Category: Culture

Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes

London, Allen Lane, 2002. Illustrated, 16pp Colour Plates, Notes, Glossary, Table of Chronology, Guide to Further Reading, Index. xxxiii + 729 pages. £25 hardback

Review by Roger Cockrell

'My compatriots and I carry our country about with us', wrote Prokofiev, during his period of self-imposed exile. At the heart of Orlando Figes' book lies the question of Russian national identity and the interaction between the culture of Russia and its history. The book's title derives from the scene in Tolstoy's War and Peace (Book Two, Part 4, Chapter 7), in which Natasha Rostova joins in a folk dance with such instinctive ease and naturalness that the fact that she is a member of the aristocracy, brought up by a French governess, is immediately forgotten. 'My aim', Figes writes in his introduction, 'is to explore Russian culture in the same way Tolstoy presents Natasha's dance as a series of encounters or creative social acts which were performed and understood in many different ways'. To dispel any possible fears, Figes makes it clear from the start that he does not intend his book to be some kind of sentimental journey, in search of an elusive 'Russian soul': 'If there is one myth which needs to be dispelled, it is this view of Russia as exotic and elsewhere'.

In pursuit of his theme Figes covers a vast range of material relating to nearly three centuries of Russian cultural history, from the founding of St Petersburg to the Brezhnev era. There are over 580 pages of text, some sixty pages of notes as well as footnotes, a useful glossary and chronological table, and a detailed guide to further reading. The illustrations include sixteen pages of colour plates, together with many black and white illustrations. The story Figes tells is in part chronological, keeping strictly within the parameters that he has set himself. We learn very little about pre-Petrine Russia, and nothing at all about the post-Soviet experience; there are no references to Gorbachev, perestroika, glasnost, or Yeltsin, and no speculations concerning Russia's future. Some may question this approach, but it has its virtues. For one thing, by starting and ending his history where he does, Figes keeps his discussion within manageable proportions. For another, the more one studies Russian history as it unfolds over the decades and centuries, the more one is struck by its sense of continuity. Major events such as the Russian revolution, or the collapse of the Soviet Union lead, of course, to far-reaching socio-political changes, but the key questions relating to Russia's place in the world remain; Gogol's troika continues to thunder on, into the unknown.

Overlapping with this chronological story each of the eight chapters focuses on a particular theme. Starting with the founding of St Petersburg and the 'opening of the window' on to Western Europe, Figes moves on to the consequences of the Napoleonic wars and 1812, including the Decembrist uprising. After this follow chapters on Moscow, peasant life, Russian Orthodoxy, the Russians in Asia and the Caucasus, and the Soviet period. The final chapter concerns the fate of those Russians who were forced, or who voluntarily decided, to live abroad after 1917. Each chapter explores, from different perspectives, the fateful issues relating to the question of 'Russianness', shown as a series of fault lines bisecting the national character. Can Russians consider themselves truly 'Russian' if they adopt the attitudes, customs and political institutions of Western Europe? Or should they, on the contrary, turn their backs on Europe and embrace Asia? How can the enormous gulf between town and countryside, between the nobility and the peasants, be bridged? What is the role of the intelligentsia in this process? Is it the Christian tradition or the pagan that has had the greater influence in moulding the Russian character? How is it possible to reconcile love for Russia with hatred of its political system (whether Tsarist or Soviet)?

These interlinked, and still largely unresolved, questions are not discussed simply in the abstract. Into this intricately structured pattern Figes weaves the lives of energetic and often supremely talented individuals who contributed in various ways to Russia's cultural life and who helped shape her destiny. A complete list of such people is impossible within the limits of a review, but it includes writers, composers, political figures, members of the aristocracy, artists, and film directors. The Soviet chapter alone features the lives, work, tribulations and triumphs of over a dozen such figures, including Akhmatova, Meyerhold, Eisenstein, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev, with Figes shifting the focal point of the discussion so that each is seen in relation to one or more of the others, as if they form part of some multi-layered mobile. Throughout the whole book, from the moment when he first burst on the scene with his dazzling poetry to Vladimir Nabokov's adoption of his mantle over a hundred years later, we are made aware of the presiding genius of Alexander Pushkin - the figure who more than any other embodies for Russians the essence of their national identity.

