Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-09T07:47:44.062Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4.8 - The Non-Russian

from History 4 - Heroes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2024

By
Michael Kunichika
Edited by
Simon Franklin ,
Rebecca Reich  and
Emma Widdis
Simon Franklin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Rebecca Reich
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Emma Widdis
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Tracing the figure of the ‘non-Russian’ across nearly three centuries of Russian writing and literary tendencies, this chapter considers how it came to embody cultural and philosophical values against which Russian writers sought to measure their own culture, history, and politics. The chapter shows that the ‘non-Russian’ was a figure central to a range of writers who grappled with Russia’s position between the symbolic antinomies of East and West, confronted the Russian and Soviet empires or emerged out of it, or used the figure to formulate what ‘Russianness’ could mean. As the constant companion of their ‘Russian’ counterparts, the ‘non-Russian’ figures examined in this chapter include those created by ethnically Russian writers as well as those who wrote in Russian while also navigating their own ethnic identities within various historical contexts and literary tendencies.

Keywords

ethnicitynationalityotherothernessRussophoneempireidentity
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature , pp. 806 - 823
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Brower, Daniel R., and Lazzerini, Edward J. (eds.), Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Dudley, Edward J., and Novak, Maximillian E. (eds.), The Wild Man Within: An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973).Google Scholar
Hokanson, Katya, Writing at Russia’s Border (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Layton, Susan, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Mathewson, Rufus W., The Positive Hero in Russian Literature (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Ram, Harsha, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Sunderland, Willard, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×