All Russia Is Burning! A Cultural History of Fire and Arson in Late Imperial Russia. By Cathy A. Frierson. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. x, 318 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tables. Map. $45.00, hard bound.

Slavic Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-189
Author(s):  
Daniel Brower
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
University Of Washington ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
History Of ◽  
Seattle University

Parallel Lives: Gogol'’s Biography and Mass Readership in Late Imperial Russia

Slavic Review ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Moeller-Sally
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Parallel Lives ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Revolutionary Ideology

Our view of the cultural situation in late imperial Russia is changing. Long set aside as a distinct period in literary and cultural history, the decades embracing the turn of the twentieth century have customarily been described according to two master narratives. The first has tied developments in cultural life to the political struggle between revolution and reaction, and to the history of Russian revolutionary ideology. The second focuses on the evolution of style, recounting the transformation of realism and the concurrent emergence of decadence and modernism. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to reveal the limits of these paradigms by directing attention to fundamental changes in the institutions of Russian literature. Jeffrey Brooks has shown how the Russian reading public expanded and diversified in the wake of the Great Reforms, thus preparing the way for a broadly based popular literature governed by market forces. As technology improved in the areas of printing, transportation and communications, the potential of this new market was increasingly exploited so that by the turn of the century popular literature had risen from its origins as a virtual cottage enterprise to the status of a major industry.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document