In the course of his discussion Figes uses the term 'culture' in the broadest sense. 'A culture', he writes, 'is made up not simply of works of art, or literary discourses, but of unwritten codes, signs and symbols, rituals and gestures, and common attitudes that fix the public meaning of these works and organize the inner life of a society'. He provides much anecdotal and factual detail to illustrate and underpin this definition. The following list is far from exhaustive: Ivan Krylov's account of the uninvited guest at the Sheremetevs' dinner table who had eaten there for years 'without anybody ever knowing who he was'; Peter Sheremetev's massive shopping list, consisting of some 40 items, including '24 pairs of lace cuffs for nightshirts', '150 pounds of superior tobacco', '12 bottles of English dry mustard', and '200 bottles of sparkling champagne'; the serfs' horn band at Kuskovo, in which each horn player was given only one note to play; Rimsky Korsakov's plan for a Russian Ring cycle, following Wagner's overall conception, but with themes from Russian folklore replacing their Teutonic counterparts; the fact that the nesting doll, the matrioshka, has no roots in Russian culture, but was first created in 1891; Diaghilev, Benois, Fokine and others dreaming up the story of The Firebird 'around the kitchen table'; the Devil's fear, according to Russian folklore, of any man who wore a belt: 'not to wear a belt was a sign of belonging to the underworld'; the deliberate misspelling of the word 'Tatar' to 'Tartar' (from Tartarus); Stalin's comment on hearing of the reception given to Akhmatova after a public reading of her poetry: 'Who organised this standing ovation?'.

There is a lot to savour here, but there are occasional inconsistencies in the wider argument. We are told, for example, that works of literature do not directly mirror reality and that the relationship between art and life is a complex one, but at least some of the examples we are given imply the opposite. And then there is the question of the nobility's service to the state during the last half of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The actual facts are difficult to unravel: at one point we learn that they have been freed from any such obligation, but a little later the opposite seems to be the case; a few pages further on, and we find them emancipated again. The book also contains a number of minor errors and typographical mistakes. Amongst others, I noted 'Dimtry Venevitanov', for the poet Dmitry Venevitinov; the 'famous lunch' between Levin and Oblonsky takes place not in 'the opening scene' of Anna Karenina, but in Chapter 10 of Part 1; in Surikov's well-known painting the boyar's wife Morozova is being dragged away, not to her execution on Red Square, as Figes maintains, but to exile in Siberia (where she was eventually to suffer a fate that was at least as horrific); in 1870 the painter Ilya Repin left St Petersburg for Samara, not for Stavropol (which is not situated on the Volga, 'about 700 kilometers east of Moscow'); the painter was Karl Briullov (or, possibly, Bryullov), not 'Bruillov'; the proletarian literary organisation, RAPP, was formed in 1925, not 1928.

Figes' approach leads on occasion to oversimplified generalisations. This is particularly evident in his cut and dried judgements on authors and works of literature. D. H. Lawrence enjoined us to trust the song, rather than the singer, but Figes is convinced that The Cherry Orchard unequivocally reflects Chekhov's belief in progress, and he writes elsewhere as if he knows the identity of the 'real Chekhov'. He adopts a similar stance with regard to Turgenev and that author's supposedly negative view of the student nihilists as reflected in his novel Fathers and Children. We are told that 'all Tolstoy's characters are searching for a form of Christian love', and that 'death is felt in all Chekhov's works'. Those who have not read Chekhov's story Steppe may well be put off by Figes' limited and misleading description. His summary of Steppe as four men crossing the steppe in a carriage against the backcloth of a landscape which 'never changes' and which is 'stifling and oppressive, without sound or movement to disrupt the tedium' does not begin to do justice to this masterpiece. Chekhov in fact presents the story largely through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy, Egorushka, and the 'tedium' of the landscape is only one of the themes of a narrative that is remarkable for its lyrical language, striking characterisation and evocative imagery.

There are other disappointments. The colour plates are not in every instance cross-referenced in the text, and the index is far from fully comprehensive. Since Natasha's Dance, as Figes says in his introduction, is 'an interpretation of a culture, not a comprehensive history', readers' expectations that it will include a reference to a particular person, work or theme will not always be fulfilled. I was surprised, for example, to find no mention either of Tolstoy's Khadzhi-Murat or the painter Boris Kustodiev. I might, it is true, simply have missed the references to them, but checking in the index is no help, given its inadequacy: the absence of an entry for a particular subject or topic is no indication that it does not appear in the text.
Natasha's Dance is a beautifully presented and very tactile book - quite a consideration in this technological age; it has an appearance and feel that invite you to open it and explore its contents. As in his earlier work on the Russian Revolution, A People's Tragedy, Figes has again demonstrated his ability to interweave chronology and theme, to sift, glean and order a mass of material in an informative manner and to present it all in elegant and lucid English. But what type of reader did the author and publishers have in mind when producing this book? Or, to put it rather differently, who will derive most benefit from reading it? It is not obviously for the academic specialist: there are few startlingly new insights, and most of the general points Figes uses to sustain his argument will be familiar to those who know about the subject. Nevertheless, had this book arrived on the scene fifteen years ago it could well have been read to advantage by Mrs Thatcher, President Reagan, and all those who apparently believed that Russia could be reformed merely by introducing market capitalism and western-style democracy - thereby creating a kind of Belgium, with its MacDonalds and Pizza Huts, only bigger. Many illusions are still apparent, moreover, and Russians themselves continue to complain, with some justification, that the West misunderstands them. Natasha's Dance does not solve the enigma of the Russian character, but for those who wish to seek to understand the complexities and paradoxes of Russia and its people, it will do much to illuminate the dark and dusty corners of ignorance and prejudice.

Roger Cockrell

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