On Russia’s «Brand» in ‘Cross-Cultural Dialogue’ in the Postmodern Era

At one of the previous Likhachov Conferences the author had an opportunity to deliver a speech on the topic of ‘Culture and national-civilizational identity of a modern great power’. Since then, sticking to the basic logic of such an approach, I have tried to develop this topic into a special research which has resulted in the monograph Culture and Issues of Civilization Identity of Russia as a Modern Great Power. I hope the monograph will be published this year.

I would like to point out once more that nowadays it is almost impossible to be a great power without a cultural civilizational identity. Aggressive attacks of highly commercialized ‘mass culture’ in the environment of globalization, the development of a postmodern phenomenon creates an obvious threat to cultural civilizational identity of many countries, including Russia.

It is necessary to understand that impressive force of mass culture in many respects consists of what is for hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, associated with the comfort of a modern life, with the various benefits of a post-industrial civilization. And this fact should not be ignored, when reflecting on its role in a modern society, about a correlation of mass culture and high culture. The many-sided personality and the bright spokesman of the latter was D.S. Likhachov.

The high culture has always been accessible (in true perception) to a rather limited part of the society with a due level of erudition and good breeding, with a developed aesthetic sense. But we should reflect on the issue of how to make high culture accessible to a considerably vaster population in this country, as well as in many other countries. With the massive development of higher education there is a chance to expand an area of high culture significantly.

In the Soviet Union enormous efforts were taken to introduce the high culture to the public — classical literature, painting, music… All was carried out, of course, within the limits of certain ideological restrictions, very rigid at times. Simultaneously in the USSR considerable efforts were made to develop literacy, secondary and higher education, music education, aesthetic education. Much of this experience seems to be quite applicable in modern Russian conditions for the sake of preservation, upholding our cultural civilizational ‘brand’.

I should notice that the disappearance of Soviet Union, one of the two superpowers in the system of the world politics, from the political map of the world had not only numerous geopolitical consequences. It has rendered already and will continue to exercise a dramatic negative cultural civilizational impact, having ceased to represent the alternative to a mass distribution of such things as glamour, whish is a component of postmodernism.

In the conditions of postmodern culture Likhachov’s suggestion of ‘progressive conservatism’ of cultures is especially important.

Likhachov also wrote that ‘a tradition is then a tradition when it moves in time’. Dmitry Sergeyevich’s formula still requires the most serious judgement and development. Considering a postmodern style as a substantial social and cultural phenomenon, it is necessary to notice what we mean by the modernist style, or the historical period of Modernism.

The Modernism is usually understood as a state of a society during the period between the Age of Enlightenment of the 17th century and the middle of the 20th century for which the rational approach to social issues and an urge to build ‘social frames’ is characteristic, in accordance with the laws of logic based on scientific knowledge.[1]

In art it is defined as a certain style – the modernist style, or art nouveau (Jugendstil in Germany), which appeared on the boundary of the 19th and 20th centuries. With all distinctions of poetics and creative installations, modernist currents in the art that appeared from the end of 19th to beginning of the 20th centuries shared one common world outlook and had many common features. In painting among its distinctive features there is the emphasis on more natural, ‘nature’ lines, rather than on the use of angles; interest in new technologies (particularly in architecture), astounding growth of applied arts, a combination of art and utilitarian functions of created works.

The Russian ‘silver age’ is closely connected with the modernist style in culture. N. Berdyaev named this phenomenon a ‘Russian cultural Renaissance’ (or a ‘Russian spiritual Renaissance’). Berdyaev wrote: Never before had the Russian culture reached such refinement as at that time.[2]

Many authors point out with a good reason that it is characteristic of a postmodern style to decrease moral thresholds considerably, to deform moral foundations on which the public relations throughout centuries and longer periods of history had been based.

