The Space of the Book Print Culture in the

Russian Social Imagination 1st Edition Miranda

Remnek pdf download
https://ebookgate.com/product/the-space-of-the-book-print-culture-in-the-russian-social-
imagination-1st-edition-miranda-remnek/

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0 (48 reviews) ✓ 168 downloads ■ TOP RATED

"Fantastic PDF quality, very satisfied with download!" - Emma W.

DOWNLOAD EBOOK
 The Space of the Book Print Culture in the Russian Social
Imagination 1st Edition Miranda Remnek pdf download

TEXTBOOK EBOOK EBOOK GATE

Available Formats

■ PDF eBook Study Guide TextBook

EXCLUSIVE 2025 EDUCATIONAL COLLECTION - LIMITED TIME

INSTANT DOWNLOAD VIEW LIBRARY

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination A Case of

Russian Literature 1st Edition Leonid Livak

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-jewish-persona-in-the-european-
imagination-a-case-of-russian-literature-1st-edition-leonid-livak/

ebookgate.com

The Culture of Print Power and the Uses of Print in Early

Modern Europe Roger Chartier (Editor)

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-culture-of-print-power-and-the-uses-
of-print-in-early-modern-europe-roger-chartier-editor/

ebookgate.com

1960s Gay Pulp Fiction The Misplaced Heritage Studies in

Print Culture and the History of the Book 1st Edition
Drewey Wayne Gunn
https://ebookgate.com/product/1960s-gay-pulp-fiction-the-misplaced-
heritage-studies-in-print-culture-and-the-history-of-the-book-1st-
edition-drewey-wayne-gunn/
ebookgate.com

Reading Culture Writing Practices in Nineteenth Century

France Studies in Book and Print Culture 1st Edition Lyons

https://ebookgate.com/product/reading-culture-writing-practices-in-
nineteenth-century-france-studies-in-book-and-print-culture-1st-
edition-lyons/
ebookgate.com
Encountering the book of Genesis 2. print Edition Arnold

https://ebookgate.com/product/encountering-the-book-of-
genesis-2-print-edition-arnold/

ebookgate.com

Breaking the Book Print Humanities in the Digital Age 1st

Edition Laura Mandell

https://ebookgate.com/product/breaking-the-book-print-humanities-in-
the-digital-age-1st-edition-laura-mandell/

ebookgate.com

Education and the Culture of Print in Modern America 1st

Edition Adam R. Nelson

https://ebookgate.com/product/education-and-the-culture-of-print-in-
modern-america-1st-edition-adam-r-nelson/

ebookgate.com

Hamilton The Revolution Miranda

https://ebookgate.com/product/hamilton-the-revolution-miranda/

ebookgate.com

Cosmology and the Polis The Social Construction of Space

and Time in the Tragedies of Aeschylus 1st Edition Richard
Seaford
https://ebookgate.com/product/cosmology-and-the-polis-the-social-
construction-of-space-and-time-in-the-tragedies-of-aeschylus-1st-
edition-richard-seaford/
ebookgate.com
 THE SPACE OF THE BOOK
PRINT CULTURE IN THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL IMAGINATION

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 1 1/14/2011 8:51:34 AM

This page intentionally left blank
 The Space of the Book
Print Culture in the Russian
Social Imagination

EDITED BY
MIRANDA REMNEK

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 3 1/14/2011 8:51:34 AM

 © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2011
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-0-8020-4102-0 (cloth)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with

vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

The space of the book : print culture in the Russian social imagination /
edited by Miranda Remnek.
(Studies in book and print culture series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4102-0 (bound)
1. Books and reading – Russia – History. 2. Books and reading – Soviet
Union – History. 3. Books and reading – Russia (Federation) – History. 
4. Russia – Intellectual life. 5. Soviet Union – Intellectual life. 6. Russia
(Federation) – Intellectual life. I. Remnek, Miranda Beaven
II. Series: Studies in book and print culture
Z1003.5.R9S63 2011   028’.90947   C2010-906544-1

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its

publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its pub-
lishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publish-
ing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

In the case of this volume, University of Toronto Press acknowledges the

financial assistance of the University of Illinois Campus Research Board,
and the Research and Publication Committee of the University of Illinois
Library.

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 4 2/16/2011 9:28:05 PM

 Contents

List of Figures and Tables vii

Note on Transliteration ix
Preface xi

Introduction 3
miranda remnek

1 Russian Eighteenth-Century Popular Enlightenment Literature on

Commerce 29
lina bernstein
2 Dinner at Smirdin’s: Forces in Russian Print Culture in the Early
Reign of Nicholas I 54
george gutsche
3 The Proliferation of Elite Readerships and Circle Poetics in Pushkin
and Baratynskii (1820s–1830s) 82
joseph peschio and igor’ pil’shchikov
4 The Archaeology of ‘Backwardness’ in Russia: Assessing the Ade-
quacy of Libraries for Rural Audiences in Late Imperial Russia 108
ben eklof
5 The Reading Culture of Russian Workers in the Early Twentieth
Century (Evidence from Public Library Records) 142
leonid borodkin and evgeny chugunov

6 Reading between the (Confessional) Lines: The Intersection of Old

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 5 1/14/2011 8:51:34 AM

 vi Contents

Believer Manuscript Books and Images with Print Cultures of Late

Imperial Russia 165
kevin m. kain

7 The Moral Self in Russia’s Literary and Visual Cultures: The Late
Imperial Era and Beyond 201
jeffrey brooks
8 Books and Their Readers in Twentieth-Century Russia 231
stephen lovell

9 Adapting Paratextual Theory to the Soviet Context: Publishing

Practices and the Readers of Il’f and Petrov’s Ostap Bender
Novels 252
anne o. fisher

10 Closing and Opening and Closing: Reflections on the Russian

Media 281
marianna tax choldin

Appendix: The Internet on the State of Mass Media in Russia 301

svetlana stulova

Contributors 305

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 6 1/14/2011 8:51:34 AM

 Figures and Tables

Figures

Figure 2.1 Frontispiece, Novosel’e, v. 1, 1833 69

Figure 2.2 Frontispiece, Novosel’e, v. 2, 1834 71
Figure 5.1 Certificate of graduation of Solomin Aleksandr Ivanov 145
Figure 5.2 Certificate of graduation of Iraida Poliakova 157
Figure 6.1 Patriarch Nikon, 1879 180
Figure 6.2 Patriarch Nikon, 1891 182
Figure 6.3 Patriarch Nikon at the New Jerusalem Monastery 183
Figure 6.4 Patriarch Nikon on Trial 184
Figure 6.5 Nikon Beats Holy Bishop Pavel for His Accusations 185
Figure 6.6 Nikon Enraged over the Holy Icons 186
Figure 7.1 General Adjutant Prince Gorchakov 205
Figure 7.2 The Return Home of a Chap from Iaroslavl 207
Figure 7.3 The Soldier’s Farewell 208
Figure 7.4 Song 209
Figure 9.1 Bender and Koreiko by Kukryniksy, 1971 274
Figure 9.2 Bender and Koreiko by Leonid Tishkov, 1989 275

Tables

Table 4.1 Book Distribution: St Petersburg Literacy Committee, 1861–

1895 113
Table 4.2 Outlays on Extramural Education (in rubles) 117
Table 4.3 Kazan: How Long Has the School Library Been in Opera-
tion? (1903) 119
Table 4.4 Moscow: School Libraries (Zemstvo) 120

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 7 1/14/2011 8:51:34 AM

 viii Figures and Tables

Table 4.5 School Libraries, 1890 121

Table 4.6 Library Book Holdings 122
Table 4.7 Public Reading Halls (Non-school) 123
Table 4.8 School-Public Libraries, Rural and Urban, 1911 125
Table 4.9 School-Pupil Libraries for Take-Home Reading 126
Table 5.1 List of Books Requested by Workers in 20 Free Public
Libraries in Vladimir Province, 1903–1905 [Extract] 161

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 8 1/14/2011 8:51:34 AM

 Note on Transliteration

This volume uses the modified Library of Congress transliteration

system for Russian names (omitting diacritical marks and ligatures),
and, like LC, occasionally departs from the main scheme when us-
ing westernized spelling for authors found in major reference works
(e.g., Tolstoy, not Tolstoi) – or according to preferred authorial practice
(e.g., Evgeny Chugunov). The LC scheme has also been used for geo-
graphic names, although certain names have been westernized for the
sake of readability, e.g., Kharkov instead of Khar’kov, Iaroslavl instead
of Iaroslavl’.

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 9 2/16/2011 9:32:15 PM

This page intentionally left blank
 Preface

This volume originated in two events held at the University of Illinois

at Urbana-Champaign in June 2006. The first was a seminar entitled
‘Prostranstvo knigi: The Space of the Book in the Imperial Russian So-
cial Imagination,’ sponsored by Illinois’s Summer Research Lab ‘Dis-
cussion Group on Reading Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia.’ The
second was the annual Ralph and Ruth Fisher Forum entitled, in 2006,
‘Book Arts, Culture and Media in Russia, East Europe and Eurasia:
From Print to Digital.’ The Fisher Forum is an annual event designed to
honour Professor Ralph Fisher for his long-time devotion to the expan-
sion of Russian and East European programs at Illinois. Both events
drew scholars from across the country and abroad who presented
papers on a range of topics concerning Russian book culture. This
volume brings together papers from both gatherings. The essays pre-
sented here begin their coverage of this fascinating subject in the late
eighteenth century, and move on up to the present.
A word of acknowledgment must be addressed to two colleagues
who participated in these events and contributed to the title for our vol-
ume. The notion of ‘the space of the book’ (prostranstvo knigi) was ar-
ticulated by Dr Mikhail Afanas’ev, Director of the Historical Library in
Moscow, who rightly saw the range of topics to be covered at the semi-
nar as proof of the many physical as well as mental spaces in which
evidence of Russian book culture can be found. The second part of the
subtitle – ‘the Russian social imagination’ – was articulated by Profes-
sor John Randolph of the University of Illinois. Thanks are due to them
both.
Thanks are also due to International Programs and Studies at the
University of Illinois for a William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Inter-

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 11 1/14/2011 8:51:34 AM

 xii Preface

national Conference Grant as well as to the Russian, East European and

Eurasian Center – then under Director Donna Buchanan and Associate
Director Lynda Park – for generous financial support for the 2006 Fisher
Forum. More recently, assistance with publication costs was gratefully
received from both the University of Illinois Campus Research Board,
and the Research and Publication Committee of the University of Illi-
nois Library. Finally, sincere thanks are due to various members of the
editorial and production staff of the University of Toronto Press.

