Russian Literature: Ideals and Realities

Myroslav Shkandrij is an associate professor of Slavic studies at the
University of Manitoba.

This survey of Russian literature developed from a series of lectures
delivered in Boston at the Lowell Institute in 1901. First published in
1905, it bears all the characteristics of an introduction to Russian
life and letters for the English-language reader of the day.
Kropotkin’s method is to follow the development of sociopolitical
ideas, “the aspirations of the history-making portions of Russian
society.”

The result is a focus on the radical nineteenth-century intelligentsia
and its literary tastes and evaluations. Some great prose writers
(Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Goncharov) receive extensive analysis;
others are accorded only the briefest mention. The author’s strong
subjective judgments are always foregrounded: Dostoyevsky, for example,
is rated “far below” the above four. Extensive sections on “folk
novelists,” political literature, and literary criticism complete the
account.

The book is part of a project to republish the anarchist thinker’s
collected works. It holds more than documentary value, however. Current
interest in reader reception and public expectation provide sufficient
theoretical support for Kropotkin’s approach. The heretical
predilections of a distinguished public figure make for stimulating
reading, of course, but it is the author’s wide culture and generous
humanitarian impulses that make this a classic primer to the golden age
of Russian writing—an age he was formed by in every respect.