Taken aesthetically, the postmodern style is characterized by the explicitly expressed eclecticism.[3]

If we speak about a postmodernism as an approach in sociology, it stands out among the majority of other sociological theories because it rejects a postulate on possibility of comprehension and evolution of societies through rational thinking, referring thus to the fact that societies are subject to constant changes.[4]

The postmodern style expresses very strong doubts of the validity of scientific knowledge of nature and society. The advocates of postmodern ideas and practices might be considered actually ‘institutional opponents’ to the neo-technocracy that plays a considerable part in many developed and developing societies. Neo-technocracy is an integral part of a modern ‘information society’ and ‘a knowledge-based society’. The characteristic feature of the modern highly skilled neo-technocracy is the combination of scientific, engineering and ecological knowledge, on the one hand, and understanding of the laws of society development, on the another. This, in turn, implies the non-ideological approach to social studies, especially to political science and sociology, application of the general logic of science to the construction of scientific social theory. The neo-technocrat can and should commensurate any decisions connected with development of those or other high technology production, with their potential ecological, climatic, medical and biologic consequences because of, at least, vast dimensions and excessive complexity of the technosphere created by the humans. The understanding of laws of the techno-evolution, especially techno-evolution of information-communication systems and means, the development of various ‘information fields’ in economic, social sphere, in world politics and in strategic relations is peculiar to such neo-technocracy, too.

It is possible to consider as a postmodern social component such a phenomenon as glamour lifestyle, which has been widely adopted in certain layers of our society and is widely covered in mass media or, rather,  even cherished by the latter. The glamour is a lifestyle. As V.T. Tretyakov, Dean of the Higher School for TV at Moscow State University, points out, ‘glamour’ is a characteristic feature of modern journalism, it is a symptomatic tendency to demonstrate the increasing domination of a ‘brand’ system of values of the modern reader and the deification of the consumerist society.

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Explicitly expressed national identity is becoming more and more rare, and, thereby, more valuable in the globalized and unified world. Both average-size states and small countries strife for their cultural-civilizational identity, however, it very often comes to them with great difficulty.

To speak about our national culture, it is necessary to re-examine once again our meaning of the concept of ‘the Russian nation’.

The overwhelming majority of the modern nations are multiethnic systems with the leading role of a single ethnos, as a rule. In modern state of affairs Russia can be considered a multiethnic nation with the leading, basic role of the proper Great Russian ethnos having at least a thousand-year history. Thus, it is necessary to define a role of Great Russian culture in an appropriate way, which among cultures of other ethnos of Russia is a unique world culture.

Since the end of the 18th century the interpretation of the concept of nation has been getting more and more politically and socially oriented, rather than ethnically characterized. In an up-to-date approach the nation is, first of all, a civil society generated within certain borders and a political community (the civil nation), with common history, traditions, a high degree of cultural compatibility of ethnos that constitute the nation.

As a rule, modern nations have a certain linguistic and cultural dominant. Weakening of such a dominant is considered a threat of a national-cultural identity loss.

For us such a dominant is the Russian language, especially the Russian literary language, the language of ‘elevated style’ formed essentially by the middle of the 19th century. Language in turn, as Likhachov puts it, is one of the main manifestations of culture, it is not just a communication medium, but, first of all, the creator, the demiurge; there is no need to speak at length about the importance of richness of language, its abilities to reflect a multi-dimensional picture of the world and to form a more and more diverse world, following, at the same time, certain moral and ethical standards that have been formed throughout the history of a human civilization. And today there emerged a pressing need to approach the Russian language as a major constituent of our Russian nation, as a major backbone factor of our culture connecting the whole lot of other factors.

It is possible, I assume, to agree with Yu. M. Lotman who called art the highest embodiment of culture. Olzhas Sulejmenov ascribed intellectual art only to the culture of a highly civilized society (thus he considers culture as synthesis of such art, and also science, religion, dominating morals).