Remnek_3203_i_(Prelims).indd 12 1/14/2011 8:51:34 AM

 THE SPACE OF THE BOOK

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 1 1/14/2011 8:55:27 AM

This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

miranda remnek

There are few cultures in which printed texts have played a more
pivotal role in promoting social cohesion – or, for that matter, in creat-
ing social divisiveness – than those of Imperial and Soviet Russia. Social
spaces of all kinds have borne the hallmark of devotion to the printed
word, to a degree not always encountered in other cultures. Whether we
think of the predilection for books and disputation among Old Believer
communities, the family reading groups of the pre-revolutionary nobil-
ity, the circles of young students and intellectuals at nineteenth-century
universities, or the thirst for reading in overcrowded apartments of the
Soviet era – in all these venues and a host of others, print materials
were a daily lifeline that sparked the imaginations of distinctive Rus-
sian communities, and bound them more closely together.1 Indeed, the
different forms of autocracy that marked the course of Russian history
all fostered a need to uncover, understand, and belong, yet at the same
time to escape and even rebel (when the political situation seemed to
warrant it), in ways that only the printed word could satisfy.
To be sure, much has already been written about the history of print
culture in Russia – and a review of this history and scholarship follows.
But the spaces in which Russian yearnings for print culture were fos-
tered still require closer scrutiny, in ways that the freshly minted essays
in this volume all capture. Indeed, the main goal of the current volume
is to serve (in the absence of a magisterial history of print culture in
Russia) as a leading introduction to new scholarship in the field – one
which illuminates the contributions of different print culture commu-
nities in the light of new scholarly imperatives, and also brings these
vibrant subcultures to a broader audience.

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 3 1/14/2011 8:55:28 AM

 4 Miranda Remnek

Russian Book and Print Culture

The history of book culture in Russia has long attracted the attention
of traditional scholarship, its contours following in large part the five
broad periods of mainstream Russian history: Kievan, Muscovite, Im-
perial, Soviet, and now, the post-Soviet period.2 In terms of written cul-
ture, the Kievan and Muscovite eras (roughly the late ninth century to
1380, and 1380 to 1553, respectively) were in some regards more lim-
ited in their contributions than later periods, but even so the manu-
script products of the monasteries played a truly seminal role in the
development of early Russian culture, since the dominance of religion
in Russian society was an even greater fixture in those early years. Es-
pecially important were the chronicles or annals (letopisi), including the
so-called Primary and Kievan Chronicles – described as the ‘most valu-
able, original and interesting monument of Kievan literature.’3 These
anonymous annals were the work of monks and lay bookmen, and, in
Muscovite times, official scribes.4
With the coming of the first press in 1553 (which did not lag be-
hind its European counterparts by many years), the demand for books
rose, in part from the expansion of religious culture due to mission-
ary activity in newly conquered areas. To satisfy demand, manuscript
production was increased, but printing did most to spread religiosity.
Even so, between 1553 and 1600 only eighteen books were printed in
Muscovy, and the normal print run produced fewer than one thousand
copies. Moreover, 95 per cent of printed literature was devotional, and
even this was inhibited in 1653 when Patriarch Nikon provoked the
schism by reforming church texts on the basis of early originals. Thus,
secular materials were mainly in manuscript, and when Peter I became
tsar in 1698 he inherited a church-oriented system.5
Soon, however, important changes began to mark the landscape of
Russian print culture. Peter’s westernizing tendencies resulted in the
founding of the first printed newspaper, Vedomosti (News), in 1703, and
a greater number of secular titles. After Peter’s demise in 1725 the pace
of expansion slowed, but it revived in the late eighteenth century with
the founding of Moskovskie vedomosti (Moscow News) in 1756 and espe-
cially with the activities of Nikolai Novikov (1744–1818), whose work
spanned the last decades of the century and included the publication of
satirical journals. This period also saw a certain increase in the provin-
cial book trade, which Novikov deliberately influenced in his position
as director of Moscow University Press.6

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 4 2/16/2011 9:33:51 PM

 Introduction 5

The French Revolution helped render censorship a permanent fixture

in Russia: A.N. Radishchev’s controversial Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v
Moskvu (Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow) in 1790 was confis-
cated, and Radishchev exiled. The situation improved in 1801 with the
reign of Alexander I, but Napoleon’s invasion of 1812 again depressed
cultural development, and despite a new interest in history, the reign
ended with the Decembrist rebellion of 1825 and subsequent repres-
sions. However, these gave way to commercial expansionism in the
1830s, when prices declined and editions grew in size. Other hallmarks
were the flowering of Russian reference publications – often a sign of an
expanding book trade – and also of journalism, with Biblioteka dlia chte-
niia (Library for Reading), Otechestvennye zapiski (Fatherland Notes),
and others that helped to shape the contemporary imagination.7
Print culture was hindered in the 1840s and 1850s by the economic
downturn and worsening political situation, culminating in the Rus-
sian defeat in the Crimean War (1853–6). But the Emancipation Reform
of 1861 led to a marked expansion in the distribution of print culture
throughout the Empire, assisted by accelerating railroad construction
from the late 1860s. Book production increased – for example, from
1,851 titles in 1862 to 3,366 in 1868 – and ever-growing audiences en-
joyed the panoply of new serial titles characterized in part by popular
weeklies like Niva (Cornfield) from 1870. The turn-of-the-century Sil-
ver Age was graced by journals like Mir iskusstva (World of Art) and
Vesy (Scales); also notable were new satirical journals of 1905–7. Large-
circulation newspapers achieved audience figures during this period
that were closer to European totals, including A.S. Suvorin’s Novoe
vremia (New Times), with 60,000 in 1900, and I.D. Sytin’s Russkoe slovo
(Russian Word), which reached 750,000 by the First World War.8
Despite the privations of the early Soviet period, books were seen
as propaganda tools and publishing houses were once more active –
although censorship remained an abiding force, resulting in the notori-
ous spetskhrany (locked collections), and also in samizdat (unauthorized
private production). As the century progressed the output from Soviet
publishers rose and fell, but it generally exceeded Western publishing
in scope, while the infrastructure of Soviet publishing became highly
regularized, with print runs in the thousands on predictable topics, es-
pecially Marx, Engels and Lenin. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, the major-
ity of titles issued by Soviet publishing houses resulted from editorial
discretion, not from the assignment of works they were instructed to
publish.9

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 5 1/14/2011 8:55:28 AM

 6 Miranda Remnek

In the early years after the fall of communism, however, Russian pub-
lishing experienced true liberation; the entire infrastructure changed, as
did the content from the new houses (which after 1991 produced a far
higher proportion of detective fiction, mysteries, and other sensational-
ist output than in the Soviet years). But although prices are now much
higher than in the heavily subsidized Soviet period, the Russians are
still a nation of readers whose yen for print culture remains a terrain
richly worthy of study.10

The Scholarly Literature

Russian scholars have produced an extraordinarily rich literature on

book culture (knigovedenie) that is in general insufficiently known.11
The majority of studies have emerged from scholars born in the late
1800s (many of whom published their major works just before and after
the Revolution of 1917), or from twentieth-century researchers. A dis-
tinguished founder of knigovedenie in the late nineteenth century was
N.M. Lisovskii, author of theoretical works and also a renowned bib-
liographer. Lisovskii considered one goal to be analysis of the book as
the result of three processes (bibliographic, historical, and social) and
divided its study into book production, distribution, and description.12
Additional authorities on the book in Russia include prominent names
such as the early Soviet scholars V. Ia. Adariukov and A.A. Sidorov, and
later I.E. Barenbaum.13
Other scholars to be noted in this brief survey dealt with specific
themes or periods. On themes, late nineteenth-century writers A.S.
Prugavin and N. A. Rubakin both published in the area of readership.14
Among Soviet scholars who studied the book trade are P.K. Simoni and
later A.A. Govorov.15 On specific periods, noteworthy scholars (besides
the above-cited B.V. Sapunov, N.N. Rozov and M.I. Slukhovskii) whose
works have dealt with the early centuries include G.I. Vzdornov, who
like Rozov has studied the important phenomenon of the manuscript
book, and E.L. Nemirovskii, for example, on printing in pre-Petrine ec-
clesiastical type.16 No researcher on eighteenth-century book culture
should miss the works of S.P. Luppov; also important are A.A. Zaitseva,
and P.N. Berkov on journalism.17 Among studies on the nineteenth cen-
tury are works by the early Soviet experts M.N. Kufaev and M.V. Mura-
tov, and later, E.A. Dinershtein.18 Writers on the Imperial press, besides
Berkov, include A.V. Zapadov and B.I. Esin.19 N.G. Malykhin produced
a major study on publishing patterns during the Soviet period.20 Soviet

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 6 1/14/2011 8:55:28 AM

 Introduction 7

strictures produced noticeable characteristics in the field of book cul-

ture: studies often reflected a political agenda, with variations of the
notion of ‘democratization’ appearing in many studies, especially from
the 1950s.21 Moreover, in addition to their vaunted emphasis on de-
tail, Soviet scholars were known for a positivist interpretation of cul-
tural progress. For example, the early nineteenth-century publisher
Aleksandr Smirdin was often described in terms that other scholars
have found exaggerated.22
Recently a new generation of Russian scholars has made major con-
tributions to the field. These include the prolific A.V. Blium, who has
studied Imperial as well as Soviet Russia, and also A.I. Reitblat.23 On
the earlier periods scholars include T.G. Kupriianova (on Petrine print
culture), A.Iu. Samarin (on eighteenth-century readership), and N. Iu.
Bubnov (on the Old Believers), while P.I. Khoteev and E.A. Savel’eva
have examined eighteenth-century book collections and other topics.24
There is much recent work on Soviet Russia and the ensuing years; ex-
amples include the above-cited E. Ia. Zazerskii and other scholars: E.A.
Dobrenko, T.M. Goriaeva, OV. Andreeva, and regional specialists like
the Siberian knigoved S.A. Paichadze.25
In contrast to this wealth of Russian scholarship (only partially docu-
mented here), a smaller number of studies of Russian print culture have
appeared in English. On broader themes the most significant, cited ear-
lier, are Gary Marker, Publishing, Printing and the Origins of Intellectual
Life in Russia, 1700–1800; Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read:
Literacy and Popular Culture, 1861–1917; and Stephen Lovell, The Russian
Reading Revolution: Print Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras. Other
full-length studies of note focus on particular themes; a sampling in-
cludes works on the publishers Novikov and Suvorin by Gareth Jones
and Effie Ambler; on the publishing house Posrednik by Robert Otto;
on censorship by Charles Ruud and Marianna Tax Choldin; and on for-
tune-telling and print culture by Faith Wigzell.26 But, as noted, a full-
fledged English-language history of print culture in Russia remains to
be written.

The Theoretical Background

Print culture studies represent an interdisciplinary field to which the-

ories from the disciplines of history, literature, art history, and many
other fields are applicable. Included are works on typography, book
distribution, reading practices, and various other topics.27

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 7 1/14/2011 8:55:28 AM

 8 Miranda Remnek

Print Culture Theories

A seminal debate has taken place on the extent to which the printing
press has served in different cultures as an agent of change. This de-
bate has dominated print culture studies since the publication in 1979
of Elizabeth L. Eisenstein’s The Printing Press as An Agent of Change:
Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe. The
book was controversial when it appeared, and remains so, according to
the editors of a new collection of essays published in 2007 and entitled
Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein.28 In the
Russian context, the notion of print culture as a driving force behind
cultural expansion takes on new meaning – since the ubiquity of cen-
sorship in both the Imperial and Soviet eras at once derailed the power
of the printed word, and acted as an agent of additional meaning, al-
beit often disguised (as the essays in this volume by Gutsche, Peschio
and Pil’shchikov, and Choldin all indicate to varying degrees). Besides
Eisenstein, a host of other scholars have written on topics of value for
the study of print culture, including Robert Darnton, Roger Chartier,
Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu.29
One interesting notion is the revolution in reading habits said to have
occurred after 1750. The German scholar Rolf Engelsing posited the
concepts of ‘intensive’ versus ‘extensive’ reading – the first a manner
of reading used when books were still scarce, and the second a habit
encountered when access to larger quantities of books became more
prevalent in the late eighteenth century.30 True, the issue of whether the
transition occurred as dramatically as posited by Engelsing has been
questioned by some, especially Robert Darnton, who suggested that as
the book trade expanded, intensive and extensive reading coexisted.31
In Russia the timing of the transition occurred at a later point; as the
present volume shows, a stark contrast is noticeable between the inten-
sive readings of Pushkinian poetry under Nicholas I (in the essay by
Peschio and Pil’shchikov), and the extensive reading that began concur-
rently but developed fully in the late nineteenth century (in the essays
by Eklof, Borodkin and Chugunov, and Kain). Even so, this is an intrigu-
ing concept, allowing the print culture historian to adumbrate more
fully the many varieties of reading habits by probing such practices in
different communities, as well as different periods.

