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Readership in Early Nineteenth-Century Russia: Recent Soviet Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Miranda Beaven
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Extract

One expanding area of research in the well-established Soviet field of scholarship known as knigovedenie (book studies) is that of the history of readership. Its newness is indicated by the fact that not until 1974 was a separate section for materials on the history of reading established in the annual surveys of book studies that appear in the basic journal Kniga: issledovaniia i materialy. As far as the early nineteenth century is concerned, the Decembrists have perhaps attracted most attention, and the one monograph broad enough to be considered a general study (Al'tshuller and Martynov) follows that trend by discussing a panorama of readers who have in common their reading of Decembrist literature. But early in the book one encounters a keynote statement which sets the study in a wider context and expresses a view increasingly held by scholars irrespective of their geographic interests: “One very important aspect of … [Decembrist poetry] has escaped attention.

Type
Notes and Comment
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Summer 1984 , pp. 276 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1984

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References

This survey is a revised version of part of a longer paper entitled "Book Production and Printing, the Book Trade and Readership in the Early 19th Century: Recent Soviet Research," which was presented on June 22, 1983 at a conference on Soviet Book Studies cosponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and held by the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of California, Berkeley. The intention was to survey Soviet research of the last twenty years.

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2. Al'tshuller and Martynov, p. 7. This seems to be a widespread perception. D. C. Spinelli, for instance, introduces a piece on the French reading public of 1809 with the following: “In recent years there has been an ever-increasing interest in the study of literacy and the reading-public for such studies prove beneficial not only to social and intellectual historians but also to scholars of literature who must often analyze and determine meaning in terms of the author's motivation and intended audience” (Spinelli, “Beaumarchais' Reading Public in 1809,” Publishing History, 9 [1981]:37).

3. Al'tshuller and Martynov, p. 91.

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7. Three volumes in this series have so far been published: vol. 1: 1973, vol. 2: 1976, vol. 3: 1979.

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15. The term applies whether the approach has been to examine a particular class of readers or mass response to a particular author or work.

16. Blagoi, D. D., “Chital li Pushkin ‘Fausta’ Gete?” in Istoriko-filologicheskie issledovaniia: sbornik statei pamiati akademika N. I. Konrada (Moscow, 1974), pp. 104–12Google Scholar.

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22. Fanger, Donald, “Gogol and His Reader,” in Todd, W. Mills III, ed., Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800–1914 (Stanford, Cal., 1978), pp. 61–95 Google Scholar.

23. Ibid., p. 64.

24. Ibid., p. 62.

25. Ia. Smolenskii, M., “Pushkin i chitatel',” in his Vsoiuze zvukov, chuvstv i dum: eshche odno prochtenie A. S. Pushkina (Moscow, 1976), pp. 53–69 Google Scholar.

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29. Krivonos, V. Sh., Problema chitatelia v tvorchestve Gogolia (Voronezh, 1981).Google Scholar

30. Ibid., pp. 5–6.

31. Ibid., p. 10. This is not to say that these institutions were losing all significance, but rather that with increased book distribution and increased periodical circulation their role as arbiters of public taste—in the form of centers for the exchange of opinion among the gentry—was no longer as crucial in determining the overall reception of a literary work.

32. Fanger, “Gogol and His Reader,” p. 62.

33. Krivonos, Problema chitatelia, p. 11. A new addition to this topic and to Kniga's Sud'by knig series is scheduled for publication shortly (Iu. V. Mann, V poiskakh zhivoi dushi:‘Mertvyedushi'; pisatel'-kritika-chitatel’). It will apparently discuss polno i ubeditel'no Gogol “s dialog with his reading public.

34. One of the recommendations of the second conference on The Book in Russia Until the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Leningrad, April 1981) was to remedy this imbalance (Kniga, 44 [1982]: 196).