Fear and Loathing of Capitalism in Russian Literature of the 19th Century

Catalog description

This course is a content-based course intended for students who speak Russian at home and seek to improve their command of formal and professional registers of the Russian language. Free trade and market relations were slowly developing in the 19th century Russia, rising against the inhibiting influence exerted by the institution of slavery and rigid social hierarchy. Russian classical realist literature is known for its fierce attacks on capitalism and capitalist values through literary characters and conflicts that prominently feature money and private property. Despite all their philosophical and ideological differences, great Russian writers signal their inherent opposition to capitalist mode of production and remain indifferent to liberal values and creative potential associated with capitalist competition. In this course we will explore what was the cultural and historical context for that palpable fear of capitalism and loathing of bourgeois values, and what was it in free market relations that scared so much all the grand authors of Russian 19th century canon. We will examine these questions through reading and analyzing the works of such authors as Pushkin, Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov.