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Russia and the “Printing Revolution”: Notes and Observations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Gary Marker
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Extract

In recent years the history of early printing in Western Europe has received renewed attention from scholars with an interest not only in elucidating the internal evolution of printing, but also in demonstrating the relevance of this development for history in general. Indeed, some historians of printing now argue that the advent of movable type was a major landmark of the centuries between the Renaissance and the French Revolution. This proposition has given rise to the still bolder hypothesis that a “printing” or “typographical” revolution visibly altered European culture in the post-Gutenberg era.

While Western scholarship has directed considerable attention to printing in early modern Europe, the history of communications outside the West has gone relatively unnoticed. The failure to consider even those societies that stood on the periphery of European experience — Russia, Byzantium, the Balkans — is especially surprising since in many ways these societies were part of European culture. In the case of Russia, at least, the neglect of theoretical issues does not stem from a lack of published information, since the study of the Russian book has a long and rich past among Russian and Soviet bibliographers and literary historians.

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Slavic Review , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , Summer 1982 , pp. 266 - 283
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1982

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References

1. Febvre, Lucien and Martin, Henri-Jean, L'apparition du livre (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar; Rudolph, Hirsch, Printing, Selling, and Reading, 1450-1550 (Wiesbaden, 1974Google Scholar); Elizabeth, Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1979Google Scholar); Elizabeth Eisenstein, “Clio and Chronos, An Essay on the Making and Breaking of History-Book Time,” History and Theory, no. 6 (1966); Elizabeth Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing in Current Historical Literature: Notes and Comments on an Elusive Transformation,” American Historical Review, 75, no. 3 (February 1970); Geneviève Bolleme, Les almanachs populaires aux XVIIe et XVIIl” siecles (Paris, 1969); Robert, Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment, A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800 (Cambridge, 1979Google Scholar); Robert Darnton, “Reading, Writing and Publishing in Eighteenth-Century France: A Case Study in the Sociology of Literature,” Daedalus, 100, no. 1 (Winter 1971).

2. Elizabeth Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance,” Past and Present, 45 (November 1969): 19; Eisenstein, , The Printing Press, pp. 3-42Google Scholar.

3. The number of books and articles on the history of Russian books actually runs into the hundreds. Among the more interesting recent ones are the many works of S. P. Luppov, M. I. Slukhovskii, I. E. Barenbaum, and I. F. Martynov.

4. Elizabeth Eisenstein, “Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of Modern History, 40 (1968): 2-7; Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance,” p. 23; Martin, Febvre and, L'apparition, pp. 11-13Google Scholar.

5. Eisenstein, “Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing,” pp. 11-13; Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance,” pp. 23-25.

6. Eisenstein, “Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing,” p. 8. The statement reappears in Eisenstein, The Printing Press, p. 75.

7. Martin, Febvre and, L'apparition, p. 420Google Scholar; Hirsch, , Printing, pp. 30-31Google Scholar; Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance,” p. 19.

8. Eisenstein, “Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing,” p. 3.

9. The subject of the changing perceptions and character of readerships and the emergence of a reading public has received a good deal of attention both from historians of print and sociologists of communications and intellectual life. See, for example, Jurgen, Habermas, Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (Berlin, 1971), chaps. 1 and 2Google Scholar. See also Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance,” pp. 68ff. and Ian, Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 35–59 Google Scholar.

10. The adoption of the vernacular in books, of course, preceded Gutenberg. But its further exploitation in the Renaissance and later seems related to the advent of movable type and its acceptance by lay intellectuals.

11. See, for example, Robert Darnton, “Trade in the Taboo: The Life of a Clandestine Book Dealer in Prerevolutionary France,” in The Widening Circle, Essays on the Circulation of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Paul J. Korshin (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 11-83 and Robert Darnton, “The High Enlightenment and the Low Life of Literature in Prerevolutionary France,” Past and Present, 51 (May 1971): 81-115.