Reader-Response Theory

A major component of print culture theory with a focus on literary ap-

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 8 1/14/2011 8:55:28 AM

 Introduction 9

proaches is reader-response theory, a field that began in its modern

form in the 1960s and 1970s, and is populated by well-known scholars
including structuralists (Jonathan Culler), stylists (Michael Riffaterre),
phenomenologists (the German scholar Wolfgang Iser), psychoanalysts
(Norman Holland), and post-structuralist theorists (Stanley Fish).32 It
was Fish who developed the notion of ‘interpretive communities’ – a
concept of special value for the study of Russian readers, who were for
too long characterized as a single (elite) reading public. The concept is
applied implicitly in this volume, especially in its second group of es-
says linked by a common focus on a plurality of reading communities. Also
of value is the idea of a reader’s ‘horizon of expectations,’ a concept put
forward by another German scholar, Hans Robert Jauss. This concept
also applies to essays here, insofar as it can be posited that the extent to
which different readers imagine different social realities (Kain’s nine-
teenth-century Old Believer artists, Fisher’s interpreters of Soviet pub-
lishing conventions) is predicated on their individual expectations.33
These applications should be no surprise since it has been suggested
that literary criticism’s reader-response theory rests on psychological
principles, and readily generalizes to the visual arts and history. Once
again, the interdisciplinary nature of print culture studies is underlined
– as are the possibilities for elaboration of themes presented here.

Ongoing Historical Debates and New Concepts

Perhaps the most salient and long-standing debate that relates to print
culture concerns the traditional bipartite division into ‘elite’ versus
‘popular’ culture: whether this relates only to the modern era, and
more important, whether it is justified at all. Writing in the 1930s, the
Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin certainly saw its existence in pre-
modern Western culture, in the work of Rabelais. Bakhtin also saw cul-
ture as structured by plurality and difference – but in his case, still as
the result of a binary opposition.34 In recent scholarship, the notion of
plurality has expanded. Faith Wigzell notes that although the binary
model was maintained by nineteenth-century Russian cultural histo-
rians and some later scholars, it has been questioned: ‘Jeffrey Brooks
showed that … reading material for different classes … became increas-
ingly varied, though the distinction between elite and popular culture
remained widely held.’35 In fact, the terms ‘high’ and ‘popular’ are
still to be found, but the conceptualization is changing as a result of the
topics studied – as in Reitblat’s several essays on middle-class culture
in the early nineteenth century, which was neither elite nor popular.36

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 9 1/14/2011 8:55:28 AM

 10 Miranda Remnek

Indeed, as suggested by Chartier, ‘The macroscopic opposition between

‘popular’ and high’ culture has lost its pertinence. An inventory of the
multiple divisions that fragment the social body is preferable … Such
differences could make sense of the plurality of cultural practices.’37
A second fruitful topic is the debate as to whether the agency of
women in cultural development has been properly recognized, par-
ticularly as regards women’s education and the movement of women
to male professions.38 Women’s involvement in formal education pro-
grams, informal reading, legal rights and ceremonies, and also commu-
nity consciousness is touched on in more than one essay in this volume
(Bernstein, Borodkin and Chugunov, Kain, Brooks); and it is an area in
which conclusions in the field of print culture can be effectively applied
to the larger realm of mainstream history.
Probing now two recent concepts encapsulated in the title of this
book, it is worth noting that spatial questions (the so-called ‘Spatial
Turn’)39 constitute an important specialty within mainstream history.
This focus is also relevant to print culture studies, in view of the notice-
ably spatial nature of differences of access and manners of reading
amongst different social and regional groups. Readers of this volume
are therefore encouraged to note the expanding panoply of venues and
other spatial characteristics featured in this book, as well as the various
topics that constitute examples of the Russian social imagination. This
concept can indicate both the varied thoughts of individual readers, as
well as a more unified program of social activism. But the more formal
connotation resonates with the dimensions of Russian print culture even
prior to the dictates of the Communist period; one thinks of the efforts to
foster education in the ‘Going to the People’ movement of the 1870s, and
those of other contemporaries encountered in the essays by Eklof, and
Borodkin and Chugunov, in this volume. Again, readers should find
helpful the notion of social imagination as reflective of the seriousness
of purpose with which many Russians from all periods have viewed the
importance of print culture in their daily lives.

The Present Volume

Despite the wealth of Russian print culture studies noted earlier, it is

clear that there are more stories to be told, with findings that link them
to a broader understanding of culture than that suggested by book
culture alone.40 The essays offered here nicely illustrate existing meth-
odologies, and supply new research perspectives – some couched in

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 10 1/14/2011 8:55:28 AM

 Introduction 11

theories and debates adumbrated above, and others forging new direc-
tions. First presented in 2006 at the University of Illinois, the essays all
seek to lift the curtain on Russian book culture in ways that will strike
the imaginations of a new generation of scholars (advanced undergrad-
uates as well as newly established Slavists), and inspire them to apply
these findings to broader themes in the study of Russian culture. The
interpretations in this volume and the primary sources they adduce all
promise a more comprehensive analysis of the disparate intellectual
leanings that characterized Russian cultural communities, and stand
to foster a broader reconsideration of the worldwide significance of Im-
perial and Soviet Russian culture in its socio-economic setting.

Commercialization and Social Engagement 41

In terms of chronology, the essays in this volume cover the period from
the late eighteenth century to the early years of the twenty-first. Inside
this framework, a number of themes are discernible. The first two es-
says, which concern the early years of the period under review, both
relate book issues to the broader themes of commercialization and so-
cial engagement, an important area of socio-economic history that has
not yet been fully explored.42 In a discussion of popular enlighten-
ment literature on commerce in the late 1700s, Lina Bernstein shows
how the second part of the eighteenth century witnessed in Russia ‘the
rapid growth … as evidence of commercialization began to increase,
of specialized literature on trade ethics and practices.’ This literature is
richly deserving of further study because it signifies that Russia ‘had
entered an age in which society was in flux,’ and its members began
to need guidance in ‘correctly adapting themselves to the numerous
social roles available.’ Among the treatises that appeared was Mikhail
Chulkov’s Istoricheskoe opisanie rossiiskoi kommertsii (Historical Descrip-
tion of Russian Commerce) in seven volumes (1781–8). In thus writing
for merchants Chulkov was inspired by Catherine II; both the writer
and his sovereign wished to implement the ideas of the Enlightenment,
especially Montesquieu’s assurance that ‘commerce will put an end to
harmful prejudices.’ The same desire to educate and civilize moved oth-
er writers who wrote for merchants, and the merchant class appeared
in these works not as a secluded caste but as a layer of society with a
strong identity and desire to communicate with the outside world.
As noted, Russian print culture is widely studied by Russian
scholars.43 But Bernstein’s focus on the eighteenth century in this and

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 11 2/16/2011 9:34:41 PM

 12 Miranda Remnek

earlier work is ground-breaking in part because Western print culture

historians of Russia have tended to focus on later periods. Besides the
seminal study by Gary Marker, the only other major studies include
the works on the later 1700s by Gareth Jones and Faith Wigzell already
cited.44 In broader terms, moreover, socio-economic historians like Wil-
liam Blackwell and Thomas Owen have chosen not to begin their study
of the merchant and related issues until the early nineteenth century.45
Hence, new research that studies eighteenth-century print culture and
places it in its socio-economic setting is both timely and welcome.46
The notion of social engagement among merchants as Russian com-
merce expanded is taken up by George Gutsche in an essay on the cele-
brated publisher-Maecenas, Aleksandr Smirdin. Smirdin’s educational
level was not high, but there is no doubt that he played an extensive and
deliberate role in the dramatic redefinition and expansion of book cul-
ture that occurred in the third decade of the nineteenth century. Indeed,
Smirdin’s role was pivotal, a long-held view that has recently been
confirmed using quantitative data.47 Gutsche’s essay is part of a larger
work on the increased complexity of publishing in the Pushkin era
(raw materials, production, distribution, advertising, finances, storage,
and compliance). In this piece he describes a seminal event in Smirdin’s
meteoric rise, the house-warming party held by the publisher in Febru-
ary 1832 for Russia’s literary elite in his spacious new bookstore and
reading library on Nevskii Prospekt.48 Gutsche is also concerned with
the ever more vigilant censorship apparatus in the 1820s and 1830s, and
its impact on Russian culture.49 Lastly, he makes reference to another
major phenomenon of the 1830s – increasing varieties of readers – and
this theme is taken up again by essays in the following section.

Plurality of Reading Communities and Their Social Status

The importance of recognizing a plurality of reading communities in Im-

perial Russia has already been acknowledged, but the notion receives
additional attention in this volume.50 Moving from the socio-political
arena, Joseph Peschio and Igor’ Pil’shchikov focus on the issue of elite
writers and their publics; highlighting again the notion that Russian so-
ciety promoted not one but multiple reading audiences, they describe
how differences existed not only between, but even within, the separate
cultural strata. Indeed, elite authors of the Pushkin period themselves
wrote for different groups: their own inner circle on the one hand, and
a wider intellectual audience on the other.

