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Capital of the Tsars and Soul of Mankind: How the Two St. Petersburgs Defined Russian Culture

John Brown, Research Associate, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy

Date & Time

Monday
Oct. 27, 2003
10:00am – 11:00am ET

Overview

The creation and evolution of the city of St. Petersburg in the 18th century had a deep influence on Russian culture, said John Brown at a recent Kennan Institute noon discussion. St. Petersburg, once referred to by Dostoevsky as the "intentional city," was established by Peter the Great in his effort to acquire, maintain, and expand power through a new order which was based on Peter's interpretation of the west rather than religious or ritualistic Russian traditions. This city, imposed from above and symbolic of the vast, secular bureaucracy which came to inhabit it, was largely rejected by Russian peasants and artists.

Brown concentrated his remarks on the reigns of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Nicholas I. These tsars and tsarina ruled during the Enlightenment–a period marked by a conscious striving towards rationality and reason. The leaders' desire to impose a rational mentality on their subjects in St. Petersburg was manifested in the physical construction and architecture of the city. As such, Brown argued, the architecture of the city became a form of state propaganda. Each successive ruler contributed to the propaganda in increasingly grandiose ways; as Russian power grew, so did the city become more of a "giant parade ground."

At this time, the intelligentsia, which at first had embraced St. Petersburg and all that it stood for, reversed its position and publicly denounced the city. Brown claimed that this happened for two reasons: because the individual (as opposed to the state) emerged as a unit of value during the Enlightenment, and because freemasonry and the significance it granted to mysticism became very important in Russian society. State censorship ensued soon after this movement took shape and authors began to associate oppression by the state with oppression by the city itself. According to Brown, a battle of symbols flared up between the architecture of the city, which came to represent propaganda, public space, the state, bureaucracy, form, and silence; and the literature that emerged in the imagination of writers in reaction to this propaganda, which in contrast represented truth, the private sphere, the soul, imagination, content, and voice.

Brown cited three examples of such literature written during this period: The Bronze Horseman by Pushkin, The Overcoat by Gogol, and The Double by Dostoevsky. Two themes prevailed throughout these works. The first was that each focused on the humanness (suffering, religiosity, modesty) of the souls of "poor, little men" rather than on humanity (exultation, humans at the center of the universe). The second theme was madness–each of the heroes in the three works go mad at the end of the story.

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Kennan Institute

The Kennan Institute is the premier US center for advanced research on Russia and Eurasia and the oldest and largest regional program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Kennan Institute is committed to improving American understanding of Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the surrounding region though research and exchange.  Read more

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