12. Eisenstein, “Clio and Chronos,” p. 44.

13. The general history of early Russian printing has been detailed in a number of works. See, in particular, Adariukov, V. la., ed., Kniga v Rossii, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1924), pp. 60–90 Google Scholar; 400 let russkogo knigopechataniia, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1964), pp. 33ff.; I. E., Barenbaum and T. E., Davydova, Istoriia knigi (Moscow, 1960), pp. 27–47 Google Scholar. See also Nemirovskii, E. L., Vozniknovenie knigopechataniia v Moskve, Ivan Fedorov (Moscow, 1964Google Scholar).

14. Luppov, S. P., Kniga v Rossii v XVII veke (Leningrad, 1970), p. 29 Google Scholar. Luppov's book is the most recent and most carefully researched study on the Russian book in the seventeenth century. In addition, Luppov is continuing his studies to cover the first half of the eighteenth century. To date he has published two additional volumes: Luppov, S. P., Kniga v Rossii v pervoi chetverti XVIII veka (Leningrad, 1973)Google Scholar and Luppov, S. P., Kniga v Rossii v poslepetrovskoe vremia (Leningrad, 1976Google Scholar).

15. This conclusion assumes that the traditionally accepted evidence, such as the correspondence with Kurbskii and the letters to Queen Elizabeth of England, is genuine. Obviously if Edward L. Keenan's challenge to historical orthodoxy proves accurate, our assessment of Ivan's reign will require revision. On the subject of Ivan's publicism and political debates, see, in particular, Bjarne, Norretranders, The Shaping of Czardom under Ivan Groznyi (Copenhagen, 1964Google Scholar) and A. A. Zimin, /. 5. Peresvetov i ego sovremenniki. Ocherki po istorii russkoi obshchestvennopolitichcskoi mysli serediny XVI veka (Moscow, 1958). See also Keenan, Edward L., The Kurbskii- Groznyi Apocrypha: The Seventeenth-Century Genesis of the “Correspondence” Attributed to Prince A. M. Kurbskii and Tsar Ivan IV (Cambridge, 1971CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

16. One of the few exceptions occurred in 1564 with the publication of a collection of the Acts and Epistles (Apostol). For this volume the printing office was directed to simplify the vocabulary and style in order to make the book easier to read ( Malykhin, N. G., Ocherki po istorii knigoizdatel'skogo dela v SSSR [Moscow, 1965], p. 39Google Scholar).

17. Luppov, , Kniga v Rossii v XVII veke, pp. 32-36Google Scholar; Adariukov, , Kniga v Rossii, pp. 90-120Google Scholar.

18. Luppov, , Kniga v Rossii v XVII veke, pp. 66-67Google Scholar.

19. Ibid., p. 93. For a very positive, and in my view rather ill-founded, assessment of literacy and the circulation of teaching psalters and Books of Hours in the second half of the seventeenth century, see Sergei, Zenkovskii, Russkoe staroobriadchestvo, dukhovnye dvizheniia semnadtsatogo veka (Munich, 1970), pp. 93–96 Google Scholar.

20. Luppov, , Kniga v Rossii v XVII veke, pp. 76-96Google Scholar. Once again, this conclusion is based upon Luppov's research. Luppov himself has drawn different conclusions, however, in arguing that the circulation of printed books was more extensive than his evidence seems to warrant.

21. This observation derives from an examination of published inventories of manuscript collections. As several scholars have observed, the more thorough inventories provide notations (zapisi) which often indicate when and where a book was copied, who owned it, who read it, and in what localities the book had circulated. See A. V. Bush, “Drevnerusskaia literaturnaia traditsiia v XVIII veke,” Saratovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, Uchenye zapiski, 4, no. 3 (1925): 5; Slukhovskii, M. I., Bibliotechnoe delo v Rossii do XVIII veka (Moscow, 1968), pp. 12–14 Google Scholar; Baklanova, N. A., “Russkii chitatel’ XVII veka,” in Drevnerusskaia literatura i ee sviazi s novym vremenem (Moscow, 1967), pp. 158–59 Google Scholar.