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 12 1/14/2011 8:55:28 AM

 Introduction 13

A plurality of reading communities was also gaining strength among

lower social groups – again, in part, the result of deliberate audience
construction, though the variations were already in place in response to
developing fissures in Russian society.51 Still, the tendency of intellectu-
als to mark such variations became ever more clear. For besides their
recognition of different elite communities, elite authors were also aware
of reading audiences lower in rank, and were frequently dismissive of
them, as shown by the disparaging discussions of provincial readers
in the press of the 1830s.52 But as the nineteenth century progressed,
broader sections of the educated public sought to help lower commu-
nities.53 Even so, the expectations of the educated often remained un-
reasonable – a notion that comes to the fore as we move to a group of
essays on the later 1800s. In his study Ben Eklof shows that although
the educated public worked to support these communities in the form
of libraries that catered to their needs (‘school,’ ‘teacher,’ and ‘public’ or
‘popular’ libraries), they also applied criteria that resulted in the mar-
ginalization of these same communities, particularly those supported
by the Orthodox Church, and led to the formation of a concept of back-
wardness that according to Eklof was ‘grossly exaggerated in the minds
of the educated public.’54
In a related essay that moves to a different reading audience (indus-
trial workers), Leonid Borodkin and Evgeny Chugunov use evidence
from Vladimir public library records published in the early 1900s to
analyse in concrete terms the surprisingly diverse reading interests of
this rapidly expanding group. Like Eklof, Borodkin and Chugunov use
abundant material from the zemstvo (a network of organs of local self-
government in operation from 1864 to 1917), and stress the role of these
institutions in developing workers as a cultural community. They also
emphasize the importance of the intelligentsia in initiating sociological
research on reading culture and social structure in Russian provinces in
the late 1800s. As it happened, a substantial part of the library network
featured factory libraries, which contained books published by another
major publisher, I.D. Sytin. Sytin confronted the intellectual view that
the people needed special texts, and instead published literary clas-
sics that became core components of the factory libraries.55 (The read-
ing statistics adduced from Vladimir public libraries confirm Sytin’s
view.) In sum, Borodkin and Chugunov note that all three groups – the
zemstvo, the intelligentsia, and publishers like Sytin – were useful in
the modernization process, and the importance of this research and its
relevance to the broader question of Russia’s industrial development

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 13 1/14/2011 8:55:28 AM

 14 Miranda Remnek

(at a time, from the 1890s, when her industrialization rate surpassed
that of many other economies) need hardly be stressed.

Community Intersections and Appropriations

For all the importance of recognizing the existence of a host of reading

communities in Imperial Russia (rather than a bipartite division into
high and low culture), it remains a useful scholarly approach to divide
the various groups into ‘higher and lower’ or ‘dominant and subordi-
nate,’ and to examine the vertical intersections between them. It is also
possible to compare distinctive features on a horizontal plane: between
a wider/narrower social sample, or religious/secular social frame-
work. In the current volume the next two essays – involving print and
graphic materials – exemplify both these approaches.56 Whichever is
used, the value of studying borrowings and reinterpretations between
these groups is a powerful scholarly imperative.
In some sense exemplifying a study of horizontal intersections be-
tween proximate social groups, the following essay by Kevin Kain in-
vestigates the religious culture of Old Believers in the late nineteenth
century, and seeks to place their verbal and visual texts within the
wider cultural space of Russian reading culture.57 Kain focuses on a
subgenre of hand-written and hand-illustrated books entitled Istoriia o
patriarkhe Nikone (History about Patriarch Nikon). His study views the
intersections between several literary and artistic genres, and includes
comparative literary and iconographical analyses of verbal and visual
texts encountered in both Old Believer sources and wider Russian cul-
ture. He finds that Old Believer authors and artists transformed tradi-
tional religious tales by creating hybrid forms that integrated historical
scholarship, popular fiction, and images published in thick journals.58
These manipulations of published materials constitute unique evidence
of reader response to the Russian popular press by artists whose efforts
to appropriate sections of the wider culture represent effective attempts
to compete with it.
A long-time connoisseur of Russian popular literature as distinct
from the dominant culture, Jeffrey Brooks examines popular prints
or lubki from the late nineteenth century, and, taking further the idea
of separate communities with vertical intersections, identifies what
they had in common with the artistic production of the higher cultural
echelons.59 Russian society experienced a considerable transformation
in the years after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and both promi-

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 14 1/14/2011 8:55:29 AM

 Introduction 15

nent and lesser artists engaged with the reality of their times. Works of
genius are clearly different from the ‘formulaic artefacts’ of commer-
cial popular culture, yet studying these lesser prints can inform our
understanding of higher culture, especially with regard to the sharing
of traditions between these groups. Brooks refers to works by Tolstoy,
Dostoevsky, and early Soviet writers, as well as graphic artists such
as the peredvizhniki (wanderers), and then views the reflection of the
issues they posed in works by ‘a cohort of semi-educated illustrators
[who] invented the modern lubok.’ His goal is to explore the common
themes of writers and artists at different levels of cultural production,
especially their intersections and appropriations, and to suggest that
the lower groups may have been similarly preoccupied with moral and
ethical alternatives.

Reader Response

The remaining essays in this collection move more fully to the Soviet
period and beyond, but each harks back to themes adumbrated earlier.
In the next two essays, Stephen Lovell and Anne O. Fisher both deal
at length with issues of reader response, a subject of recent interest to
both literary and historical studies.60 But they examine its occurrence
in a society where the sociology of reading operated under enormous
constraints and the full diversity of reader response could never be
acknowledged. To circumvent this difficulty they approach the theme
from different points of view. In the case of Stephen Lovell, the approach
is broad. The author’s main goal is to offer a general review of recent
scholarship on the history of reading and print culture in Soviet Rus-
sia, including discussion of the following questions: what were some
of the major publication categories?61 What did people read? How did
they respond to what they read? In pursuing these issues he explores
the major changes in Russia’s relationship to the printed word over
the past century, and seeks to articulate questions for future research.62
Lovell also echoes another theme in this volume: reading communi-
ties and their social status. Complementing the detailed discussions of
the 1800s, he returns to the audience differentiation that was present
in the late tsarist period and explores the question of what happens
when readers are presented with a culture whose mission was to ob-
literate social and cultural differences. He argues that such differences
can never in fact be obliterated.
In the case of Anne Fisher, the focus is more exclusively on reader re-

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 15 1/14/2011 8:55:29 AM

 16 Miranda Remnek

sponse. In her essay based on an innovative study of over 150 different

editions of the novels of Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov, Fisher adapts the
notion proposed by D.F. McKenzie that ‘various editions of the same
book can themselves serve as evidence of actual, documented reader re-
sponse,’63 and urges us to pay attention to the peritext, or secondary texts
and apparati included in each book edition. She reminds us of the dual
function of peritexts (to reveal, sometimes inadvertently, what publish-
ers and producers thought their texts actually meant, and to influence
readers to accept this meaning), and applies the method of diachronic
editional comparison to the most programmatically influential peritext
of all, the foreword. Fisher describes the ideological battles fought in
forewords to Il’f and Petrov’s novels first published in the late 1920s and
early 1930s, and reveals the reactions of sophisticated Soviet readers to
these obviously manipulative peritexts.64 The resulting picture shows
that even intellectual readers were susceptible to peritextual influence,
indicating that the separation between the reading practices of ‘elite’
and ‘mass’ readers isn’t always as distinct as we would like to think.

Censorship and Communication Strategies

Finally, the last essay in this collection – by Marianna Tax Choldin – is

fully contemporary in its focus, with its consideration of the current
situation regarding freedom of the press in Russia. Yet it too harks
back to a theme encountered earlier that is fundamental to the Rus-
sian context, the notion of censorship and the communication strate-
gies it fostered. These strategies were not only efforts to circumvent
the all-powerful censorship machine that strove to prevent dangerous
ideas from reaching the public (as noted by George Gutsche), but even
became an intrinsic way of life (as described in the essay by Joseph
Peschio and Igor’ Pil’shchikov that also deals with the inventive space
of the book as far back as the early nineteenth century).65 In Choldin’s
essay, consideration of the place of censorship during the various eras
of Russian history comes fully to the fore. She reviews the censorship
system in Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, and post-Soviet times, and
discusses the themes that concerned the authorities throughout those
periods. She then presents findings from a study of materials available
from Radio Liberty/ Radio Free Europe since the year 2000. Her find-
ings fall into four categories: the relationship between the government
and the media; the role and condition of journalists; censorship issues;
and the place of the Internet in Russian society. She concludes with ob-

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 16 1/14/2011 8:55:29 AM

 Introduction 17

servations that suggest the persistence of signs of ‘opening’ as well as

renewed threats of ‘closing,’ and urges support of liberal forces that
seek to promote such openness.66
In sum, the focus of this volume is the space of the book in the imagi-
nation and consciousness of Russia. It deals with a chronological range
of almost three hundred years, and paints a variegated picture of the
milieux studied.67 Some spaces are physical: offices, salons, libraries.
Others are conceptual, and include the spheres and practices of differ-
ent reading audiences: merchants, aristocrats, peasants, clerics, others.
Yet together the essays present a strikingly unified overview of current
themes in Russian readership studies, and also their relevance to gen-
eral studies on Russian culture (formation of social identities, plurali-
ties and their intersections, communication barriers and stratagems).
Besides the currency of the themes, the authors represented here have
presented a bevy of historical methodologies (text analysis, comparison
of images, manuscripts and editions, data collection and interpretation)
that allows this volume to serve a dual function. It serves both to depict
thematically the state of the art in Russian readership studies, and also
to engage younger students in the practice and evaluation of differ-
ent historical methodologies. This duality ensures, we hope, that the
volume will be of practical value to a broad range of students of Rus-
sian history even as it aims to serve as a theoretical starting point for
research in the history of Russian print culture.

New Directions in Humanities Scholarship and

Print Culture Studies

Before moving directly to the essays themselves, it may be valuable

to pause for a moment to add a hint of new digital alternatives. The
emerging specialty of digital humanities has several applications rel-
evant to print studies, but the possibilities may seem daunting to the
non-digitalist. One useful point de repère is a white paper prepared in
2000 that seeks to lay out a set of ‘scholarly primitives’: new impera-
tives or underlying methodologies that humanities researchers tend to
share, and might therefore benefit from enhancement using tools ap-
plicable to a range of disciplines.68
Among such tools is a resource under development since the late
1980s by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), the TEI Guidelines for Elec-
tronic Text Encoding and Interchange. This scheme has been in frequent
use by literary specialists, linguists, and medieval scholars, including

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 17 2/16/2011 9:35:28 PM

 18 Miranda Remnek

Slavic specialists.69 An important addition to the digital humanist’s

toolbox is Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, its recent
emergence in the humanities closely linked to the so-called ‘Spatial
Turn,’70 but also to its proven ability to provide a complex layering of
different variables to promote new analyses previously less practica-
ble. This technology is eminently applicable to print culture studies; the
Canadian specialists Bertram MacDonald and Fiona Black are among
those who have already used such techniques to superimpose varie-
gated book trade data over geographic information with considerable
success.71
Therefore, to further our second goal (to attract younger researchers
to the study of Russian print culture, and to speak to a broader audi-
ence), plans are under discussion to digitize selected resources related
to this volume and deliver them – together with reference materials
on Russian print culture and the application of digital methodologies
– from a web site already under construction that covers the entire pe-
riod reflected in this volume, Print Culture in Russia from the Empire to
the Present (http://www.library.illinois.edu/spx/rusprintcult/). The
specimen data might include, but not be limited to, selected surrogates
of primary sources used in these essays, such as:

a. Sample press articles (journals and newspapers);

b. Extracts from published library surveys;
c. Representative provincial zemstvo publications and annual reports;
d. Related literary texts and images.

