Contenu du sommaire

Inès Muller de Morogues, N.S. Leskov : A religious propagandist and critic of moralistic literature. Leskov believed that conscience-raising was the main mission of all writers and his well- known righteous men are not the only proof. Leskov, the literary critic, wished to present to readers any work which would contribute to their moral development, as he considered such development, based on the ideals of Christianity, to be essential for social progress. He is therefore concerned by the ignorance of the Russian people in matters of religion. He is an advocate of solid religious teaching based on the Bible, the history of the Russian Church and the lives of the Saints. He becomes committed when he comments on religious texts and publishes prayer books, and biblical and patristic literature. He also sends long recensions to morality conscious magazines aimed at the general public. He always insists on the necessity to publish stories and illustrations that correspond to the needs and realities of the Russian people. However, in the 1880's, as he separates himself from the Orthodox Church, he becomes closer to Tolstoi. This in no way implies that Leskov's interest in moralistic literature lessens. On the contrary, he finds in Tolstoi the support he seeks for his innermost beliefs and pushes even further his wish to moralize. This is evident in his defense of Tolstoi's writings and initiatives as well as in his own literary works.

Valentina Brio, "Game — the initial poetry" in A. Pogorel'skii's work. The work of Antonii Pogorel'skii (Aleksei Perovskii) is considered an example of literature game, artistic mystification. This creative device was shown in witty articles on Pushkin's Ruslan and Liudmila, which Pogorel'skii was protecting from critics, in the cycle of romanticist short stories The Double, or My evenings in Malorussia and in other works. Pogorel'skii often "plays" with ready topics, motives, preserving the paradoxical contradiction between reality and convention, embodying new romanticist tendencies. Unknown archive materials, used in this article, confirm his evolution towards witty parody and paradox. The work of the author is connected with the atmosphere of literary salons and represents an original dialogue with contemporaries, a lively dispute on burning subjects.

Agnès Kefeli-Clay, The popular Islam of the Christian Orthodox Tatars in the nineteenth century. Over the course of the nineteenth century, several thousand Christian Tatars (whose ancestors had adopted Orthodoxy in the 1500's and 1700's) asked to be officially recognized as Muslims. An analysis of their protest sheds light on the transmission of traditional Koranic knowledge and Tatar resistance to Russian attempts to assimilate them. Tatar Islam succeeded in reintegrating these Christians primarily through the efforts of itinerant indigenous mullahs, who brought Sufi books from Central Asia, and commercial traders who travelled regularly back and forth between the Christian and the Muslim world. In addition, Muslim missionaries very effectively assimilated and exploited networks of pre-Islamic and pre-Christian sacred places. The popular Islam adopted by these erstwhile Christian Tatars reflected the Islam of the larger Tatar peasant community, an Islam which Muslim reformers (ğadids) later reacted against.

Dmitry Shlapentokh, Bolshevism as a Fedorovian regime. The ideas of the Russian nationalism of Russia as a chosen nation were transformed in the mind of some of the Russian thinkers as the idea of humanity as a "chosen species" in which mastery over nature would ensure humanity an eternal life. Nikolai Fedorov was one of the best representatives of this sort of thinking. His ideas became an integral part of the philosophy of the Soviet regime. The political and economic expansion of the regime were viewed as the spreading of human power over the cosmos. At the same time, the collapse of communism and the USSR, the heir of the Russian Empire, was a death knell for Russian intellectuals for such a vision of the relationship between nature and humanity.

Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu, The playwright Liudmila Petrushevskaia and the Soviet critic of the 1970's and 1980's. Liudmila Petrushevskaia is the author of many stories, poems, plays, children's books and screenplays, but, for a long time, she remained unknown to the Russian and Soviet public. She was not mentioned in the literary press before the mid-1970's, even though her first stories had been published at the end of the 1960's. At first, her plays (mainly one act plays), were staged by young professional or amateur groups, scattered throughout the country, which met in actors' studios or small theaters. Played before they were published, the works of Petrushevskaia were attacked before they were read and, frequently, even before they were seen. She acquired the reputation of a writer of "customs and manners" (bytopisatel') whose style was difficult. The critics also expressed distaste for the bleak atmosphere depicted in her works. Then, after having been "forgotten" during the 1970's and pulled to pieces by the critics during part of the following decade, Petrushevskaia suddenly became known as one of the most original Soviet playwrights at the end of the 1980's. Since then, Petrushevskaia has gained fame abroad, where both her stories and plays have been translated. In particular, it was the European tour of the Studio L'Homme which started the renown when it brought her play Cinzano to Munich, London, Glasgow, Parma, Arnhem, and Paris.