SAINT PETERSBURG'S HERITAGE ACROSS EUROPE AND ABROAD

Spring's Festival

Russia's Decisive Role in European Cultural Modernity

Важнейшая роль России в европейской  культурной  современности. 

Il ruolo determinante della Russia nella modernità europea.

Le role dècisif de la Russie dans la modernité européenne.

Entscheidende Rolle Russlands in Europas kulturellem Moderne

Notwithstanding its contradictions, Tsarist Russia was deeply implicated in all great cultural and political tendencies of that period in Europe (romanticism, nationalism, democracy, imperialism, industrialism, cultural avant-gardes). Its specific “flavour” rendered it still more attractive for Europeans. Writers such as Pushkin, Gogol, Checov, Dostojevsky and Tol’stoy, componists such as Chajkowsky, Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky, choreographers like Diaghilev, painters like Rerih and Kandinsky, became “classical” all over the world already during their lives. Tol’stoy enjoyed worldwide an incredible fortune, not only as a writer, but, also, as a social reformer. By the way, Gandhi’s political thought was deeply influenced by Tol’stoy’s.

Especially at the moment of the Russian Revolution, it became evident that Russia contained such a cultural richess, that, even just its Diaspora (i.a. Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall, Trubeckoy, Stravinsky, Nabokov, Trockij), constituted a sort of  “cultural great power”,together France and Germany. They were decisive in the diffusion of cultural avant-garde all over the world.

Between 1917 and 1929, three million Russians left their country, giving rise to great Russian cultural centers abroad, such as the ones in Berlin (Charlottemburg), in Paris and in New York.

In 1923, within the framework of N.E.P. (“Novaya Ekonomičeskaya Politika”), due to the Locarno Treaty, the Soviet State had eliminated controls on migrant visas for Germany, so that half a million Russians migrated towards Berlin, where life was cheap at the time, because of the terrible post-war economic crisis. Thus, the town could enjoy a rich Russian cultural life (concerts of Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Heifej, Hovonij and Milsternčj; presence of writers such as Cvetayeva, Gorki, Bely, Pasternak, Ehzenburg, Nabokov). There were even 68 Russian publishing houses. Later on, at the end of the twenties, Paris had become the center of Russian Diaspora’s culture, where, i.a., Larionov, Bakst, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Merežkovsky were culturally active.

The culture expressed by the Diaspora was rather conservative, due also to the anti-Bolshevik orientation of most of its members. Authors, like Stravinsky or Rachmaninov, who, during their “Russian” period, had been engaged in avant-gardes, oriented themselves towards conservative cultural expressions. This gave a contribution to the preservation of Russian National Character, also in front of the globalistic approach of Westerners, whilst such avant-garde, in Russia, was submerged by the successive waves of Modernism and of Socialist Realism.

The richess of Russian artists living in the West prompted also a re-evaluation, by the Western public itself, of the “classical” Russian style, the classical traditions of Tsars St. Petersburg, as symbolized, e.g., by Čajkovskij’s music, or by the Dornröschen of Djaghiliev. Under the characteristics of this new cultural trend, there was the rehabilitation of aristocratic values and the “art pour l’art”, which was expressed precisely in Čajkovskij’s music and in Puškin’s literature. Djaghiliev pursued, with “Les Biches” and “Train Bleu”, a more “Occidentalist” path, which was not so much palatable to the- rather  “Eurasiatist”- Russian Diaspora in Paris –. He even interrupted the tour of his “Shéhérazade”, which he found “outdated”.

Russian Diaspora has diffused her roots all over the world, and especially all over Europe, with special reference to Paris, London, Berlin. Flourishing communities of Russians exist in all European countries, with their churches, their newspapers, a.s.o.. They constituted, and still constitute, a strong and permanent link between Russia and Europe. The aristocrats, the White Guards as well as dissenting intellectuals, migrating to other countries of Europe, gave important contributions to European culture, It is sufficient to mention Kandinskij, Chagall, Nabokorov, but also Koyré, Kojève, Prince Trubeckoj.

What is interesting is that the colonies of Russian émigrés have maintained their identity throughout a century, and are still recognizable in cities like London, Paris and Berlin, where they still publish their own newspapers and magazines.

The heritage of “White” Armies and of Tsarism in general are not sufficienlty known by European public opinion, influenced for a long time by Western Marxists. In the past, there was a general tendency to believe that these were just remnants of a far-away period, not having any cultural interest for the past and for the future. On the contrary, the more the times of Soviet Russia goes back, the more the persistence of pre-revolutionary Russia become evident. The symbols of the new Russia, the culture expressed, for example, by cinema, is highly linked to Pre-Civil Was Russia.

Present-days’ Russian filmography, like, for instance, the works of Sakurov and of Zviagintsev, summarize at best, according to us, the heritage, for Europe, of the traditions of the Russian Empire, such as the nostalgy for the aristocratic world, as well as the deep sense of the link between generations and between men and land, also over troubled and obscure times. Today, the monuments of Tsarist Russia, such as ancient towns, churches, palaces, fortresses, are refurbished and well maintained. Their splendorrevives, both for  Russians and foreigners, the pride of that ancient State.