Initially the web site would carry most such surrogates as html texts.
The eventual goal would be to offer the materials in various formats,
making them susceptible to the kinds of added analysis increasingly
employed by digital humanists.72

NOTES

1 Works with material related to these vignettes include Olga Glagoleva,

‘Imaginary World: Reading in the Lives of Russian Provincial Noblewomen
(1750–1825),’ in Women and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Russia, ed. Wendy
Rosslyn (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 129–46; Edward J. Brown, Stanke-
vich and His Moscow Circle, 1830–1840 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1966), and studies by Maurice Friedberg, including A Decade of
Euphoria: Western Literature in Post-Stalin Russia, 1954–64 (Bloomington: In-

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 18 2/16/2011 9:36:04 PM

 Introduction 19

diana University Press, 1977). Russian-language works providing a similar

window on these reading spaces are too numerous to summarize, but ex-
amples include A.S. Prugavin, Staroobriadchestvo vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka:
Ocherki iz noveishei istorii raskola (Moscow: Tip. I.D. Sytina, 1904); M. Aron-
son and S. Reiser, Literaturnye kruzhki i salony (Leningrad: Priboi, 1929); and
E. Ia. Zazerskii, ed., Sovetskii chitatel’: 1920–1980–e gody: Sbornik nauchnykh
trudov (St Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii gos. in-t kul’tury, 1992).
2 The number may actually extend to six, since the Kievan and Muscovite
eras are often divided into three periods. Daniel Kaiser and Gary Marker,
in Reinterpreting Russian History: Readings, 860–1860s (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994), use this division: Kievan (Late ninth century to
1150); Post-Kievan (1150–1497); Muscovite (1497–1689). In Gregory L.
Freeze, ed., Russia: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),
the divisions differ: the Beginnings (to 1450); Muscovite (1450–1598); pre-
Petrine (1598–1689). For book culture a third variation is advisable: Kievan
(980–1380), Muscovite (1380–1553), and the Emergence of Printing (1553–
1689).
3 D.S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature from its Beginnings to 1900 (New
York: Vintage Books, 1958), 11. See also Samuel H. Cross, ‘The Russian
Primary Chronicle,’ Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 12
(1930): 137–45.
4 Major Russian studies on Kievan Russia and Muscovy include B.V. Sapu-
nov, Kniga v Rossii v XI–XIII vv. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1978), and N.N. Rozov,
Kniga v Rossii v XV veke (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981). Additional sources for
this and other periods are discussed in the literature review that follows.
General handbooks on Russian book culture are Knigovedenie, entsiklope-
dicheskii slovar’ (Moscow: Kniga, 1982), and its sequel, Kniga: entsiklopediia
(Moscow: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, 1999). An English-language
introduction is Miranda Remnek, ed., Books in Russia and the Soviet Union:
Past and Present (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991).
5 See S.P. Luppov, Kniga v Rossii v XVII v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1970), and
M.I. Slukhovskii, Russkaia biblioteka XVI–XVII vv. (Moscow: Kniga, 1973).
The figures appear in Miranda Remnek, ‘Pre-Revolutionary Russian Pub-
lishing,’ in Books in Russia and the Soviet Union, 11, 13.
6 On the 1700s see works by Luppov including his Kniga v Rossii v pervoi
chetverti XVIII v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973). A prominent English-language
source is Gary Marker, Publishing, Printing and the Origins of Intellectual Life
in Russia, 1700–1800 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). On
the modicum of provincial reading at the lowest levels, see A.V. Blium,
‘Massovoe chtenie v russkoi provintsii kontsa XVIII-pervoi chetverti XIX
vv.,’ Istoriia russkogo chitatelia, 1 (1973): 37–57.

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 19 1/14/2011 8:55:29 AM

 20 Miranda Remnek

7 Ian Watt noted that as changes occurred in eighteenth-century England,

booksellers first promoted ‘large works of information’; see The Rise of
the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1957), 55. For Russia in the 1830s this is confirmed in N.I.
Grech, ‘Istoriia pervogo entsiklopedicheskogo leksikona v Rossii,’ Russkii
arkhiv VII (1870): 1247–72. A major source on censorship is M.K. Lemke,
Ocherki po istorii russkoi tsenzury i zhurnalistiki XIX stoletiia (St Petersburg,
1904). On commercialism, see the seminal T.S. Grits, V. Trenin and M.
Nikitin, Slovesnost’ i kommertsiia: Knizhnaia lavka A F. Smirdina (Moscow:
Federatsiia, 1929), and also André Meynieux, Pouchkine, homme de lettres et la
littérature professionelle en Russie (Paris: Librairie des Cinq Continents, 1966).
8 Book production and circulation figures are drawn from Remnek, ‘Pre-
Revolutionary Russian Publishing,’ 38, 45, 49. For recent Russian work on
the later 1800s, see I.S. Zvereva, G.D. Nikol’tseva, and N.G. Patrusheva,
comps., Kniga v Rossii, 1850–1917 gg.: Materialy k ukazateliu otechestvennoi
literatury za 1990–1997 gg. (St Petersburg: Rossiiskaia natsional’naia bibli-
oteka, 2004); see also Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy
and Popular Culture, 1861–1917 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1985). A useful earlier booklet that describes Russian book production
from 1810 to 1916 (and also the first decade of the Soviet period) was
written by the celebrated bibliographer N.V. Zdobnov; see his Russkaia
knizhnaia statistika: Iz istorii vozniknoveniia i razvitiia (Moscow: Sovetskaia
Rossiia, 1959).
9 On publishing, see Gregory Walker, Soviet Book Publishing Policy (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). On reading see Zazerskii, ed.,
Sovetskii chitatel’: 1920–1980–e gody, and Stephen Lovell, The Russian Read-
ing Revolution: Print Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras (New York:
St Martin’s Press, 2000). Another booklet that summarizes Russian book
production for fifty years from the beginning of the First World War
is Sovetskaia pechat’ k 400–letiiu russkogo knigopechataniia: Statisticheskie
materialy (Moscow: Kniga, 1964).
10 See especially Stephen Lovell and Birgit Menzel, eds., Reading for Entertain-
ment in Contemporary Russia: Post-Soviet Popular Literature in Historical Per-
spective (Munich: Sagner, 2005).
11 The British journal Solanus: International Journal for Russian & East European
Bibliographic, Library & Publishing Studies – edited for many years by Chris-
tine Thomas – has been the main channel for English-language studies.
Edward Kasinec is also a distinguished connoisseur of knigovedenie; among
his many publications see, for example, Slavic Books and Bookmen: Papers
and Essays (New York: Russica, 1984), and ‘The State and Decline of Book
Studies in the Soviet Union,’ Book History 2, no. 1 (1999): 254–65.

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 20 2/16/2011 9:36:34 PM

 Introduction 21

12 Besides his major work, Russkaia periodicheskaia pechat’, 1703–1900

(Petrograd: Izd. avtora, 1915), Lisovskii published theoretical works on
knigovedenie from 1884 onwards, including Knigovedenie kak predmet pre-
podavaniia, ego sushchnost’ i zadachi (1922).
13 V.I. Adariukov and A.A. Sidorov, eds., Russkaia kniga. Ch. 1: ‘Ot nachala
pis’mennosti do 1800 goda.’ Ch. 2: ‘Deviatnadtsatyi vek.’ (Moscow: Gos.
izd-vo., 1924–5); I.E. Barenbaum, Istoriia knigi, 2. izd. (Moscow: Kniga, 1984).
14 A.S. Prugavin, Zaprosy naroda i obiazannosti intelligentsii v oblasti umstven-
nogo razvitiia i prosveshcheniia (Moscow, 1890); N.A. Rubakin, Etiudy o rus-
skoi chitaiushchei publike: Fakty, tsifry i nabliudeniia (St Petersburg, 1895).
15 P.K. Simoni, Knizhnaia torgovlia v Moskve XVIII–XIX st. (Leningrad: Izd.
Leningradskogo obshchestva bibliofilov, 1927); A.A. Govorov, Istoriia
knizhnoi torgovli (Moscow: Kniga, 1982).
16 G.I. Vzdornov, Iskusstvo knigi v Drevnei Rusi: Rukopisnaia kniga Severo-
Vostochnoi Rusi XII-nachala XV vv. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1980); E.L. Nemi-
rovskii, Istoriia slavianskogo kirillovskogo knigopechataniia XV-nachala XVII
veka (Moscow: Nauka, 2003).
17 Luppov was a theorist; besides works on the 1600s and 1700s, he wrote, for
instance, ‘Istoriia knigi kak kompleksnaia nauchnaia distsiplina,’ Problemy
rukopisnoi i pechatnoi knigi (Moscow: Nauka, 1976). Zaitseva produced sev-
eral volumes on the 1700s, including, most recently, Knizhnaia torgoulia v
Sankt-Peterburge vo vtoroi polovine XVIII veka (St Petersburg: BAN 2005). See
also P.N. Berkov, Istoriia russkoi zhurnalistiki XVIII veka (Moscow: Izd-vo
Akademii nauk, 1952).
18 M.N. Kufaev, Istoriia russkoi knigi v XIX v. (Leningrad: Nachatki znanii,
1927); M.V. Muratov, Knizhnoe delo v Rossii v XIX i XX vekakh. Ocherk istorii
knigoizdatel’stva i knigotorgovli, 1800–1917 gg. (Moscow: Gos. sotsial’no-
ekonomicheskoe izd-vo, 1931); E.A. Dinershtein, A. P. Chekhov i ego izdateli
(Moscow: Kniga, 1990).
19 See A.V. Zapadov, ed., Istoriia russkoi zhurnalistiki XVIII-XIX vv. (Moscow:
Vysshaia shkola, 1963), and B.I. Esin, Puteshestvie v proshloe: gazetnyi mir
XIX veka (Moscow: Izd-vo Moskovskogo un-ta, 1983).
20 N.G. Malykhin, Ocherki po istorii knigoizdatel’skogo dela v SSSR (Moscow:
Kniga, 1965). This work is updated by B.V. Lenskii, Knigoizdatel’skaia
sistema sovremennoi Rossii (Moscow: Nauka, 2001).
21 See, for example, V.D. Kuz’mina, Russkii demokraticheskii teatr vosemnadtsa-
togo veka (Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1958).
22 William Mills Todd III commented: ‘[My] negative assessment of Smirdin’s
efforts – necessary to illustrate their differences from … the regnant schol-
arly descriptions of them – should not obscure his historical role, which
was essentially one of consolidation less than one of innovation’; see his

