The Russian Soul
As the 19th century progressed, focus shifted from the landowning minority to the laboring majority. After Alexander I’s pivotal defeat of Napoleon in 1814, the Russian elite turned its attention to the peasants who had secured the victory. Around the same time and for the next several decades, serfdom was losing popular support, and more and more nobles favored abolition. Public estimation of the government fell steadily, and the simple hardworking peasant became the new embodiment of Russian character, the only hope for the fulfillment of its glorious national destiny.
In such an atmosphere did Gogol’s Dead Souls arrive, in 1842. Gogol and his contemporaries established literature as Russia’s new weapon of choice, the tool by which it could inform itself of its greatness and urge the nation to its destined position as a world leader. Gogol may not have had such grand notions, but with the help of Belinskii he paved the way for a new concept of Russian identity - the great Russian soul. As opposed to the preceding “Russian spirit,” which focused on Russia’s past, “Russian soul” was an expression of optimism. It stressed Russia’s historical youth and its ability, by following the wisdom of the peasant, to become the savior of the world. Indeed, although the concept of the Russian soul grew upon Western ideas, its advocates believed that Russia had made those ideas its own and would use them to save Europe from itself.
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Famous quotes containing the words russian and/or soul:
“Other centuries had their driving forces. What will ours have been when men look far back to it one day? Maybe it won’t be the American Century, after all. Or the Russian Century or the Atomic Century. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Phil, if it turned out to be everybody’s century, when people all over the world—free people—found a way to live together? I’d like to be around to see some of that, even the beginning.”
—Moss Hart (1904–1961)
“The soul was not cured,
it was as full as a clothes closet
of dresses that did not fit.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)