Михаил Ямпольский — историк культуры, философ, киновед. Доктор искусствоведения, профессор Нью-Йоркского университета. Лауреат Премии Андрея Белого за 2004 год (в номинации «Гуманитарные исследования»).
Сергей Яров — историк, доктор исторических наук, ведущий научный сотрудник Санкт-Петербургского института истории РАН, профессор Европейского университета в Санкт-Петербурге и Российского государственного педагогического университета им. А. И. Герцена (Санкт-Петербург).
SUMMARY
Mikhail Iampolsky (New York University). «Revolution as an Event of Meaning». Revolution (for people involved in it) is usually a combination of a meaningless chaos and of new aggressive significations. Some theoreticians — Alain Badiou and Henri Lefebvre among them — have applied to revolution a model of a momentary transformation of chaos into a meaningful Gestalt. In his essay lampolski critically analyses this model and suggests that a better approach is possible. He claims that the model of expressivity developed by Spinoza is more adequate for the description of a dramatically changing reality. Reality expresses itself but doesn’t offer to the gaze of a distant observer any unifiable image.
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford University). «How Anthropological is Time? (About „Effects of Revolution“ in Different Chronotopes)». Revolutions, thus the main and deliberately anti-Marxist thesis of this essay, cannot belong to the ontologically «objective» dimension of «real» historical events — but are a type of experience/perception shaped by the historically specific «chronotope» that we are (or rather: we used to be) living in. There is nothing unusual — let alone disrespectful — in this observation: all of our experiences/perceptions of the past depend upon a configuration of chronotopes, i.e. an interference between the past chronotope and the present chronotope, under which they emerge — with «chronotope» being a phenomenological interpretation of the concept Bakhtin was referring to with this predicate. If «Revolution» was a type of experience due to and typical of the «historicist» chronotope as it had emerged in the early 19th century (Darwinian Evolutionism and Hegelian Philosophy of History being its most salient products), we may today no longer see and shape historical discontinuities in the same way — because, thus the second most important hypothesis of this essay, the historicist chronotope may have imploded and vanished, somehow «while our backs were turned,» during the third quarter of the 20th century.
Igor Dmitriev (St. Petersburg State University). «Pierre Simon Laplace — little emperor of great science». This article offers a general description of social, political and cultural aspects of the operation of French science between the Thermidorian revolt and the abdication of Napoleon. It pays special attention to the personality and some peculiarities of scientific creative work of Pierre Laplace (1749–1827), who was not only the most prominent scientist of his time but also the man who (partly thanks to his talent and reputation and partly thanks to his close relationshp with autorities) had noticeable influence on the formation of the French post-revolutionary (or, to be precise, post-Thermidore) scientific community.
Alexander Semyonov (St. Petersburg, Smolny College of Liberal Artand Sciences). «The Revolution of 1905: The Elusive Liberal Alternative». The article seeks to situate the liberal political program in the context of the 1905 revolution in the Russian Empire. It presents an argument against taking the liberal alternative in early twentieth-century Russia as a structurally given offspring of the development of liberal ideas from the nineteenth century or a function of the social position of zemstvo-constitutionalists, intellectuals, and modern professions. The author highlights paradoxes in the debates about modernity and its historical determination among the ideologues of Russian liberalism of the early twentieth century and therefore suggests that the historically formed phenomenon of the liberal alternative should be given back its dimension of political imagination and volition.
Oleg Lekmanov (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow State University, and Alexey M. Gorky World Literature Institute). «Fifteen notes made by Aleksandr Tinyakov on Zinaida Gippius’ book „Last poems“ (1918) (On constructing the readers’ history of literature)». This article analyses the notes made by a poet and literary critic Aleksandr Tinyakov (1886–1934) on the margins of a copy of Zinaida Gippius’ poetry collection held in the Russian State Library (Moscow) that were dicovered by the author. These notes, as the article demonstrates, represented preparatory work for Tinyakov’s review of the «Last poems» — that essay was published in the «Orlovskie izvestiya» newspaper. The poems in the «Last poems» collection were extremely critical of the Russian October communist revolution, and Tinyakov in his review declares Gippius’ book to be a socially dangerous act. Paradoxically, Tinyakov’s poetics was very close to that of Gippius, especially to the poetics of the «Last poems». Therefore Tinyakov’s criticism was waging war not on something «alien» but rather on something recognised as one’s own, something that was culturally close to the author of the review.
