Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia: The Pleasure and the Power
Richard Stites
Abstract
Serf-era and provincial Russia heralded the spectacular turn in cultural history that began in the 1860s. Examining the role of arts and artists in society's value system, this book explores this shift in a history of visual and performing arts in the last decades of serfdom. Provincial town and manor house engaged the culture of Moscow and St. Petersburg while thousands of serfs and ex-serfs created or performed. Mikhail Glinka raised Russian music to new levels and Anton Rubinstein struggled to found a conservatory. Long before the itinerants, painters explored town and country in genre scen ... More
Serf-era and provincial Russia heralded the spectacular turn in cultural history that began in the 1860s. Examining the role of arts and artists in society's value system, this book explores this shift in a history of visual and performing arts in the last decades of serfdom. Provincial town and manor house engaged the culture of Moscow and St. Petersburg while thousands of serfs and ex-serfs created or performed. Mikhail Glinka raised Russian music to new levels and Anton Rubinstein struggled to found a conservatory. Long before the itinerants, painters explored town and country in genre scenes of everyday life. Serf actors on loan from their masters brought naturalistic acting from provincial theaters to the imperial stages. The book offers new perspectives on the origins of Russia's nineteenth-century artistic prowess.
Keywords:
provincial Russia,
cultural history,
value system,
performing arts,
serfdom,
Moscow,
St. Petersburg,
provincial theatres,
imperial stages,
Russian music
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2005 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780300108897 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: October 2013 |
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300108897.001.0001 |
