Volume 45, Number 15 · October 8, 1998
The Sphinx of Russia
By Aileen Kelly
Echoes of a Native Land: Two Centuries of a Russian Village
by Serge Schmemann
Knopf, 350 pp., $27.50
Turgenev described the feverish atmosphere in St. Petersburg just after the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861, when the intelligentsia debated the future of the traditional peasant communes: Should they be abolished as the remnants of a primitive economy, or preserved as the repositories of the Russian soul? Slavophiles and Westernizers, radicals and conservatives, Turgenev wrote, 'whirl before one's eyes like figures in a danse macabre, while below them, in the dark background of the picture, lurks a sphinx—the Russian people.'
Review, 5348 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |