Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy - Paperback

by Susan Layton (Author), Catriona Kelly (Editor), Anthony Cross (Editor)

This is the first synthesizing study of Russian writing about the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century age of empire-building. It covers major writers including Pushkin, Tolstoy and Lermontov, but also introduces material from travelogues, oriental studies, ethnography, memoirs, and the utterances of tsarist officials and military commanders. Setting these writings and the responses of the Russian readership in historical and cultural context, Susan Layton examines ways that literature underwrote imperialism. But her study also reveals the tensions between the Russian state's ideology of a European mission to civilize the Caucasian Muslim mountaineers, and romantic perceptions of those peoples as noble primitives whose extermination was no cause for celebration.

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This is the first book to provide a synthesizing study of Russian writing about the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century age of empire-building. From Pushkin's ambivalent portrayal of an alpine Circassia to Tolstoy's condemnation of tsarist aggression against Muslim tribes in Hadji Murat, the literary analysis is firmly set in its historical context, and the responses of the Russian readership to receive extensive attention. As well as exploring literature as such, Susan Layton introduces material from travelogues, oriental studies, ethnography, memoirs, and the utterances of tsarist officials and military commanders. While showing how literature often underwrote imperialism, the book carefully explores the tensions between the Russian state's ideology of a European mission to civilize the Muslim mountain peoples, and romantic perceptions of those tribes as noble primitives whose extermination was no cause for celebration. By dealing with imperialism in Georgia as well, the study shows how the varied treatment of the Caucasus in literature helped Russians construct a satisfying identity for themselves as a semi-European, semi-Asian people.