Reading Practices and the Uses of Print in Russian History

Abstract

Reading Practices and the Uses of Print in Russian History Yelizaveta Raykhlina (bio) Damiano Rebecchini and Raffaella Vassena, eds., Reading Russia: A History of Reading in Modern Russia, vols. 1–3. 295 + 561 + 435 pp. Milan: Ledizioni, 2020. ISBN-13 978-8855261920 (vol. 1), 978-8855261937 (vol. 2), 978-8867055944 (vol. 3). Open access via OpenEdition Books. Yukiko Tatsumi and Taro Tsurumi, eds., Publishing in Tsarist Russia: A History of Print Media from Enlightenment to Revolution. xv + 264 pp. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. ISBN-13 978-1350246768. $40.95. The history of Russian civil society has been examined by scholars looking to explain the underdevelopment of independent political institutions, weak rule of law, and relative illiberalism of successive Russian regimes across the centuries.1 Turning to the history of reading, printing, and the control of public discourse, scholars once saw imperial Russia's public sphere as lacking in critical mass and degree of political influence in comparison to its European and North American counterparts, while Soviet publics were constrained under the tight control of the state. This understanding has undergone significant revision in recent decades, as scholars have interrogated both the prescriptive categories and models of Western political theory, and as new research has uncovered broader types of agency and participation across Russian history. Working largely in the disciplines of literature, history, and historical sociology, these approaches [End Page 886] have produced deeply researched studies of publishers, presses, publics, and readers in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Examining questions such as canon formation and marketplace influence, literary scholars have looked to the Formalist tradition, semiotics, and sociological concepts to provide critical context and analysis for understanding the work of renowned authors and their "classics."2 Historians, inspired by the Annales school and the various historiographical "turns"—cultural, imperial, transnational—have explored the manifold applications and uses of publishing, from mass readerships and cultural production to the entanglements among writers, publishers, politics, and the state.3 Cumulatively, this research has not only underscored the integral role of reading and texts for understanding the imperial and Soviet periods but has also pointed to multiple new avenues for scholars to explore. This review focuses on four edited volumes which do precisely that: examine text consumption and production using novel and multidisciplinary approaches. Reading Russia: A History of Reading in Modern Russia, the three-volume series edited by Damiano Rebecchini and Raffaella Vassena, surveys Russian reading practices from the late 17th century to the post-Soviet period, while Publishing in Tsarist Russia: A History of Print Media from Enlightenment to Revolution, edited by Yukiko Tatsumi and Taro Tsurumi, provides an innovative approach to studying publishing in imperial Russia from the late 17th century to 1917. The four titles have several elements in common. First, all four edited collections present the cumulative effort of scholars using varying methodologies to explore a related set of questions and concepts, thus pointing to new directions in what is a highly multiand often interdisciplinary area of study. Second, the volumes complement [End Page 887] one another by exploring two entangled questions, with the Reading Russia volumes asking how readers responded to, and interacted with, Russian texts and the evolving literary culture over time, and Publishing in Tsarist Russia asking how imperial subjects made use of Russian-language publishing across the empire's vast geography to access participation within the imperial order. Third, the four volumes cover critical historiographical terrain while also spotlighting primary source research through case studies and suggested further reading. Finally, while not adhering to a single theoretical approach, both Reading Russia and Publishing in Tsarist Russia suggest complications of, and even challenges to well-worn methodological categories, particularly—as the editors' introductions argue—those associated with Jürgen Habermas's theory of the public sphere and Benedict Anderson's understanding of the links between language, nationalism, and print capitalism. _____ The three-volume Reading Russia is dedicated to the long-challenging task of analyzing reader response and reception to the Russian word.4 The editors' introduction presents the volumes as not only an attempt to correct a long-standing overemphasis in literary studies on authors and texts by focusing specifically on readers and reading...