M. V. Stroganov. Cultural paradoxes: Works from various years

Abstract

The review discusses M. Stroganov’s final monograph on the problem of the genesis and evolution of Russian mass culture. The book details the constructive role of the parodying nature of A. Pushkin’s poem The Black Shawl [Chornaya shal], which his contemporaries perceived as a phenomenon of mass culture. Pushkin’s poem Little Light [Luchinushka] appealed to the tendency of 19th-century Russian intellectuals to adapt ethnographic artefacts to their own cultural needs. The fact that it is possible to draw moral and ethical parallels between the cultural myth of Lomonosov and Pushkin, the practices of treating life as a creative process used by members of the Arzamas Society, as well as N. Mikhaylovsky’s literary-critical discourse, indicates their typological similarity. The principle of rigorism engendered by Saltykov in relation to popular culture ensures its peaceful coexistence with elite culture. The monograph’s general verdict is that classic and mass cultures are essentially united, given their mutual historical, cultural, and social dependence.