22. On the expense of producing books and their consequent high retail prices, see Luppov, , Kniga v Rossii v XVII veke, pp. 68-74Google Scholar and V., Adrianova, Materialy dlia istorii tsen na knigi v drevnei Rusi XVI-XVIII vv. (Moscow, 1912)Google Scholar.

23. The most prominent forms of written communication which in general failed to break through the printing threshold were literary: fables, fairy tales, byliny, and the like. In addition, the writing of history and travel accounts stayed almost entirely within a manuscript culture in the seventeenth century. Even the popular broad sheets (lubki) — many of which contained at least some brief prose — were produced by hand or through wood-block prints. None reached a movable-type press in the seventeenth century. On the repertoire of seventeenth-century books, see Luppov, Kniga v Rossiiv XVII veke, pp. 30-37 and N. P., Kiselev, “O moskovskom knigopechatanii XVII veka” Kniga, issledovaniia i material)/, vol. 2 (1960), pp. 130-36Google Scholar.

24. Kliuchevskii, V. O., Kurs russkoi istorii, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1937), p. 294 Google Scholar and passim.

25. On seventeenth-century libraries, see Slukhovskii, , Bibliotechnoe delo, pp. 28–29Google Scholar and Luppov, , Kniga v Rossii v XVII veke, pp. 99–212Google Scholar.

26. Kartashev, A. V., Ocherki po istorii russkoi tserkvi, vol. 2 (Paris, 1959), pp. 86–90 Google Scholar.

27. Paul, Miliukov, Outlines of Russian Culture, vol. 1Google Scholar: Religion and the Church in Russia (New York, 1942), pp. 32-33; Kartashev, , Ocherki po istorii russkoi tserkvi, pp. 88-90Google Scholar.

28. Pierre, Pascal, Avvakum et les debuts du raskol, la crise réligieuse au XVII’ siècle en Russie (Paris, 1938), pp. 10–28 Google Scholar and passim.

29. Kartashev, , Ocherki po istorii russkoi tserkvi, pp. 90-91Google Scholar; Miliukov, , Religion, pp. 33-34Google Scholar.

30. Pascal, , Avvakum, p. 66Google Scholar.

31. Ibid., pp. 66-73.

32. Besides the studies by Pascal and Kartashev, excellent material on the nuanced disagreements that set apart various figures of the question of the meaning and significance of the Byzantine heritage can be found in Florovskii, G. O., Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1937), pp. 24-30, 59–74 Google Scholar and Kapterev, N. F., Kharakter otnoshenii Rossii k pravoslavnomu vostoku v XVI i XVIIstoletiiakh (Sergiev Posad, 1914), especially chaps. 3-7 and 9–10 Google Scholar.

33. Pascal, , Avvakum, pp. 190-227Google Scholar. Other Eastern Orthodox patriarchs in fact warned Nikon against pressing his advantage too swiftly and thoroughly. Nikon, perhaps less experienced with the impact of movable type than the others, ignored them.

34. One difficulty with much of this literature is its failure to deepen its conceptualization of context beyond acknowledging that a context did exist. Eisenstein, for example, has made the splendid point that “one must investigate the prior expansion of a literate laity and a manuscript book trade … or try to explain why printing industries expanded so rapidly in Western Europe during the late fifteenth century and why the invention of movable type did not have similar consequences in the Far East” (Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing in Current Historical Literature,” p. 738. The statement is repeated in Eisenstein, , The Printing Press, pp. 31-32Google Scholar). But neither she nor any other leading historian of print expands on this observation to compare respective contexts. On the contrary, the thrust and substance of their arguments tend to make printing so singularly important that other factors fade into the background. Thus, one can infer from this literature that historical circumstances may help to explain how printing expanded so rapidly, but to explain why it expanded one must look into the inherent characteristics of printing itself. In all probability none of the historians of printing would accept this conclusion, but their writings give a contrary impression. Besides Eisenstein, see Febvre and Martin, L'apparition, pp. 50-110; Hirsch, , Printing, pp. 10-12Google Scholar.