Ekaterina Dmitrieva (Moscow, Russian State University for the Humanities). «Re-volutio in Sense and Sensibility (on some peculiarities of Eighteenth-Century French Libertinage)». This paper suggessts that the literature of French libertinage served as one of the ab nihilo triggers of the French Revolution. It analyses the ways in which libertinage, that traditionally has been perceived as a revolution in social expressions of the erotic, might, in fact, have emerged from within the code of honntet itself. It explains how the notion of elevated or refined feeling which, in the vocabularly of eighteenth-century libertinage was used to mask desire, led to a ‘reverse evolution’ (re-volutio), and why the ensuing contrasts between refined language and unrefined behaviour, between form and reality, prompted an interpretation of the senses themselves as derivatives of language in some way.
Elena Mikhailik (Sidney, University of New South Wales). «An Unnoticed Revolution». The idea of the «literature of fact» formed in the late ‘20s by the LEF and the New LEF theorists was from its very conception founded on an irresolvable contradiction. The LEF theorists proclaimed that as of now both the form and the content of a work should be determined not by the author but by the nature of the material in question. However to single out a certain «fact» from the general flow and to arrange and edit those facts (regardless of the organisational principle employed) one needed a point of view that would exist separately from the material itself, i.e. that very authorial view that LEF strived to abolish.
The article is going to demonstrate that Varlam Shalamov who in the 1920s had been active on the periphery of New LEF and later dropped out of the literary process due to reasons beyond his control, used the concept of the «literature of fact» to assign meanings to and to assimilate the prison camp environment which (according to Shalamov) existed outside human experience. Shalamov turned an authorial viewpoint into a part of his material and made reproduction of experience his central organisational principle. The paper also discusses some theoretical and literary consequences of that experiment.
Balázs Trencsényi (Budapest, Central European University). «Revolt Against History: National Characterologies in East Central Europe in the Interwar Period». While conservatives in the nineteenth century advocated a political, social and institutional continuity with the pre-modern structures, after WWI the conservative agenda came to be entrenched in the feeling of rupture and the need of restoring the lost tradition with radical means. Having a powerful impact all over Europe, Conservative Revolution in East Central Europe led to the formation of a new discourse of national characterology, seeking to challenge the hierarchy based on the «superiority» of Western Europe and the «derivative nature» of Eastern European civilization. Following the Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian debates, the study seeks to unveil the relationship of the patterns of historical representation and the growing infatuation with «national essence» that came to dominate East Central Europe in the interwar period.
Laurent Thévenot (Paris, EHESS, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques). «Upside down: French May 68 turning community and personality head over heels». French May 68 was a remarkable occasion to relaunch, experience and learn critical activities. Here, we concentrate on the intense and creative elaboration of words and images which display the significant and emotional core of what was felt as a profound subversive trial. We first consider the critique or reactivation of the different «orders of worth» and bring light on the various notions of hierarchy involved. We then turn to the reappraisal of the different «regimes of engagements» of the person with the world and with others, from the most public ones to the closest ones. The simplistic reduction of May 68 to «individualization» is thus questioned.
Oleksandr Grytsenko (Kyiv, Ukrainian center of cultural research). «Rhetoric of Justice vs. rhetoric of Stability: post-revolutionary changes in value orders and cultural identities (The case of Ukraine)». The article deals with ongoing changes in national and regional cultural identities in contemporary Ukraine as well as political implications of these changes as manifested through current rivalries between Ukraine’s two leading political forces and their leaders, namely, Yulia Tymoshenko’s BYUT and Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
Traditionally, Ukraine’s political scene has been seen as a dichotomy of pro-Western, pro-democracy forces based on the western part of the nation (Ukrainian-speaking, national-democratic and arguably ‘more European’), and pro-Russian forces based on its eastern and southern parts (Russian-speaking and Soviet-nostalgic).
