Histoire de l'utopie en Russie by Leonid Heller; Michel NiqueuxReview by: Robin AizlewoodThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 123-124Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212572 .

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REVIEWS I23

Rasmus T. Slaattelid discusses 'Ethics of Genre: Bakhtin at the Limits of Language'. Aaron Gurevich, in a very personal piece, discusses the nature of historiography and particularly his work as a scholar of Old Norse texts. Finally, Victor Bychkov defends the early-twentieth-century writing on aesthetics of Losev, Florenskii and Kandinskii at a time 'when art, or rather that which styles itself so, is trying demonstratively to forget about spirituality of any kind' (p. 336).

As with most homage volumes, the authors range from exotic stallions to cart horses, but there is much of interest and academic value here; Jostein Bortnes has every reason to be pleased with this tribute.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University of London

Heller, Leonid and Niqueux, Michel. Histoire de l'utopie en Russie. Ecriture Collection. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, I995. 295 pp. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. FF I98.00.

THE significance of utopias and utopianism in Russian history, thought and literature is apparently so well established that it is surprising that a book such as this, which covers Russian utopianism as a broad phenomenon in historical and generic perspective, has not been written before. It is remarkable also that Leonid Heller and Michel Niqueux, in this very valuable study, can cover so much so effectively in what they themselves call 'a too rapid journey over ten centuries' (p. 277). But although rapid, they do not hurry, presenting their account with clarity and balance. They also offer a wealth of information on primary (and secondary) sources, with, in all, some forty pages of bibliograph- ies at the end of the chapters.

The tone is set in the Introduction (pp. 5-I3), which lays out briefly and succinctly the parameters of the study. Heller and Niqueux classify, and draw on, the range of usage of the term 'utopia', but also define its limits, so that it does not become a catch-all for any 'project or aspiration of the human spirit' (p. 7). These limits are marked by two features: rupture with the present and the collective character of the ideal. The history of utopianism in Russia is complex and cannot be reduced to a set of texts in the canonic genre; indeed, as the authors note, the article on utopia in the encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron lists no Russian texts as examples of the genre. In the first chapter, Heller and Niqueux trace the origins of Russian utopianism in medieval Russia, especially in the orientation towards the realization of the Kingdom of God. The second chapter, which describes the popular utopianism of religious sects and the peasantry, spans the seventeenth through to the twentieth centuries. This is a key chapter, since the popular tradition stands out in comparison to Western Europe for its long survival, which was in the end brutally suppressed in the Stalinist utopia of collectivization. The matrix of connections within the overall tradition also begins to develop in fascinating ways. The next two chapters cover the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from political history (Peter, Catherine) to the dispute between Dostoevskii and Chernyshevskii. Fascinating here, for example, are the linguistic theories

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I24 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

of Trediakovskii, Sumarokov and, not least, Shishkov. Some of the area covered is of course well known, and in their Introduction Heller and Niqueux say that they attempt to cover such aspects briefly. There is a risk of losing something here. The dreamy quality of Kireevskii's utopian vision of Muscovite Russia could have been adduced to considerable effect, and the evolution of Gertsen's thought is central to the elaboration of anti-utopian thinking. The next two chapters cover the late nineteenth century and Modernism, from Fedorov to Cosmism to Merezhkovskii, and then the definitive and culminating period of the New World of the Revolution. There is much of interest among the lesser-known figures or areas: for example, the works of another Fedorov (N. D.), 'Atavizm' (i 899) and Vecher V 22I7 godu (I906), which, drawing on H. G. Wells and Jerome K. Jerome, stand right at the start of the twentieth-century anti-utopian tradition; or the anarchist utopia of the Gordin brothers, and the utopias and anti-utopias of the emigration. Finally, the last main chapter looks at the Khrushchev period, the I 960s flowering of science fiction, and on to the present day. While utopianism may have lost some of its dynamic and complexity, its constituent strands and language continue.

In their conclusion, Heller and Niqueux stress once again the diversity of Russian utopianism, which does not allow for reduction to a simple formula, for example, an equation of Moscow as Third Rome and the Third International. At the same time, while illuminating the specificity of Russian utopianism, such as a leaning towards esotericism and the proliferation of counter- and anti-utopias out of opposition to a dominant version imposed by the state, their study shows that it should not be absolutized either in itself or in opposition to the West. Nevertheless, given the weight of utopianism in the Russian tradition, Heller and Niqueux end wittily by forecasting that the development of a non-utopian society may prove to be one of the most difficult utopias to realize.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies ROBIN AIZLEWOOD University of London

Panfilowitsch, Igor. Alexander Puskins 'Mednyj vsadnik': Deutungsgeschichte und Gehalt. Otto Sagner, Munich, I995. 656 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Price unknown.

IN Pushkin's lifetime, his poem 'Mednyi vsadnik' was published only in extracts (i834). In i837 a version was printed which had been prepared for press by Zhukovskii. In this version, the objections of Pushkin's censor, Tsar Nicholas I, were taken into account, which consequently led to considerable abridgements. It was only more than a hundred years later, in I947, that the original version was re-established. Thus, the history of interpretation refers to a fragmentary text. It was a long and intricate history, which for long stretches conformed to the Russian tradition of pursuing literary criticism of society, while ignoring, if need be, the actual text.

This is Panfilowitsch's starting-point. The subtitle of his treatise, 'Deutungs- geschichte und Gehalt', has to be taken literally. It determines the structure of

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