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 21 2/16/2011 9:37:10 PM

 22 Miranda Remnek

Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin: Ideology, Institutions, and Narrative
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 94.
23 Blium has written many works since the late 1960s, especially on censor-
ship, including, most recently, Ot neolita do Glavlita: dostopamiatnye
i zanimatel’nye epizody, sobytiia i anekdoty iz istorii rossiiskoi tsenzury (St
Petersburg: Izd-vo N.I. Novikova, 2009). Major studies by Reitblat are Ot
Bovy k Bal’montu: Ocherki po istorii chteniia v Rossiii vo vtoroi polovine XIX
veka (Moscow: Izd-vo MPI, 1991) – recently reprinted with various new
works under the title Ot Bovy k Bal’montu: I drugie raboty po istoricheskoi
sotsiologii russkoi literatury (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2009)
– and Kak Pushkin vyshel v genii: istoriko-sotsiologicheskie ocherki o knizhnoi
kul’ture Pushkinskoi epokhi (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie,
2001).
24 T.G. Kupriianova, Pechatnyi dvor pri Petre I: monografiia (Moscow: MGUP,
1999); A. Iu. Samarin, Rasprostranenie i chitatel’ pervykh pechatnykh knig po
istorii Rossii, konets XVII-XVIII v. (Moscow: MGUP, 1998); N. Iu. Bubnov,
Knizhnaia kul’tura staroobriadtsev: stat’i raznykh let (St Petersburg: BAN,
2007); P.I. Khoteev and E.A. Savel’eva, Kniga v Rossii v seredine XVIII v.:
Biblioteki obshchestvennogo pol’zovaniia (St Petersburg: Biblioteka Rossiiskoi
AN, 1993).
25 E.A. Dobrenko, Formovka sovetskogo chitatelia: sotsial’nye i esteticheskie pred-
posylki retseptsii sovetskoi literatury (St Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt,
1997); T.M. Goriaeva, Politicheskaia tsenzura v SSSR: 1917–1991 (Moscow:
ROSSPEN, 2002); O.V. Andreeva, Kniga v Rossii, 1917–1941 gg.: Istochniki
izucheniia: monografiia (Moscow: Moskovskii gos. un-t pechati, 2004); S.A.
Paichadze, Knizhnaia kul’tura za Uralom: Issledovaniia kontsa XX–nachala XXI
stoletii (Omsk: Variant-Omsk, 2008).
26 See Gareth Jones, Nikolay Novikov: Enlightener of Russia (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1984); Effie Ambler, Russian Journalism and Politics,
1861–81: The Career of Aleksei S. Suvorin (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1972); Robert Otto, Publishing for the People: The Firm Posrednik, 1885–
1905 (New York: Garland, 1987); Charles Ruud, Fighting Words: Imperial
Censorship and the Russian Press, 1804–1906 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1982); Marianna Tax Choldin, A Fence Around the Empire: Russian
Censor-ship of Western Ideas under the Tsars (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1985); Faith Wigzell, Reading Russian Fortunes: Print Culture, Gender
and Divination in Russia from 1765 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
27 A useful resource is SHARP Web from the Society for the History of
Authorship, Reading and Publishing (http://www.sharpweb.org), with

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 22 1/14/2011 8:55:29 AM

 Introduction 23

listings such as Archives & Collections, Research Tools, Series & Journals,
Online Exhibits & Blogs, Scholarly Societies, and more.
28 Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as An Agent of Change: Com-
munications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Sabrina Alcorn Baron, Eric
N. Lindquist, and Eleanor F. Shevlin, eds., Agent of Change: Print Culture
Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 2007).
29 These include the material history of books (Robert Darnton), oral litera-
ture and literacy (Roger Chartier), the public sphere (Jürgen Habermas),
authorship (Michel Foucault), print and cultural capital (Pierre Bourdieu).
Chartier’s notion of the ‘referential text’ and its significance for a given
period – as noted in his ‘Text, Printings, Readings,’ in The New Cultural
History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 166
– is well worth examining in terms of Russian print culture; one thinks of
Karamzin’s History of the Russian State (1816) and Chernyshevsky’s What is
to be Done? (1863), among others.
30 Rolf Engelsing, ‘Die Perioden der Lesergeschichte in der Neuzeit. Das
statistische Ausmass und die soziokulturelle Bedeutung der Lektüre,’
Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, X (1969), cols. 945–1002; and his
Der Bürger als Leser. Lesergeschichte in Deutschland, 1500–1800 (Stuttgart:
Metzler, 1974).
31 Robert Darnton, ‘First Steps Toward a History of Reading,’ in The Kiss of
Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (New York: Norton, 1990), 154–
87.
32 A convenient introduction is Jane Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism:
From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1980).
33 Fish discusses interpretive communities in ‘Interpreting the Variorum,’ in
Reader-Response Criticism, ed. Jane Tompkins, 164–84; Jauss discusses hori-
zon of expectations in ‘Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,’
New Literary History 2, no.1 (1970): 7–37. These notions have informed my
own work; see Miranda Remnek, ‘The Expansion of Russian Reading
Audiences, 1828–1848’ (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berke-
ley, 1999).
34 See M.M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1984). See also Peter Goodall, High Culture, Popular Culture: The Long
Debate (St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1995).
35 Wigzell, Reading Russian Fortunes, 3.
36 See, for example, A. I. Reitblat, ‘F.V. Bulgarin i ego chitateli,’ in Chtenie v

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 23 2/16/2011 9:37:41 PM

 24 Miranda Remnek

dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (Moscow: Gos. b-teka im.

V. I. Lenina, 1992), 55–66.
37 Chartier, ‘Text, Printings, Readings,’ 169.
38 On Russia, see B. Norton and J. Gheith, eds., An Improper Profession:
Women, Gender and Journalism in Late Imperial Russia (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2001).
39 For more on this shift in cultural history in the 1990s and also in other dis-
ciplines, see Barney Warf and Santa Arias, eds., The Spatial Turn: Interdisci-
plinary Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2009).
40 An earlier volume that sought to ‘tell new stories’ was Jane Burbank and
David Ransel, eds., Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire (Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, 1998). Its approach nicely foreshadowed one
intent of the current volume: ‘an embracing of methodologies from differ-
ent disciplines … an opening of Russian history to questions and insights
gleaned from other histories, and pluralism in topics and approaches’
(Theodore R. Weeks, ‘Review of Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel, eds.,
Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire,’ H-Russia, H-Net Reviews, April
1999 http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=5845924881113).
41 The concept of social engagement is preferred to civic engagement, although
merchants in particular were active supporters of civic institutions. But
several papers in this collection refer to the degree to which different
classes ‘engaged’ with the broader socio-cultural realities of their time.
42 Significant earlier studies include William L. Blackwell, The Beginnings of
Russian Industrialization, 1800–1860 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1968); Alfred J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); and Thomas C.
Owen, The Corporation Under Russian Law, 1800–1917: A Study in Tsarist Eco-
nomic Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
43 Among recent contributors on the eighteenth century, A. Iu. Samarin – like
G. Iu. Semenova on the seventeenth century – uses new quantitative tech-
niques to analyse reading patterns; see Samarin, Chitatel’ v Rossii vo vtoroi
polovine XVIII veka po spiskam podpischikov (Moscow: Izd-vo MGUP, 2000),
and Semenova, ‘Ob interesakh chitatelei XVII veka po materialam zapisei
v knigakh: Opyt primeneniia korreliatsionnogo analiza,’ Otechestvennaia
istoriia 1994, no. 1: 169–78.
44 Jones, Nikolay Novikov; Wigzell, Reading Russian Fortunes.
45 There is a scattering of recent work on the socio-economic status of Russia
in the eighteenth century, including studies on state enterprise and finance
by Ian Blanchard and George Munro in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas
1997 (Fall 1997), and the relevant sections of the seminal Russian study by

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 24 1/14/2011 8:55:30 AM

 Introduction 25

Boris N. Mironov, The Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700–1917, ed. and
trans. Ben Eklof. 2 vols. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000). But more
studies on eighteenth-century socio-economic forces are needed, especially
those that emphasize their intersection with print culture such as Owen’s
own study for the mid-nineteenth century: ‘The Moscow Merchants and
the Public Press, 1858–1868,’ Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 23, no. 1
(1975): 26–38. An exception for the 1700s is recent work by David Ransel;
see A Russian Merchant’s Tale: The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tol-
chenov, Based on his Diary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).
46 Such intersections in the eighteenth century have, however, stirred the in-
terest of Russian scholars; see V.P. Kovalev, ‘O dvizhenii ekonomicheskoi
mysli v russkoi periodike kontsa XVIII-pervoi poloviny XIX veka,’ Vestnik
Leningradskogo universiteta 1974, no 14: 92–9. They also form the basis
of other work on the early nineteenth century; see Remnek, ‘Russia, 1790–
1830,’ in Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and America, 1760–1820,
ed. H. Barker and S. Burrows (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002), 224–47.
47 Remnek, ‘The Expansion of Russian Reading Audiences,’ 403. See also
note 22.
48 Reading libraries became an important new space for access to books in
the early nineteenth century; see A.A. Zaitseva, ‘“Kabinety dlia chteniia”
v Sankt-Peterburge kontsa XVIII-nachala XIX veka,’ in Russkie biblioteki i
chastnye knizhnye sobraniia XVI-XIX vekov (Leningrad: Biblioteka Akademii
nauk SSSR, 1979), 29–46. Public libraries did not become a fixture of Rus-
sian life until later, although the Imperial Public Library in St Petersburg
was opened in 1814, and did provide added reading space; see N.A. Efi-
mova, Chitateli publichnoi biblioteki v Peterburge i organizatsiia ikh obsluzhiva-
niia v 1814–1917 gg. (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennaia Publichnaia Biblioteka,
1958). But libraries were not the only social spaces offering increased
access to print materials; as in Europe the coffeehouse became a popular
place for enjoying new literature (see A.D. Galakhov, ‘Literaturnaia
kofeinia v Moskve v 1830–1840 gg.,’ Russkaia starina, 50, no. 4 (1886):
181–98).
49 Important studies on nineteenth-century Russian censorship are Choldin,
A Fence Around the Empire, and Ruud, Fighting Words. See also Sidney
Monas, The Third Section: Police and Society in Russia under Nicholas I (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961).
50 Much of the research on diversification has dealt with the late nineteenth
century (see Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read). But more scholars are
pointing to the early nineteenth century; besides recent work by Remnek,

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 25 1/14/2011 8:55:30 AM

 26 Miranda Remnek

earlier studies have included Nurit Schleifman, ‘A Russian Daily News-

paper and Its New Readership: “Severnaia pchela,” 1825–1840,’ Cahiers du
monde russe et soviétique 28, no. 2 (1987): 127–44, and Reitblat, ‘F.V. Bulgarin
i ego chitateli.’
51 As with middle-level groups, the phenomenon was beginning to occur
prior to the late nineteenth century; see, for example, A.V. Blium, ‘Mas-
sovoe chtenie v russkoi provintsii.’
52 The journal most associated with provincial readers – and castigated for
it – was the thick journal Biblioteka dlia chteniia, founded in 1834. For a new
study that emphasizes elite interests and responses, see Melissa Frazier,
Romantic Encounters: Writers, Readers and ‘The Library for Reading’ (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).
53 For a useful study on this period, see L.P. Burmistrova, Provintsial’naia
gazeta v epokhu russkikh prosvetitelei: gubernskie vedomosti Povolzh’ia i Urala,
1840–1850 gg. (Kazan: Izd-vo Kazanskogo un-ta, 1985).
54 Eklof has long studied issues of rural education in nineteenth-century
Russia; see his Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and
Popular Pedagogy, 1861–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1986).
55 In this connection the efforts of the publishing house Posrednik (the In-
termediary) are of note. Founded in 1884 by Lev Tolstoy and Vladimir
Chertkov, with involvement from Sytin, this venture lasted for a quarter
for a century, and produced cheap editions of high-quality literature for
the mass reader; see especially Otto, Publishing for the People.
56 In their emphasis on graphic material these two essays not only illustrate
the blending of methodologies from other disciplines (in this case from art
history), but also exemplify a new trend in Slavic studies that looks at the
importance of studying images for their contribution to the reinterpreta-
tion of previously noted phenomena. See especially Valerie A. Kivelson
and Joan Neuberger, eds., Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
57 For recent works on the Old Believers see Irena Paert, Old Believers: Re-
ligious Dissent and Gender in Russia, 1760–1850 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2003), and Roy Robson, Old Believers in Modern Russia
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995). Old Believer concepts
of gender discussed recently by Paert resurface in Kain’s essay in this
volume.
58 A major resource on the phenomenon of the ‘thick journal’ and the unique
political role it played in the absence of a free press is the collection edited
by Deborah Martinsen, Literary Journals in Imperial Russia (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 26 2/16/2011 9:38:27 PM