The post-revolutionary years, however, revealed the limits of these cultural-political explanations and related strategies. Ukrainian politicians have begun to look elsewhere for convincing alternatives capable of constructing an imagined community broader than those based on the East/West dichotomy. Their efforts resulted in two political strategies promoted by the above-mentioned political forces (which can be labeled, respectively, ‘defense of stability’ and ‘struggle for justice’). Societal preconditions for both strategies, their main messages, their target audiences, and values embodied are reviewed here in detail.
The article also analyses two quite different tactics of political image-building represented in the public personae of the leaders, Viktor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko. It is argued that these public images are products of mass culture techniques ratherthan of traditional political propaganda campaigns. The leaders, therefore, are indebted much more to the symbolic capital of regional, national and global popular culture for their success than to political meaning of their messages or economic results of their policies.
Viktor Zhivov (Moscow, Russian Language Institute / Berkeley, University of California). «Disciplinary Revolution and the Struggle with Superstitions in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Failures and their Repercussions». The formation of modern state and modern society in various European countries was informed, differently in different cases, by a disciplinary revolution, that is, by the regimentation of the social life originally based on new religious values. The extirpation of superstitions was an important part of this process; «superstitions» could be conceptualized in this process in various manners. The paper describes the peculiarities of this struggle in eighteenth-century Russia and analyzes the consequences of its failure.
Sergey Yarov (St. Petersburg, European University, St. Petersburg Institute of the Russian Academy of Science). «Explaining leaving the RCP(b) in 1919–1922 as a form of expressing political loyalty (on the materials of the State contemporary history archives of the Novgorod region)». The main topic of the article is pressure to conform produced by the revolutionary political institutions. Applications for permission to leave the Party made by the rank and file Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) members had never been used as a primary source before. The author analyses such applications written mostly by former peasants and semiliterate workers that were preserved in the State contemporary history archives of the Novgorod region (Russia). Paradoxically, these documents express more conformism and loyalty to the new, Soviet regime than applications to join the Communist party. This has to do with the fact that leaving the Party could have led to political persecution, so the authors strived to persuade the local functionaries that they support the new regime and that their reasons for leaving the party ranks were not of a political nature. The form of many documents of that kind resemble standard prerevolutionary petitions sent by private persons to various administrative bodies.
Stanislav Savitsky (St. Petersburg, Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences). «Revolutionary train and historical experience». Revolutionary historical experience consists of a variety of social, ideological and cultural realities. One of the keys to understanding it might be an apposition of three planes: mass culture symbols; avantgarde ideologemes, realised though experimental artistic forms; and documental and autobiographic works that that contain elements of socio-psychological analysis. The author chose as his material the political, artistic and social portrayals of trains. Karl Marx’s metaphor portraying revolution as a «locomotive of history» is linked to the way the intellectuals of the second half of the 19th century perceived new communications technologies. Later, for the Futurists the fullness of experiencing history took a form of progressist or pro-urban ideology. The Futurist train does not stop, it is a symbol of being enraptured with speed. Its passenger seeks to lose oneself in its purposeful movement to take part in history. In Soviet propaganda the train is always a sign of the «only true» Utopian Communist idea. For the followers and «junior fellows» of the Futurists who were trying to comprehend the legacy of the revolution — e.g. for a pupil of the Formalists Lidia Ginzburg — the train no longer was connected either with a faith in technical progress or with being enraptured by urbanist speed or Marx’s formula. For her the railroads serve as a metaphor of a society. Her journey described in an essay «Going home» is an attempt to describe socio-psychological reality. Historical experience here presupposes a position not of a participant of revolutionary events but that of a self-conscious observer of an unpredictably changing society.
