Metamorphoses of Russian Mass Culture

The article is a review of the monograph “Russian Mass Culture: From Baroque to Post-Modernism” by Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences I.V. Kondakov. The book, which consists of seven chapters, is devoted to the history of the emergence and development of mass culture in Russia from ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century. Studying its ori­gins dating back to antiquity, the author proves that Russian mass culture received an “impulse of indepen­dence” in the 17th century, as the culture was becoming personified, which means a personal principle was coming forward in it. It was during that period, associated with the emergence of Russian Baroque, that two paradigms appeared — Pre-Renaissance and Pre-Enlightenment, which led to the subsequent juxtaposition of “mass” and “elite” cultures in Russia first before Peter the Great and then after his period. The author gives an interesting assessment to the period of the Russian Enlightenment of the 18th century, when there happened a demarcation of the noble culture into libe­ral-democratic and conservative directions. Moreover, the former contributes to “massification”, and the latter – to “individualization” of Russian culture. The crisis of the classical paradigm in the 19th century, including the “literature-centrism” and “critical-centrism” of Russian culture, ultimately led to the formation of new artistic movements, new genres and styles, that is, to the modernization of Russian culture at the turn of the 19th—20th centuries. In this regard, the Silver Age turned out to be an “exquisite and ephemeral construction of the Russian Renaissance” in paradoxical forms of symbolism and modernism.

The review reflected the structural and substantive aspects of I.V. Kondakov’s monograph, the features of his theoretical analysis, the specifics of style and language. The article evaluates the publication, reveals its uniqueness and scientific significance for modern humanitarian science, including history and cultural studies, literary criticism and philosophy, art criticism and aesthetics.

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