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By the end of the 17th century the formation
of the Russian nation was already complete. Conditions were ripe for
substantial changes in the cultural and other aspects of everyday life. It
became clear that the modernization of the state was impossible without first
abandoning the medieval way of thinking. The 17th century had already shown
several attempts by some progressive individuals to free themselves from
preconceived modes of thought, set ways of acting and reacting, and the
tutelage of church authorities. The trend toward independence was particularly
marked in literature, which had already covered some distance in its
development and which, by the end of the century, had become accessible to a
larger circle of people than was the case before. The interest in man, in his
empirical knowledge and cultural development, in his life and happiness,
increased at the expense of concern for holy scriptures and religious art. The
line dividing the new literature and arts from their ecclesiastical
counterparts grew wider, and the latter increasingly becoming restricted to
purely religious matters. This process of liberalization and decline of
traditional manners and habits and of Church guardianship opened new
possibilities for the "Europeanization" of Russia. As had happened
some six centuries before, when Russia turned to Byzantium for enlightenment,
she discovered the West as the cultural source from which she could draw new
inspiration and strength, and almost anything that the modern life could offer.
The man who speeded up the process of imitating the West and who crushed those
who opposed the introduction of rapid changes in Russia was Peter the Great.
It was with Peter that the Russians first developed a need to catch up with the
West. Since this process lasted for so many years, it produced a certain
inferiority complex, particularly among intellectuals. Some of them went so far
as to feel an aversion to anything that reminded them of their ancient
heritage, which they often erroneously associated, from the artistic point of
view, with backward civilizations. To be modern and progressive, they thought,
it was not sufficient to copy the West, but also to break with one's own past.
This complex has survived until the present day, and it continues to trouble
the minds of many Soviet intellectuals despite considerable cultural progress
that Russia made in the 19th century, and an enormous technical leap forward in
the 20th.
Instead of cultivating their own artistic values, which crystallized so
powerfully during the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th
centuries, after a long period of blending many foreign influences into a new,
characteristically national style, the Russians suddenly started to imitate the
West. Under Peter the Great imitation spread rapidly, from the artisans in
architecture to interior decoration and clothing; even wigs were imported. From
the new capital, new manners and habits spread to other cities, but they
affected only a small minority of well-to-do; the people remained indifferent
and unaffected and continued to live and work as before, paying for the
extravagances of the few. In this respect Russia was not an exception; a
similar process occurred everywhere else, before and after the one in Russia.
A French art historian, Eugene Violet-le-Duc, 1814-1879, spent many years
studying the origins of ancient architecture, and of Russian churches in
particular. After careful research, he concluded that imitation finally leads
to the destruction of the creative abilities of a people. It would be difficult
not to agree with him that a certain amount of damage results whenever fantasy
and passion are tangled and transplanted to somebody else's limited sphere, but
art, like everything else, has its vicissitudes, and Russian art, after
reaching its zenith, became disciplined under Peter and began to follow foreign
patterns. Something similar happened after the revolution; when art again was
deprived of its natural sources of inspiration and forced to follow so-called
socialist realism. In between these two alien exigencies there were brief
periods of revival of national traditions, but they brought negligible and
short-lived results. All that is left today are some decorative examples of
ancient handicrafts that have somehow been saved from complete disappearance;
they are still used to embellish various items of the household. Le Duc's wish
to see Russian art play the role of intermediary between the West and the East,
as she did during certain periods, is not true now, and most probably will
never again be. American influence, which spread so rapidly throughout the
world after the last war, and a sort of an internationalization of taste in
almost all fields of human creative activity, which usually calls for things to
be practical, simple, harmonious, light, cheap, and disposable, have left
little space for individual and independent expression of national trends and
styles.
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