35. On parish priests see Gregory L., Freeze, “Social Mobility and the Russian Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century” Slavic Review, 33, no. 4 (December 1974): 651Google Scholar. The latest attempt to gauge literacy among the officers is Carol B. Stevens, “Belgorod: Notes on Literacy and Language in the Seventeenth-Century Russian Army,” Russian History, 7, pts. 1-2 (1980): 113-24.

36. Lawrence Stone, “Literacy and Education in England 1640-1900,” Past and Present, 42 (February 1969): 76-85, 98-102.

37. The figures represent my own calculations from the following catalogues: T. A., Bykova and M. M., Gurevich, Opisanie izdanii grazhdanskoipechati 1708 — ianvar11725 (Moscow, 1955)Google Scholar; T. A. Bykova and M. M. Gurevich, Opisanie izdanii napechatannykh kirillitsei 1689 — ianvar’ 1725 (Moscow, 1958); T. A., Bykova and M. M., Gurevich, Opisanie izdanii napechatannykh pri Petre I. Dopolneniia i prilozheniia (Moscow, 1972)Google Scholar; Svodnyi katalog russkoi knigi grazhdanskoi pechati XVIII veka, 1725-1800, 6 vols. (Moscow, 1962-75); Zernova, A. S., ed., Svodnyi katalog russkoi knigi kirillovskoi pechati XVIII veka (Moscow, 1968)Google Scholar.

38. See the listing of publishers in Svodnyi katalog russkoi knigi grazhdanskoi pechati, 5:278-90.

39. The most extensive discussion of Peter's assumption of command of cultural affairs, printing among them, is P., Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii pri Petre Velikom, vols. 1 and 2 (St. Petersburg, 1862Google Scholar).

40. See the laws and public notices listed in the three catalogues compiled by Bykova and Gurevich (note 37 above). See also Freeze, Gregory L., The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1977), p. 31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. For a review of this endeavor see Pekarskii, , Nauka i literatura, 2:642-43Google Scholar.

42. Marc, Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York, 1966), pp. 38ffGoogle Scholar.

43. At first sight the notion that printing somehow contributed to a more intimate image of the autocracy seems paradoxical, especially in light of the frequently cited complaint of the Petrine servitors that Peter had destroyed the traditional intimacy between tsar and servitor. For most of the population, however, this traditional intimacy had long since ceased to have much relevance. True, a handcopied notice with the tsar's own signature would be more intimate than a printed one. But few outside of a small stratum ever saw such handcopied proclamations. Printed notices, by contrast, appeared everywhere and frequently

44. Gavrilov, A. V., Ocherki istorii S. Peterburgskoi sinodal'noi tipografii (St. Petersburg, 1911), p. 129Google Scholar; R. M. Tonkova, “Peterburgskie tipografii pervoi chetverti XVIII veka, vkliuchaia akademicheskuiu,” Institut knigi, dokumenta, pis'ma, Trudy, 5 (1936): 115.

45. Documentation for the growing importance of each of these groups, although substantial, is exceedingly diffuse. In the secondary literature there is considerable discussion of the creative role of intellectuals, whether gentry or “democratic,” from midcentury onward. But except for the obeisance to Novikov and his publishing empire, the several dozen other intellectual figures who helped direct Russian publishing have received only episodic attention. For the growing importance of merchants and artisans at every stage in the communications process, one must return to the primary sources. For a few examples of the role of students and recent graduates from secondary academies in founding and directing presses in the middle of the century, see D. D. Shamrai, “Tsenzurnyi nadzor nad tipografiei sukhoputnogo shliakhetnogo korpusa,” Vosemnadtsatyi vek, 2 (1940): 293-328; Raeff, , Origins, p. 139Google Scholar; Shtrange, M. M., Demokraticheskaia intelligentsiia v Rossii v XVIII veke (Moscow, 1965), pp. 85–109 Google Scholar; and la. la. Kogan, Prosvetitei XVIII veka la. P. Kozel'skii (Moscow, 1958), p. 42.

