Around Pushkin: Spirit, Law, and Liberty in the Debates of the Ninetieth

Abstract

The spirituality of Russian culture exposed itself explicitly in the discussion that unfolded among Pushkinists in the last decade of the XXth century. Liberals and conservatives, Westernizers and Slavophiles, they were debating the nature of “Spirit”. They discussed the interplay of Spirit, Liberty, Law, and Unlawfulness in Russian poetry and history. Those who participated in this discussion were prominent Russian literary critics, such as Valentin S. Nepomnyaschy, Irina Z. Surat, Sergei G. Bocharov, and Irina B. Rodnyanskaya. In the course of the debate, they uttered and rejected ideas that have been around since the days of Socrates and Plato. We can trace the development of these ideas from the “Re­public” by Plato, to “Leviathan” by Hobbes, the letters of Paul, and “Capital” by Marx. Discourse that mainstreams bygone ideas and disputes characterizes many turning points in history. Yet the interest in spirituality, accompanied by apoca­lyptic visions, became the key characteristic of the intellectual dispute in Russia at the turn of the 21st century.