Famous Russian Imperial Culture - Essay Example

Russian Imperial Culture It will be very true for Russia's imperial culture to be adequately conceived in terms of a museum "paradigm" or museum metaphor. But not all of it can be adequately captured in a museum paradigm. With the huge culture that was associated to the imperial period in Russia it will be difficult to think it can be conceived in a museum metaphor. But looking at the imperial period of Russia and what went on you will see that it is possible to capture the imperial culture of Russia in a museum. We have to look at the imperial culture of Russia at the time to get a detailed feel of what the culture was at the time to make it difficult to keep in a museum metaphor. Imperialism is an exploitative system of administration in which certain group comes to a territory and exploits the people of their wealth. Fundamentally, however, monopoly and finance capitalism are logical developments from free, competitive capitalism; political imperialism is a logical development of monopoly capitalism; war is a logical development of imperialism. Wars were therefore very important aspects of imperial Russian culture. The Russian state persistently battled against Nogai-Horde and Crimean khanat which were successors of the Golden Horde. Russians captured by nomads were sold on Crimean slave markets. In 1571 the Crimean khan Devlet-Girei, with a horde of 120 thousand horsemen, devastated Moscow. Annually thousands of Russians became victims of attacks by nomads. Tens of thousands of soldiers protected the southern borderland - a heavy burden for the state which slowed its social and economic development. In the beginning of the 16th century the Russian state set the national goal to return all Russian territories lost as a result of the Mongolian invasion and to protect the borderland against attacks of hordes. The noblemen, receiving a manor from the sovereign, were obliged to serve in the army. The manor system became a basis for the nobiliary horse army. Russians emraced nobility as a way of life, titles were given to nobility. Ivan the Terrible was officially crowned the first Tsar (from the Roman Caesar, also written Czar) of Russia at the age of sixteen. Russian Cossacks established the first settlements in Western Siberia. In the middle of the 17th century there were Russian settlements in Eastern Siberia, on Chukotka, along the river Amur, on the Pacific coast. In 1648 the Cossack Semyon Dezhnev discovered the strait between America and Asia. The greater and more expansive Russian Empire was born. Muscovite control of the nascent nation continued after the Polish intervention. Peter the Great, brought ideas and culture from Western Europe to a severely underdeveloped Russia. Catherine the Great, enhanced this effort, establishing Russia not just as an Asian power, but on an equal footing with Britain, France, and Germany in Europe. She enlarged the Russian empire by the Partitions of Poland. Russia had now taken territories with the ethnic Belarus and Ukrainian population, earlier parts of the medieval Kievan Rus'. As a result of the victorious Russian-Turkish wars, Russia's borders expanded to the Black Sea and Russia set her goal on the protection of Balkan Christians against a Turkish yoke. Russia and the Georgian Kingdom (which was almost totally devastated by Persian and Turkish invasions) signed the treaty of Georgievsk according to which Georgia received the protection of Russia. After Peter the Great, Russia emerged as a major European power. Examples of its post-Peter European involvement includes the War of Polish Succession and the Seven Years War. These wars were necessary to preserve the Russian empire and preserve the sovereignity of the Russian people. Each well-developed national mythology has produced what can be called the culture of the ordinary. It has to do with everyday life of men and women over a period of time. It could be said that the culture of imperial Russia was based on wars and economic exploitation. Museums could capture the dress (uniform), the weaponry and arsenal used in the imperial Russia. They could capture the architecture of buildings in the imperial Russia into museums. A clear example of this scenario will be seen with the winter palace. The organization of her government and the arrangement of nobility and royalty is one aspect that may not be captured adequately in any museum but the overall culture of the generality of the Russian people during the imperial period can be captured and conceived in terms of a museum paradigm. The winter palace does work as a central image for this paradigm. The Hermitage Museum is housed in the Winter Palace (and some other buildings), the main residence of the Russian imperial family. Magnificently located on the bank of the Neva River, this Baroque-style palace is perhaps the major attraction of St. Petersburg. The green-and-white 3-story palace has 1786 doors, 1945 windows and 1057 halls and rooms, many of which are open to the public. The Winter Palace was built in 1754-62 for Empress Elisabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. By the time it was completed Elisabeth had already died, and only Catherine the Great and her successors could enjoy their new home. The Hermitage Museum was founded in 1764 when Catherine the Great purchased a collection of 255 paintings from Berlin. Today, the Hermitage Museum is the largest art gallery in Russia and one of the largest and most respected art museums in the world, with 2.7 million exhibits from Ancient Egypt to early 20th century Europe. It includes works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, unique collections of Rembrandt, Rubens, French Impressionists (Renoir, Cezanne, Manet, Monet, Pissarro), plus Van Gogh, Matisse, Gaugin and sculptures by Rodin. Most of these artworks housed at the Winter Palace that are not Russian goes to depict the imperial culture of Russia. The lands they conquered and the territories they occupied. The Russians have kept this museum as a way of preserving their national pride and history. The choice of location of this museum can even be understood looking that it was constructed by the father of imperial Russia, and the status of the building as an imperial building. How could the culture of imperial Russia better be captured St Petersburg will be seen as a kind of Russian imperial theme park. Peter The Great, who could easily be described as the greatest persona of the imperial Russia, established St Petersburg. St Petersburg is a relatively young city, by both Russian and European standards, and was only founded in 1703 by Tsar Peter the Great. Despite its short life so far, Petersburg has a rich and exciting history. From the early days of Peter the Great's "Venice of the North" to