evil animals – the inhabitants of the African savannah, fantastic creatures, for example, with a dragon, visit the afterlife. The fears of Akhmatova’s lyrical heroine are motivated by dramatic collisions of the interpersonal, primarily love and relationships. The terrible thing for Mandelstam lurks in the fatal illness predicted to him, the sacred depth of religious faith, and the collapse of the world of cultural values that feeds his spiritual self-sufficiency. Acmeists were not afraid to depict and comprehend death, bearing the emptiness of non-existence, promising a frightening collision with the unknown and otherworldly, and plunging into a stupor of hopelessness. The scary made it possible to expand the thematic and pictorial possibilities of the works, address sociocultural issues, and reflect the tragedy of life becoming a marker of the high standard artistry of modernism.
{"title":"The Scary in Acmeist Poetry as a Marker of Modernist Artistry","authors":"Igor Vasiliev","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.1.779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.1.779","url":null,"abstract":"In its self-affirmation in the cultural field and its defiance of the extremes of Symbolism, Acmeism insisted on the diversity of its creative possibilities, the preference of the worldly content to the otherworldly, the development of a clear and transparent artistic form, the self-identity of artistic realities, and their balance. All this testified to the tendency to classical artistry, which determines not only the form of works (language and poetic style, composition) but the content (circle of ideas, problems, themes and images, and plot). The author examines how this system comprehends the chaotic and disharmonic that are part of life within its boundaries of cosmographic properties (harmonious, bright, optimistic). Earthly life as a reality declared a priority in the Acmeist paradigm is full of hostility, threats, and danger. Also of interest are the questions of how the negative category of the scary manifests itself and whether its presence testifies to the connection of Acmeism with the non-classical artistry of modernism. Answers to these questions form and represent the problems of this article. Referring to the works of N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, and O. Mandelstam, the author explores the image and artistic understanding of the scary in Acmeist poetry. The article demonstrates a variety of objects, phenomena of reality, life processes, connections, and relationships that cause unpleasant feelings and experiences in poetic perception. On the one hand, the poets’ fears are due to personal characteristics and predilections, i. e., they have an individual nature and, on the other hand, they express the general tendencies of Acmeism. For Gumilyov, the dangers are associated with his love of travel. Hence the presence of a spatial component in the adventurous topic of his poems: the characters participate in battles with the sea, evil animals – the inhabitants of the African savannah, fantastic creatures, for example, with a dragon, visit the afterlife. The fears of Akhmatova’s lyrical heroine are motivated by dramatic collisions of the interpersonal, primarily love and relationships. The terrible thing for Mandelstam lurks in the fatal illness predicted to him, the sacred depth of religious faith, and the collapse of the world of cultural values that feeds his spiritual self-sufficiency. Acmeists were not afraid to depict and comprehend death, bearing the emptiness of non-existence, promising a frightening collision with the unknown and otherworldly, and plunging into a stupor of hopelessness. The scary made it possible to expand the thematic and pictorial possibilities of the works, address sociocultural issues, and reflect the tragedy of life becoming a marker of the high standard artistry of modernism.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42583456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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