|
|
| | | | "Rossiia", Literaturnaia gazeta, 12 October 1988, no. 41, pp. 5-6; M. M. Gromyko, Traditsionnye
normy povedeniia i formy obshcheniia russkikh krest'ian XIX v. ( Moscow: Nauka, 1986). Journal-
ist Hedrick Smith ( The New Russians [ New York: Random House, 1990]) is in a long American
tradition of risky attempts to probe (and overgeneralize) Russian character. Cf. Margaret Mead
, Soviet Attitudes toward Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet
Character ( New York: Schocken, 1951); Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux, eds., The Study of
Culture at a Distance ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Geoffrey Gorer and John Rickman
, The Peoples of Great Russia: A Psychological Study ( New York: Norton, 1962 [original
Cresset, 1949]). Clyde Kluckhohn, the psychological anthropologist who headed the 1950s Har-
vard Refugee Interview Project, declined to write a monograph on Russian character. A power-
ful approach to Russian traditional values remains through literature, including the nationalist,
often xenophobic "village" writers Valentin Rasputin, Iuri Bondarev, Vasilii Belov, and Viktor Astaf'ev
. Cf. "The Russian Complex: The Eidelman-Astafiev Correspondence", Detente,
Winter 1987, pp. 5-7. See also the moving story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn "Matriona's
Home", in Half-way to the Moon, eds. Patricia Blake and Max Hayward ( New York: Anchor,
1965), pp. 13-53. | | | | | 6. | The usual Soviet Marxist view was that the people (narod) formed first, and then the state.
This remains valid for many historians, but not all. Compare B. I. Krasnobaev, Russkaia kul'tura
vtoroi poloviny XVII-nachala XIX v. ( Moscow: Moscow State University Press, 1983), pp.
41-62; D. S. Likhachev "Rossiia", Literaturnaia gazeta, 12 October 1988, no. 41, pp. 5-6; V. S. Rumiantseva
, "Tendentsii razvitiia obshchestvennogo soznanii i prosveshcheniia v Rossii XVII
veka", Voprosy istorii, no. 2, pp. 26-40; I. Ia. Froianov and A. Iu. Dvornichenko, Goroda-
gosudarstva drevnei Rusi (Leningrad: Leningrad State University Press, 1988); Iu. V. Krivosheev,
"Sotsial'naia bor'ba i problema genezisa feodal'nykh otnoshenii v severo-vostochnoi Rusi
XI-nachala XII veka", Voprosy istorii, 1988, no. 9, pp. 49-63; E. A. Mel'nikova and V. Ia. Petrukhin
, "Nazvanie 'Rus' v etnokul'turnoi istorii drevnerusskogo gosudarstva" (IX-X vv.),
Voprosy istorii, 1989, no. 8, pp. 24-38; I. V. Dubov, "Spornye voprosy etnicheskoi istorii severo-
vostochnoi Rusi IX-XIII vekov", Voprosy istorii, 1990, no. 5, pp. 15-27; V. P. Filippov, "Iz istorii
izucheniia Russkogo natsional'nogo samosoznaniia", Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1991, no. 1,
pp. 25-33. For Western views placing the gradual formation of Russian ethnicity well beyond
the Kievan or Mongol periods, see Edward L. Keenan, "Royal Russian Behavior, Style, and
Self-Image", in Ethnic Russia in the USSR: The Dilemma of Dominance, ed. Edward Allworth
( New York: Pergamon, 1980), pp. 3-16; idem, "Moscovite Political Folkways", The Russian
Review, 1986, vol. 45, pp. 115-81; Henrik Birnbaum and Michael S. Flier, eds., Medieval Russian
Culture ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Cf. Gail Lenhoff, The Martyred Princes
Boris and Gleb: A Socio-cultural Study of the Cult and the Texts ( Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1989).
Edward Keenan gave early warnings of Russian national chauvinism in historical analysis, both
before and during the Gorbachev period. | | | | | 7. | A few Ukrainians have also decided that the true roots of their culture lie with the pre-
Christian cult of Iarilo. For discussion of Orthodoxy, see "Kruglyi Stol. Rol' pravoslavnoi
tserkvi v istorii Rossii", Voprosy istorii, 1990, no. 3, pp. 84-106. With the Millennium, the jour-
nal Voprosy istorii instituted a section "Ocherki Istorii Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi" including
writings of Orthodox clergy; see, e.g., 1989, no. 8, pp. 54-75. See also A. B. Golovko, "Khristian-
izatsiia vostochnoslavianskogo obshchestva i vneshniaia politika drevnei rusi v IX-pervoi treti
XIII veka", Voprosy istorii, 1988, no. 9, pp. 59-71. Cf. James H. Billington, "Russia's Quest for
Identity" and "Looking into the Past", Washington Post, 21 January 1990, p. B7; 22 January, p.
All. In March 1989 a new pan-Slavic cultural organization was formed, Fond slavianskoi
pis'mennosti i slavianskikh kul'tur, whose leaders are mainly Russian nationalists. See John Dunlop
, "Two Noteworthy Russian Nationalist Initiatives", Radio Liberty Report on the USSR, 26
May 1989, pp. 1-4. In July 1991 a well-attended religious procession carried the remains of St.
Sarafim of Sarov through Central Russia. See A. Vasinsky and A. Yershov, "Pilgrimage to a
Miracle", Izvestiia, 31 July 1991, p. 6 (and Current Digest of the Soviet Press, vol. 43, no. 31,
pp. 29-30; vol. 43, no. 29, pp. 27). | | | | | 8. | A Russian-American volume commemorating the Millennium is William C. Brumfield and
Milos Velimirovic, eds., Christianity and the Arts in Russia ( New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991). For a summary of religion and change under Gorbachev, see Sabrina P. Ramet,
ed., Religious Policy in the Soviet Union ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). See
also the 1990 USSR "Law on Freedom of Conscience" ( Current Digest of the Soviet Press, vol.
42, no. 40, pp. 6-8, 31), being adapted for Russia in 1992. | | | | -xviii- | | |
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication Information: Book Title: Russian Traditional Culture: Religion, Gender, and Customary Law. Contributors: Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer - editor. Publisher: M.E. Sharpe. Place of Publication: Armonk, NY. Publication Year: 1992. Page Number: xviii.
|