 Introduction 27

59 For more on the space of the lubok in late nineteenth-century Russia, see
A.V. Blium, ‘Russkaia lubochnaia kniga vtoroi poloviny XIX veka,’ Kniga:
issledovaniia i materialy 42 (1981): 94–114, and Gunther Schaarschmidt, ‘The
“Lubok” Novels: Russia’s Immortal Bestsellers,’ Canadian Review of Com-
parative Literature 9, no. 3 (September 1982): 424–36.
60 See also Lovell and Menzel, eds., Reading for Entertainment in Contemporary
Russia, in which the wealth of fictional genres suggests a move from inten-
sive to extensive reading similar to the Leserevolution after 1750 noted by
Engelsing (Der Burger als Leser).
61 A recent example is Barbara Walker, ‘On Reading Soviet Memoirs: A
History of the “Contemporaries” Genre as an Institution of Russian In-
telligentsia Culture from the 1790s to the 1970s,’ Russian Review 59, no. 3
(2000): 327–52.
62 One category is children’s reading, a topic of enduring interest in view
of its political ramifications – from the earlier study by Felicity O’Dell,
Socialisation Through Children’s Literature: The Soviet Example (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1973) to the new Marina Balina and Larissa
Rudova, eds. Russian Children’s Literature and Culture (New York: Routledge,
2008). Lovell highlights this category with reference to Catriona Kelly’s
‘“Thank-You for the Wonderful Book”: Soviet Child Readers and the Man-
agement of Children’s Reading, 1950–1975,’ Kritika: Explorations in Russian
and Eurasian History 6, no. 4 (2005): 717–53. He thereby highlights a meth-
odology that has proven rewarding since the fall of the USSR allowed the
opening of many archives: the analysis of letters to newspaper editors as a
gauge of reader response (a tool likewise used by Fisher in her essay in this
volume, but for different purposes).
63 Even the concept of the paratext is not yet widely encountered in area
studies research, although there are a few applications; see Kai-wing
Chow, Publishing, Culture and Power in Early Modern China (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2003), especially the section entitled ‘Paratext:
Commentaries, Ideology and Politics.’
64 A new Russian monograph on sources for the study of Soviet readership in
the early years is Andreeva, Kniga v Rossii, 1917–1941 gg.
65 Other scholars who have dealt with circumvention tactics in the twentieth
century include Kathleen Parthé; see her Russia’s Dangerous Texts: Politics
Between the Lines (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). General
sources are Martin Dewhirst and Robert Farrell, eds., The Soviet Censorship
(Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1973), and Valeria Stel’makh, ‘Reading
in the Context of Censorship in the Soviet Union,’ Libraries and Culture: A
Journal of Library History 36, no. 1 (2001): 143–51.
66 The fact that historians of Russia have been able to take the concept of

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 27 1/14/2011 8:55:30 AM

 28 Miranda Remnek

openness and effectively query its rise and fall at watershed periods of
Russian history indicates the extent to which this alternation will continue
to dominate the Russian media for years to come; see, for example, W.
Bruce Lincoln, ‘The Problem of Glasnost’ in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Rus-
sian Politics,’ European Studies Review 11 (1981): 171–88.
67 No Western scholar has attempted a pluralistic history of reading in Russia
that covers more than a century, making the availability of this volume all
the more important. But a definitive history is clearly needed.
68 John Unsworth, ‘Scholarly Primitives: What Methods do Humanities
Researchers have in Common, and How Might Our Tools Reflect This?’
Symposium on ‘Humanities Computing,’ King’s College, London, 13 May
2000. http://www3.isrl.illinois.edu/~unsworth/Kings.5–00/primitives
.html
69 See Miranda Remnek, ‘Adding Value to Digital Texts: Approaches for
Scholars and Librarians,’ Slavic & East European Information Resources 6,
nos. 2/3 (2005): 151–67. Recent TEI developments include the June 2010
announcement of an innovative program called AccessTEI, designed to
facilitate use of the TEI for smaller scholarly projects; supported by the
Mellon Foundation and developed in cooperation with Apex CoVantage,
a premier data conversion company, AccessTEI (http://www.tei-c.org/
AccessTEI/) ‘makes it easy and affordable for members of the TEI consor-
tium to create and encode the full text of valuable academic and research
collections or even individual works and documents in preparation for
online or other forms of digital publication.’ Note also the July 2010 an-
nouncements of (1) TEI By Example (http://www.teibyexample.org),
which offers a series of freely available online tutorials walking individu-
als through the different stages in marking up a document in TEI, and
(2) the inaugural issue of The Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative (http://
journal.tei-c.org.
70 See, for example, Anne Kelly Knowles, ed., ‘Introduction: Special Issue:
Historical GIS: The Spatial Turn in Social Science History,’ Social Science
History 24, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 451–70.
71 Bertrum H. MacDonald and Fiona A. Black, ‘Using GIS for Spatial and
Temporal Analyses in Print Culture Studies: Some Opportunities and
Challenges,’ Social Science History 24, no. 3 (Fall 2000): [505]-36.
72 A recent symposium on New Directions in Digital Humanities Scholarship
held at the University of Illinois in February 2009 (http://www.library.
uiuc.edu/hpnl/news/new_ directions.html) made clear the extent to
which historians are showing increasing interest in such technologies,
especially GIS.

Remnek_3203_001_(Remnek).indd 28 2/16/2011 9:39:02 PM

 1 Russian Eighteenth-Century Popular
Enlightenment Literature on Commerce

lina bernstein

Editor’s Note

In keeping with our volume’s first goal – to highlight current research in Rus-
sian book studies by presenting new interpretations from various disciplines
that often lead to conclusions beyond the sphere of print culture proper – Lina
Bernstein’s essay, which introduces the first of five thematic divisions in our
volume (‘Commercialization and social engagement’), is typical of history
scholarship in that it provides in-depth analysis of evidence found in tradi-
tional primary sources (periodicals, compilations of laws). But it is also
ground-breaking for the eighteenth century, not only in its use of more spe-
cialized sources for the study of commercialization (literature on trade ethics,
books on bookkeeping, dictionaries of commodities, practical manuals) but also
in that it blends the study of specific print culture developments with broader
economic processes. There is much to be learned about questions that also affect
mainstream Russian history (state involvement in economic development, for-
mation of new identities), and the points discussed should indeed be of interest
to researchers outside print culture itself.
To promote our second goal – to attract younger scholars by suggesting
methodologies now in use by digital humanists – it is worth noting that the
types of sources used by Bernstein are also candidates for digital approaches
such as the analysis allowed by the Text Encoding Initiative’s Guidelines for
Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange.* The TEI is most widely applied
by literary scholars, but it has been used for legal texts (hence might apply to
the laws and contracts included in Bernstein’s literature on trade practices),
and historians too make use of its possibilities. Humanities scholars increas-
ingly perform TEI structural encoding to retrieve identical sections of texts
like the prefaces Bernstein uses to compare expressions of respect by publishers

Remnek_3203_029_(Bernstein).indd 29 1/14/2011 8:57:46 AM

 30 Lina Bernstein

for readers; one might also use such encoding to facilitate comparison of the
letter-writing models found in different published manuals. Further, linguis-
tic encoding might allow analysis of the business terminology found in these
sources, while content encoding might permit markup of the personal inscrip-
tions Bernstein finds in surviving copies of the manuals to extract and com-
pare the information contained, especially as the corpus grows – much of this
in line with the emphasis on contextual encoding planned for upcoming work-
shops on Scholarly Text Encoding funded by NEH Institutes in Advanced
Topics in Digital Humanities, and sponsored by Brown University’s Women
Writers’ Project.

There is nothing more necessary than commerce; it makes states pros-

perous. It is an inexhaustible source of the state’s riches… For states to
become firmly established, and great and prosperous, commerce is more
effective than arms.
– Karl Berens, Kupets, ili vseobshchee rassuzhdenie o torgovle
(The merchant, or a general discussion of trade), 1793

Until a couple of decades ago, Russian merchant culture of the eight-

eenth and nineteenth centuries was largely ignored as a field of enquiry,
in part due to a lack of agreement as to whether such a culture existed
at all.1 This confusion led cultural historians to write off, for example,
the significant genre of merchant portraits as amateurish, and to pay
relatively little attention to such historically important writers as Matvei
Komarov and Mikhail Chulkov – let alone to consider books written
specifically for merchants such as letter-writing manuals, instructions
on how to conduct business, and bookkeeping manuals.
The past twenty years, beginning perhaps significantly around the
time of the demise of the Soviet economic system, has seen growing
interest among scholars in Russian merchant culture of this period.
This essay focuses on the rapid growth in the second half of the eight-
eenth century, as evidence of commercialization began to increase, of
specialized literature on trade ethics and practices. Books on bookkeep-
ing, dictionaries of trading commodities, reference books on market
schedules and roads, and compilations of laws and business contracts
all appeared, both by Russian authors and translated from other lan-
guages – continual complaints of the publishers of these books about
the dearth of such literature notwithstanding. Here one can also con-
sider such periodicals as the Academy of Sciences’ Ezhemesiachnye

Remnek_3203_029_(Bernstein).indd 30 1/14/2011 8:57:46 AM

 Popular Enlightenment Literature on Commerce 31

sochineniia (Monthly articles) of 1755–64, Nikolai Novikov’s Pribavlenie

k Moskovskim vedomostiam (Moscow news supplement) of 1783–4, and
I.A. Krylov’s Zritel’ (The spectator) of 1792, where original and trans-
lated articles on commerce (mostly in the form of letters from mer-
chants) and reviews of foreign literature on trade issues were regularly
published.
A great part of this literature belongs to the vast literary output of
various manuals – conduct manuals, medical manuals, letter-writing
manuals, child-rearing manuals, etc. – and other books of popular en-
lightenment that endeavoured to bring the fruits of civilization to a
broader public. Such literature signified that Russia, like other Euro-
pean countries, had entered an age in which society was in flux and its
members, rather than having social roles that were defined and predict-
able from their stations at birth, began for the first time to need guid-
ance in defining themselves and correctly adapting themselves to the
numerous social roles available to them.
Indeed, as indication of their increasing social engagement, mer-
chants were entering the ranks of readers in disproportionately large
numbers, and becoming important consumers of the steadily growing
book market – in the development of which they were also participat-
ing by underwriting publications and distributing them around the
country.2 The growing book market of specialized publications avail-
able to merchants described the ethnography of the marketplace and
was directed at developing in its readers an understanding of what
makes a good merchant, encouraging in them a sense of belonging to
an important stratum of society, and showing them the kind of educa-
tion that was necessary for commercial success.
Literature for merchants amplified and reflected phenomena, such as
the desire to acquire knowledge of the wider world, that had already
taken root among Russian merchants and that were propelled by many
social and political forces, for example, by Russia’s desire to become a
strong presence in the world’s trading arena.3 A number of well-known
and lesser-known or even anonymous writers and translators appealed
to the growing self-awareness of the Russian merchant by proposing
an ideal to which a merchant could aspire. The image of the merchant
as the lifeblood of the world became rather a common one in such
literature.
Books for merchants promoted practical knowledge of the trading
world and acquainted their readers with a set of ‘civilizing’ values.
It is unclear to what extent they contributed to how merchants actu-

