Self and Story in Russian History - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801486688 ISBN 13: 9780801486685

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Russians have often been characterized as people with souls rather than selves. Self and Story in Russian History challenges the portrayal of the Russian character as selfless, self-effacing, or self-torturing by exploring the texts through which Russians have defined themselves as private persons and shaped their relation to the cultural community. The stories of self under consideration here reflect the perspectives of men and women from the last two hundred years, ranging from westernized nobles to simple peasants, from such famous people as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Akhmatova, and Nicholas II to lowly religious sectarians.

Fifteen distinguished historians and literary scholars situate the narratives of self in their historical context and show how, since the eighteenth century, Russians have used expressive genres―including diaries, novels, medical case studies, films, letters, and theater―to make political and moral statements.

The first book to examine the narration of self as idea and ideal in Russia, this vital work contemplates the shifting historical manifestations of identity, the strategies of self-creation, and the diversity of narrative forms. Its authors establish that there is a history of the individual in Russian culture roughly analogous to the one associated with the West.

About this title

About the Author:

Laura Engelstein is Professor of History at Princeton University. She is the author, most recently, of Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale, also from Cornell. Stephanie Sandler is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She is the author of Commemorating Pushkin and editor of Rereading Russian Poetry.

Review:

"In this fine book, historians, literary scholars, and art critics engage in an intense and thought-provoking dialogue that illuminates different facets of Russian private, social, and cultural life. The diverse topics and fields of study converge into an extremely rich and well-organized whole, exposing a new intellectual space―a fascinating mosaic of Russian society in the making."

(Boris Gasparov, Columbia University)

"Demonstrating the diverse ways in which individual Russians since the late 18th century have attempted to understand and define their personal identities, these pathbreaking essays effectively challenge collectivist representations of modern Russia's particularity. By also showing, however, how individual efforts at self-definition were shaped by historical and cultural contexts, the authors do much to illuminate the particular character of modernity and ways of understanding the self in Imperial and Soviet Russia. Self and Story in Russian History provides us with an important new perspective on modern Russia."

(William Wagner, Williams College)

"Self and Story in Russian History is the first sustained scholarly exploration of how selves―and the self as idea and ideal―were narrated in the Russian past. This is an important and necessary book."

(Mark D. Steinberg, University of Illinois)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0801486688
• ISBN 13: 9780801486685
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Engelstein Laura, Sandler Stephanie