In maintenance of a national identity a sufficient role is played by an external relation to the nation, the perception of its art, and an internal perception – by individuals, layers of society. The difference between internal and external perceptions can be quite considerable, but the external perception of culture of any country almost always returns, also deformed, back to the country. In 1920s one of characteristic features of our cultural-national identity was an avant-garde style in painting (in a slightly smaller extent at theatre), and also in literature, which became most explicit in V.V. Mayakovsky’s poetry.

The author of this article has distinguished seven constituent parts of art and culture to define the cultural-civilizational identity of Russia that can be considered the ‘brand’ of Russia.

It is immediately necessary to notice that particular names, teams, groups, communities are indispensable elements of cultural identity.

1. The great Russian literature of the 19th century which was developed at silver age, and later in the Soviet literature.

The high literature preserves and develops the language; its value, the value of literary texts in this respect does not diminish its significance with the development of cinema, theatre, TV, the Internet. A person most substantially gets, as it seems to me, moral and aesthetic ideas through literature, through the language of art.

2. Classical music — In Russian cultural ‘brand’, in its musical dimension as the most tangible top in world culture reigns Tchaikovsky, near him Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, then Scriabin, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Denisov, Schnittke, etc.; music performers — Ojstrakh, Gilels, Rostropovich, Gergiev, Spivakov, Bashmet, etc.

3. Classical ballet — starting from Petipa through Pavlova, Diaghilev, Ulanova, Nureyev, Plissetskaya; it is the Bolshoi Theatre, the Mariinsky Theatre, Perm’ Opera House, etc. I should recollect D.S. Likhachov’s reflections on Russian classical modern ballet which are full of charm and refinement.

4. Painting and sculpture — here ‘peredvizhniki’, ‘miriskusniki’, constructivists, supremacists, ‘akhrov school’, ‘ostov school’, etc. are starring.

Artists have done huge work aimed at the formation of our historical consciousness. These are Ivanov’s canvases, as well as Surikov’s, Repine’s, Vasnetsov’s, etc. Artistic interpretation of the landscapes of the Russian empire, then of the Soviet Union — Savrasov, Levitan, Ayvazovsky, Kuindgy, Polenov, etc.

Objects of art that explicitly expressed the national-identification character appeared in sculpture a little later than in painting in this country. The first place, certainly, belongs to Sergey Timofeyevich Konenkov, commensurable with Repin in painting, Leo Tolstoy in literature, Pyotr Tchaikovsky in music. Then follow Golubkina, Erzja, Shadr… Speaking about our contemporaries, one cannot omit such an outstanding sculptor as Rukavishnikov.

The Soviet period in painting, sculpture, graphic art produced a whole constellation of schools, names: Nissky, Deyneka, Labas, Pimenov, Kravchenko, Platov, Stozharov, Konchalovsky, Yuon, Samokhvalov, Grekov, Kugachis (the father and the son), Britov, Neprintsev, Salakhov, etc. What today is called, for example, ‘the Soviet impressionism’ is more and more considered abroad to be one of cultural-civilizational features of our country.

5. Architecture and city architectural landscapes, including small cities or great small cities, as based on D. Likhachov. He has included here Great Novgorod. I prefer to speak about much smaller cities — Rostov the Great, Tarusa, Borovsk, Tobolsk, Pereslavl-Zalessky, also about Torzhok, Suzdal, which Dmitry Sergeyevich mentions as well.

A clearly distinctive Russian style in architecture developed by the second half of the 17th century, for the first place in church architecture. To me personally one of the vivid examples of such clearly identified Russian architecture is a small church of Michael the Archangel in Arkhangelskoye in Krasnogorsk area of Moscow Region.

6. Russian theatrical drama art — this part of the Russian cultural ‘brand’ is connected with Chekhov Academic Moscow Art Theatre, with Stanislavsky, in 1960–90s with Taganka Theatre, Sovremennik Theatre, Lenin Komsomol Theatre, Tovstonogov’s Theatre, with the names of Nemirovich-Danchenko, Meyerhold, Okhlopkov, and then Tovstonogov, Lavrov, Yefremov, Tabakov, Dodin, Fomenko.