46. For a few examples of the influx of merchants, both native and foreign, into Russian publishing in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, see Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (TsGIA), fond 796, opis’ 63, no. 512, list 1 and ibid., f. 730, op. 1, no. 170, 1. 7. The documents in question make reference to a number of publishers of merchant status who put in bids to the Synod and to the Commission on Establishing Primary Schools to get publishing contracts in the 1780s and 1790s. See also I. F. Martynov, “Knigotorgovets i knigoizdatel’ XVIII v. M. K. Ovchinnikov,” Kniga, issledovaniia i materialy, 24 (1972): 103-14.

47. As one of many examples of this unprofitability, see the debit and credit sheets of Catherine IPs Society for the Translation of Foreign Books which lasted from 1768 to 1783 (Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov [TsGADA], f. 71, no. 34, 11. 1-7 and Arkhiv Akademii nauk [AAN], f. 3, op. 1, no. 543, 1. 526). An excellent treatment of the society's history can be found in Semennikov, V. P., Sobranie staraiushcheesia o perevode inostrannykh knig, uchrezhdennoe Ekaterinoi II 1768-1783 gg. lstorichesko-literatumoe obozrenie (St. Petersburg, 1913)Google Scholar.

48. On the direct and indirect influence of the educational system on reading and readership, see, among others, the orders from booksellers to the Academy of Sciences Press in AAN, f. 3, op. 1, nos. 922-29.

49. Printing, of course, played an important role in making the works of the European Enlightenment available to Russian intellectuals. But the fundamental question for the Enlightenment in Russia involves not the availability of books but the evolution of a corps of intellectuals for whom these ideas would have some meaning. More generally, any conceptualization of Russian printing or any non-Western printing has to take into account the derivative nature of Russian intellectual history and its positioning on the periphery of the history of ideas in Europe (Reinhard Bendix, Embattled Reason, Essays on Social Knowledge [New York, 1970], p. 268).

50. Raeff, , Origins, p. 139Google Scholar; Shtrange, M. M., Demokraticheskaia intelligentsiia v Rossii v XVIII veke (Moscow, 1965), pp. 76–111 Google Scholar.

51. TsGADA, f. 71, no. 34,11. 1-7. See also the pressrun listings in the Svodnyi katalog for the works of Fielding, Richardson, Swift, and DeFoe which the Academy of Sciences published.

52. Pressruns for calendars are listed in Svodnyi katalog, vol. 4, nos. 264 to 523. Evidence on their sales and distribution is scattered but derives largely from AAN, f. 3, op. 1, nos. 922-29.

53. See as an example of this sparseness the inventories which the Holy Synod collected on the holdings of provincial bookshops as part of the crackdown on the Masons in 1787 (TsGADA, f. 796, op. 68, no. 290).

54. A. V. Blium, “Izdatel'skaia deiatel'nost’ v russkoi provintsii kontsa XVIII-nachala XIX vv.,” Kniga, issledovaniia i materialy, 12 (1966): 136-59; Chechulin, N. D., Russkoe provintsial'noe obshchestvo vo vtoroi polovine XVIII veka (St. Petersburg, 1889), pp. 72–76 Google Scholar.

55. See, for example, the lists of subscribers to the multivolume Deianiia Petra Velikogo by I. I. Golikov in which a total of 145 provincial subscriptions appeared, most of which came from about twenty towns, or the 241 provincial subscriptions to Archbishop Platon's Pouchitel'nye slova, virtually all of which went to 10 provincial towns ( Golikov, Ivan I., Deianiia Petra Velikogo, vol. 12 [Moscow, 1789], pp. 19ffGoogle Scholar. and Platon [Petr Levshin, E., Pouchitel'nye slova, vols. 2 and 5 [Moscow, 1780]Google Scholar).