the modern events of the 1991 coup d'etat, the city has always bustled with life and intrigue, revolution and mystery. Once the power and prosperity of Novgorod was subdued by Moscow and the lands along the Neva River became part of the centralized Russian state - Muscovite Russia. However, unrest began to brew in Russia, after the last Tsar of the Riurik dynasty - Fiodor Ioanovich (the son of Ivan the Terrible), had died leaving no heirs to the throne. The new ruler, Vasily Shuisky, invited the Swedes to fight on his side. The Swedes realized how weak Russia was, and decided instead to occupy a significant portion of North-Western Russia. For the remainder of the century the Neva River area became a part of Sweden, and the Swedes effectively cut off Russia from all Baltic trade routes. Peter the Great was determined to change the status quo, regain access to the Baltic Sea and establish stronger ties with the West. In the hope of achieving these goals he embarked on the Northern War with Sweden. In 1703 the Russians gained control over the Neva River and Peter the Great founded the city of St. Petersburg on the banks of the river. During the first few years of St. Petersburg's history, the banks of the Neva saw an amazing transition from a swampy, scarcely populated area to a fine European capital. The first structure to be built in the new city was the Peter and Paul fortress. Although it was originally designed to protect the area from possible attacks by the Swedish army and navy, the fort did not actually take part in any fighting. Just across the River Neva from the fortress Peter built the fortified Admiralty complex, where the most powerful ships of Russia's Baltic Fleet were built. Many of these vessels were to lead Russia to a great series of naval victories during the course of the Northern War. Many of St. Petersburg's street and district names still remind us today of Peter the Great's preparations for war and the great shipbuilding industry he instituted; Liteiny - meaning "the Foundry yard" and Smolny - "the Tar yard", which produced tar for the purposes of shipbuilding, for example). Till today ships are still being built in St Petersburg and is still one pof the major industries of St Petersburg. The Tsar Peter the Great's first residence in the city was a small hut, known now as the Cabin of Peter the Great. As the city developed the Tsar commissioned a Summer Palace to be built for him in 1714 and later a Winter Palace (which has now been converted to a museum that now captures the cultural heritage of the imperial Russia), just a little further down the river. Originally there were no bridges crossing the mighty Neva River and people had to be ferried between banks by boat, one of the reasons why St. Petersburg was given the epithet "the Venice of the North". It has remained that St Petersburg has remain till date the center of Russian economy and her politics. It will be seen that much of the actions of imperial Russia from Peter the Great to his daughter were centered in St Petersburg. St Petersburg can thus be said to be the imperial theme park for the culture of imperial Russia. It remained an important city even when Russia was a member of the Soviet Union. It still maintains that relevance till date. The Soviet Union was meant to be a transnational worker's state free from nationalism, which, according to Leninism, is a ruse used by the bourgeoisie to keep the international working classes from realizing their common exploited position and overthrowing the bourgeois. This removed from St Petersburg her imperial culyural identity. As imperial authority was being questioned and the role of nobility was challenged. The concept of Russia as a separate national entity was therefore not emphasized in the early Soviet Union. Although Russian institutions and cities certainly remained dominant, many non-Russians participated in the new government at all levels. Stalin manuevered his way to be the leader of the USSR and killed or exiled the elites that could have challenged his rule. Stalin forced rapid industrialization of the largely rural country and collectivization of its agriculture. Most economic output was immediately diverted to establishing heavy industry. Civilian industry was modernized and heavy weapon factories were established. The plan worked, in some sense, as the Soviet Union successfully transformed from an agrarian economy to a major industrial powerhouse in an unbelievably short span of time. St Petersburg remained the strongesthold for cultural imperial russia, but control was always exerted exclusively from Moscow. The Soviets extracted heavy war reparations from the areas of Germany under their control, mostly in the form of machinery and industrial equipment. The Soviet Union consolidated its hold on Eastern Europe. The United States helped the western European countries establish democracies, and both countries sought to achieve economic, political, and ideological dominance over the Third World. The ensuing struggle became known as the Cold War. Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, and the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth. The reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and introduced landmark policies of openness and restructuring, attempting to modernize Soviet communism. Opennes meant that the harsh restrictions on free speech that had characterized most of the Soviet Union's existence were removed, and open political discourse and criticism of the government became possible again. Restructuring meant sweeping economic reforms designed to decentralize the planning of the Soviet economy. This initiative provoked strong resentment amongst conservative elements of the government, and an unsuccessful coup that attempted to remove Gorbachev from power instead led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin seized power in Russia and declared the end of exclusive Communist rule. The USSR was officially dissolved in 1991. Since then, Russia has struggled in her efforts to build a democratic political system and a market economy to replace the strict centralized social, political, and economic controls of the Soviet era. St pitersburg again came up to be the tourism and military capital of the post Soviet era, while Moscow remained the administrative capital. The new/alternative paradigm the culture of the past can be for us is to help chart a new course for a new economy and politics for Russia. Imperialism has been done away with, but the pride of Russians in their country is still great. Patroitism is the strongest culture of the russians of today. This can be descibed as the new paradigm that the nationalist and imperialist cultures of the past has been. Reference 1. In Search Of Nationhood; Wilmot, Patrick; 2. Read More