7. Cinema. — Among the great, emblematic Russian figures there is Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Romm, Chuhray, Gerassimov, Tarkovsky, Bondarchuk, Konchalovsky, Shakhnazarov, Govorukhin, Mikhalkov, Bondarchuk Jr., Herman, etc.

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Getting back to the role of glamour, it might be observed that its power and influence cannot be considered exclusively through a prism of its vast purely commercial importance, but the latter plays almost the leading part in the glorious journey of glamour, which for last 30–35 years has passed triumphantly through practically all regions of the world, getting insignificant resistance in various cultural-civilizational communities. It is obvious that the power of glamour (including such its part as hypersexuality) is rooted in many components of ‘human nature’, in human psyche. Sources of glamour and glamour behaviour can be found even in primitive societies. We can see more ‘proto glamour’ (and ‘proto postmodern style’) in a number of advanced civilizations of the previous epochs — and not only in the late Roman empire in its decline which was followed by its fall, but also, for example, in China at the Tan Dynasty times (618–907). But then there were no those mass media that we have today, there was no such terrible multiplicative and enslaving force as an overwhelming part of television to which the Internet has contributed also.

Some authors even before the present global financial and economic crisis began to notice that ‘the end of glamour civilizations is coming’[5]. Is it so? An unambiguous answer would be a little bit premature, especially referring to Russia where glamour by the time of the crisis had only started to gain its strength, including the political one. For the vast number of girls in the Russian Federation the strongest desire ‘to marry a rich guy’ (multimillionaire, preferably) and to indulge in a life of glamour has become almost a ‘national idea’, having extremely deformed all moral and ethical ideas about relations between man and woman that have been formed throughout centuries, if not millennia.

Glamour, being, of course, the off-spring of the European-Atlantic civilization, first of all born and developed mainly in the West during the postmodern period, has quite considerably intruded into the most ancient of existing civilizations of today, the Chinese. There is no doubt that ideology of glamour and its huge ‘operational opportunities’ have transformed (and deformed) cultural-civilizational ‘brand’ of almost any country, any nation (the concept of nation I have already covered above).

In many countries including Russia glamour and the postmodern style are often almost completely identified with a modern American culture and, to tell the truth, with its ‘mass culture’. Glamour is present at all strata, at all levels of the American society (and has its price for each of these strata) with distinctions in prices, shops, actions for the lower middle class, middle class and upper middle class, etc. In Russia, where ‘middle class’ (and its ‘subclasses’) is still insignificant, it looks a little different — one might say, it is less structured and more deformed.

Inside the USA glamour and the postmodern style as a whole are taken negatively by a very considerable part of the society, and very often even negatively as the phenomena destroying traditional American values with the most dangerous consequences for the USA as a multiethnic nation, a civilization of a single superpower that has remained in the world politics after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

And considering today the postmodern style and glamour as a global phenomenon in relation to Russia, to our cultural-civilizational ‘brand’, we should not fail to take into consideration everything that is taking place in the USA and in other western countries which gave rise to the postmodern style and glamour. It is also necessary to watch how these phenomena ‘behave’ in China, and also in India, without forgetting the multilateral Muslim world. The search for the identity, for the cultural individuality in the environment of globalisation, for the postmodern style and glamour is still going on in many countries.

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We need today Likhachov’s ‘progressive conservatism’ of cultures more than ever, now that it is necessary for the development of compensation mechanisms in reaction to the destructive influence of glamour and the postmodern style… It is extremely important for the synthesis of the art and culture of the past which has been approved of by the time, by many generations, and also for the valuable new trends that might be found even in objects of art in the postmodern era. Otherwise, more ‘unpleasant scenarios’ can be expected in future.

Source: Nasledie