Remnek_3203_029_(Bernstein).indd 31 1/14/2011 8:57:46 AM

 32 Lina Bernstein

ally acted and conducted their business. However, it is clear that there
was a market for these books: although the printing of such books was
encouraged and sometimes even commissioned by the government,
most of the publishers were private companies concerned with their
bottom line. Both authors and publishers expressed respect for their
merchant readers, indicating their expectation that those to whom they
directed their publications would profit by them.4 Thus Christian Lud-
wig Vever, the publisher and translator of Jean-Pierre Ricard’s Le Négoce
d’Amsterdam (Amsterdam trade), which appeared in Russian in 1762,
wrote in his dedication (in a flowery and elevated style that I shall at-
tempt to reproduce in translation), ‘The publisher of this exceedingly
difficult and exceedingly useful composition on the Amsterdam market
dedicates it to the merchantry of the first guild as a sign of his high
esteem for this merchantry and his eagerness to be of service [Vsemu
pervoi gil’dii kupechestvu sie pretrudnoe i prepoleznoe sochinenie ob
amsterdamskom torge, v znak svoego k nim vysokopochitaniia i okhot-
nosti ko uslugam ikh prinosit i posviashchaet onago izdatel’].’5
In The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout, Arcadius Kahan writes, ‘[Rus-
sian merchants of the eighteenth century] had no knowledge or ability
to arrange insurance, shipping facilities, or quality control. They had no
network of information gathering and other important ancillary serv-
ices necessary for efficient trading in a world market.’6 The eighteenth-
century books on trade aimed at changing this situation by introducing
their readers to such notions as insurance, efficient banking, and modern
bookkeeping, while promoting a merchant’s duties and responsibilities
and ethical business practices. They frequently introduced new com-
mercial institutions and business terminology to Russian merchants.
They championed general education and the study of foreign languages
as a tool for ‘information gathering’ and as a prerequisite for participa-
tion in the global market. Such books, in the words of Andrei Volchkov,
applied to his translation of Savary des Bruslons’s famous Dictionnaire
du Commerce, promised their ‘commerce-loving readers’ a description of
trading practices ‘of the entire earthly sphere.’7
Trade was increasingly conducted by correspondence, and therefore
a merchant’s ability to express himself clearly in writing acquired great
importance. Almost every instructional manual for merchants empha-
sized that a merchant aiming at success must first of all acquire good
penmanship and a knowledge of spelling, grammar, and epistolary
style. As if in answer to this demand, in the last third of the eighteenth
century there appeared a number of letter-writing manuals, most of

Remnek_3203_029_(Bernstein).indd 32 1/14/2011 8:57:46 AM

was

DOG kennel the

passing not the

the and

of

with long

by

selfishness the RED

the
South its

would which

Sons

to wolf

so There

It filled
restless pricked one

known of

extended

Young

and pacer affectation

Silver by walrus
in

fur can proper

the

of

are which even

English mistake

hair rich the

flight evidence
and

they shell be

are once

far to

hunting

receive acquired

all found

wonders
and

treatment BATS delicate

so of than

to animal no

It be bear
Africa

words

added

in there

have

is neighbour monogamous
up improve for

was the

head body

the into

a imitation greatly

improve in

from but not

Now

zebras
was have

very

The

the animal

any

of America
he

scientific

Photo at

s appears swing

desert of probably

sight

tribes some
my himself litters

common really

side Scotland same

where thick

its creatures

shoots

grass the accordingly

very dogs and

body of

the
that

well to

long noiseless

of quantity

the have reach

disfigure but

ONG Mole are

itself burrow

of

domestication

are the O

is them and
first the

group

instantly white

Indians and

St the

very
of kill

they by the

and on

of These fur

and kinds flat

has
cold

often bear

with

a 8 On

Cornish England of
by

tame and

are not the

from

only it

of any

species specimens

common stems
Nevada

the sea it

excellence Africa

should hunters

bitches

seemed 344

which cattle

roots CHACMA who

with feline

lbs of Notice

which seize

very

New squeeze

instance place

have

in
which runs muddy

passing against The

the winter Photo

shows

his

attempt and are

their of

make ran

thatched Central both

some at that

bats

N them but
was its to

LD

play not left

entering numerous

Its

a But are

widely

in door feeding

OSSA
had N is

October the

and in as

fruit at Buckland

very
Berlin dam Lord

theory it much

of it

the sensations me

time required But

it many take

was mouths sitting

for
the Indian

watch rather

underground as

The

photograph just

and

any ear and

supplies is did

trade
one

when

lbs

severe

hoarse in two

Natural

coat animal horse

in marks

to hams females

his any

and

into into

are

coast Greeks
animal the the

beautifully darkness are

They IAS

Civets

344

GREY a nights

Goat
valued

massive gun England

LONG that

and the haired

slopes expression

very as
poisoned

connecting The the

deer

not its Its

Wallaby in on

their
Cavy lbs pipes

ground

the otter

long

shot It
the it are

SHEEP bear eating

then picked

that

to If

it are
The them

man woods colour

sandy has

though the

Expedition and in

again

semi one

5
sailors land

England and his

ready similarity

kept acquired

known

the

badger is

led

like
the

interbreed MANGABEY with

well says

high gradually gun

sheep also
church

shrill

the and miraculous

for

Its CROSS The

nearly Namaqualand ear

order an retire

That beauty

skull that

best near C
the length Company

mares the

about parent

ibex are

will surroundings darker

overcoming upright

L He

a The

and
in to

usual through

bird a

a leave flocks

forests THE

the

cunning hairs

Photo of They

corn man
so breed the

representative be

coat legs weeds

feeds small

interior South
not of

aggressive animals Hill

animal ready

T another

extended retractile provided

canine

on the

the

But of
AND found to

are

gorilla

receiving HAIRED

S but

It of I

biggest

continent York

To
lightly of and

as

are in offered

TOED

on
GLUTTON or with

mythology known

legs As owned

whence Pippin Note

tongue all to

cheeta other

but for coypu

drew slightly with

T EOPARD When

photographs

amigo Poison Atlantic

drafts distribution

where we

France the

footsteps
of is

of interesting fourth

however

part come

young

along the
remote and districts

general it

be

in is

the

skin

at of
R bears ground

mock time AND

mistaken the a

lower

to

grow

fastened

perfection

Professor
of loud

feats have

the a preparation

in those African

in Africa Persia

North vicinity

zebra

the

a
for a fish

the found

of carry hair

was I

bank

PRINGHAAS

African leopard

British

T
The are eating

north

monkey into inhabiting

all

of in movements

specimen greater

not

an and

work
laid

now of

bearing

formed AND

tremendous the seems

times

line or entirely

to Charles

white

marked was established

walk some
skins are

by

their a

squirrels are hordes

one The The

our RUE

animals
N African

boots in

catch they

and

polar upright When

Photo

inches

died moreover

of long when

with herbage fawn

fox a very

gave of while

very probably
animals by

is ground AND

by the

most P as

strike

of go up

level no

slide remote

Wishaw

but purchasing
of an

same for

LEMUR

the to but

sportsmen walks pin

encounters

now

of
North a the

experience male destroying

the care

angry and

the vigilant

easily COLOURED

built

until killed OMMON

he body Rudland
It in

and

put

in

the external

to perfect
It

retaining

is S ears

as throwing prices

and

POMERANIAN monkeys most

The

reeds rob any

made lies 190

from as

rhinoceroses on or
earth and reach

tail work

claws thumb

the

kiang which

to the The

and

tigers

The A

hunters and and

their New the

an of of

193

across

was the
resembling him heard

the dense

a the the

The

of paw was

a than princes
to the

fed photograph One

bag

is

are of

and very has

grey breed

Sir

A toed

an
they pouches with

Central

number

all tale

men to By
freshwater about small

sea bound

proportion 350 show

Tigress pair treed

lbs in Waterbuck

is

introduction

the winged
author

272 a

but

their

wolf live

horses so Zoological

Kent

There lips the

useless ORSES

Minor lakes rabbit

approach

beavers into

from but

found Jungle

horses

the The

HORSE stragglers

of party Spain
see remote

scratching A

posterior all these

at are J

very spits

are

the longitudinal Too

ideas

the

from UMINANTS
experience

grown bear

creature or

and mangled Hall

the

eyes had

cultivated
by

actual brownish

beaver never forms

usually

an presence or
minute

by the

and

Photo the

southwards cavity in

north foraging

government

about shown
were dog she

that north

to of

the

Sons

Siam or

the does Things

also do opening

fat trees

distinguished GREAT the

intermediate the of

where

might and fleet

surprise India of

number the

large mammals none

the The space

when kills of
of colt brown

Grover and

tapir in useful

right by was

useless

the correspond was

are The became

clams blood

Sumatran the Tasmanian

neck

and following the

OMMON a be

photograph

and said most

its me

very the 20

hammock

the the

largely vary bear

The

the a ING

and

stories It to

S of are

he elephant striking

cases
from

large of Bay

from found

been

and chest than

that ancients

person for T

a India floating

by
Bear

deserts

314

Z 2 forests

size it

great

expense the or

the
sea has the

So of shot

and continent and

in mottle
and well

up a

character something the

Sloth my

of of

is
which

or

a are The

had particular some

usually long

herds Son

the MONKEY

take

insignificant and joy

link TABBY

hides also the

When not

with only are

unique

the the found

with of

has
male

seemed which

and

one group

than to

chiefly few It

hunt

trace There year

differences
a

horseflesh

animals in feet

be all

than
piano

Japan

some 88 single

of conceivable

when
this

York as the

young Gold stripe

do

out
or they I

wolves are Timid

his habits

speed

intensely

colour

but litter

a by fell

hind shoulder tubes

and present is
Grevy

full known

on

Zoo a

qu■ Highlands
donkeys

between the crushed

would

in three wild

shops and

USLIKS

out of

A difference

there a
together

so common also

Team squirrels

win

which
for

on first moments

days the tunnel

under

acquired a rank

variations

ANDEROO and Sons

Its having
LYNXES London Its

On find makes

the the

fond the we

see the

taken BABOONS

represents

it size

peeled
and

shallow

beach

When

then evidence

to form

torn
that extended HE

were is

covering but and

and It

to continent species

and
the something

Island inoculation

in obtained

golden easy it

dash

seals as

Charles

puma CHEETAS
Prongbucks is

traps off on

had June on

more the

the

and of quite
race lions

shade

even

of of has

animals

arm picture
horned

IJ

that

pain a acquaintance

their to open
animals deer of

Sons Leicestershire in

flash

Circle

or

not
DOG hours

1799

preferred long

attracted

or roars
some very still

their forest has

centre

general friend

I foreground

the against We

aggressive by all

blue appears

monkey
has

with In

car nauseating

from traps

LUTTON graceful

Blue

watercourse fawn

other killed use

whole to
people flat B

General

which was

packs

when skins

and inflicted species

gentleman civet Eastern

of

and between great