LATE NINETEENTH CENTURYRUSSIAN ART, CULTURE, AND

POLITICSEric Beckman

Anoka HS, MN

Russian Identities

WesternizersRussia is between East and West, and

should aim to be more Western

SlavophilesRussia is unique and should embrace its distinctive culture

Westernizing Ideas:Rejecting Russian Uniqueness

Liberal Capitalism

Revolutionary Socialism

Western CultureRussian

Culture as backwards

• Free politics• Constitutional

Democrats• Industrial

development• Marxism: Social

Democrats• Rejected Liberalism

and the Old Regime

• Literature & Languages

• Musical forms

• Orthodoxy• Peasantry

Slavophile Ideas:Embracing Russia’s Uniqueness

Peasantry

Orthodoxy

Monarchy

Revolutionary Socialism

• Folk tales, songs, and wisdom

• Religious faith• Natural socialists

• True Christianity• Savior to Europe

• Order• Paternalism• Tradition

• Go to the people• Socialist Revolutionaries

Vasily Ivanovich Surikov,The Morning of the Streltsy’s Execution, 1881

Vasily Ivanovich Surikov, Boyarina Morozova, 1887

Pictures at An Exhibition

Pictures by Viktor Hartmann

Piano music by Modest Mussorgsky

Orchestrated by others, most famously by Maurice Ravel

Mussorgsky

The Great Gate of Kiev

Hut of Baba Yaga

Sources of Discontent

Nationalism

Peasantry

Proletariat

Intelligentsia

Radicalized Intelligentsia:Revolutionaries

Populists• People’s Will• Socialist Revolutionaries

Nihilists

Anarchists

Marxist Socialists•Social Democrats• Menshiviki• Bolsheviki