One of you readers commented a couple of posts ago that one of the most helpful works when it comes to trying to understand Russia is Orlando Figes’ “Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia” (1998). Clearly, I cannot argue with this, as I have not yet had the pleasure to read it, but I intend to do so as soon as I can get my hands on it – for some reason or other, English-language books are still rather scarce in most Russian cities (unless you’re looking for easy-read classics printed in Russia for schoolkids). But I have read many good reviews concerning this work, like this one for example, and everyone I know who’s read it speaks warmly of it. Another good work on the history of Russian culture is “Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia” (2002) by W. Bruce Lincoln, which I wish I could recommend to you along with some remarks of my own, but I must once again confess that neither have I read this one. As always, I very much intend to, if I can only get a hold of it, that is. What kind of post is this today, then? Only me talking about things that I have only heard about and only know «заочно» [‘in absentia’, or in this case ‘from other people’], without bringing anything of my own to the table? «Нет, дамы и господа!» [No, ladies and gentlemen!] You know I’d never do that kind of thing, not to you and not to this blog. Besides, I’m always full of ‘opinions’, no matter what the subject is, even more so when it comes to ‘Rossiya’. The third (or first, depending on how you count) most influential work on Russian cultural history, is “The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture” by James H. Billington. Despite being written already back in 1966, long before the ‘tumbling down’ of the USSR, it contains many solid facts and lots of insightful reflections still as fresh today as they were forty years ago. The author of this immense work (which stretches over 597 pages, and then includes almost 200 pages of precise footnotes, ending with an extensive index of all the people, works, places, ideas, and so on and so forth mentioned in it – making it the perfect academic work for anyone who’s always dreamed of letting out their inner Russian scholar and go crazy!), has a very impressive biography, I must say. Check it out on wikipedia – and try count just how many titles this man has earned during his long and fruitful career. There’s even a Russian version of it!

Though some might read the reviews of a book before reading it, I like to do it the other way around – read the book first and then read other people’s criticism on it, as a way to both compare my own thoughts and opinions on what I’ve read afterwards and to not know too much about it in advance. After finishing “The Icon And The Axe” I came across an interesting review under the title of ‘LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS TELLS IT LIKE IT WAS ABOUT RUSSIA!’ by David Roger Allen, written in November 2000. His review might not be very thoughtful, as it is rather superficial and concise, but he does give much credit to its author, especially in the following words: “…he [James H. Billington] worked on it very much”. What about my views, then? What did I think of this massive piece, filled over-the-top with information? First up, dear reader, one should know just what kind of girl I am, and what I think of all these books on Russia and Russian culture, history, politics, literature, that pop up in the shops when you least expect it – let me tell you just one thing, and I think that one thing will clear up everything for you: every time there’s a new book out by Simon Sebag Montefiore, my mother buys it for me (in the Swedish translation, sadly, perhaps she doesn’t trust my knowledge of English, or perhaps she thinks I need to read more in my native tongue) and then I swallow it like ice-cream with cookies within a week. When I read his “The Red Tsar” it was as if I had lived in Soviet Russia and wandered side by side with the first wife of Stalin as she walked toward her suicide. Then it was the book about Catherine The Great and Potemkin – which some say isn’t Montefiore’s best work – and it inspired me so much that I was forced to write a short story based on their relationship. Some people claim that I take everything that has to do with Russia personally. And I suppose they’re right. I cannot remain a serene, uninspired outsider looking in when it comes to this country. It might be one of the reason as to why I’m still here, still in the middle of it all, in the heart of the chaos, swirling in the wind of change, without any intentions to leave (at least not today!), but it might also be one of the reasons why I didn’t really like “The Icon And The Axe”.

The book has many pluses, and is as likable because of one of them, as it is for all of them together. It deserves to be regarded with respect, as well as be placed in a place of honor in any Russophile’s library. Though being called ‘an interpretive history’ (and rightly so) by its author, it far more than just one man’s understanding of a country not his own, and in many ways more foreign to him (as it seems to me) than to most. It is much more. But what it is not, and Billington himself makes this very clear in his preface, is a complete history of Russian culture, nore does it pretend to explain everything, from beginning to end. Many things are not mentioned in it, and this might cause anger among some readers, and some things are only mentioned in passing, which will probably leave many an expert offended. For example, Billington states that Pushkin, despite generally considered by Russians to be «наше всё» [our everything], didn’t really influence Russian thought and didn’t leave such a big legacy after all. But most adults, I should hope, can deal with their ‘darlings’ not always being in the center of attention.

Though that’s easy for me to say – Billington seems to think that my fave, Достоевский [Dostoevsky], is the glue that keeps the history of Russian culture together. Of course, that’s very nice to hear, and even nicer to see him quote Фёдор Михайлович [Fyodor Mikhailovich] beginning with the end of the preface, and ending with the last part: “The Irony of Russian History”, but he was actually also only that which he considered himself to be – a writer.

One of the main pluses of the work is the very detailed description of the schism in the late seventeenth century, the «раскол», which formed the fraction of Old Believers while reforming the Orthodox Church, something that can be hard to understand for many interested in Russian religious history. Generally speaking, the book is amazing from this very perspective – from the religious point of view, as religion was (and still very much is) a huge part of Russian society, something that has influenced both philosophy and art through centuries. There are very good reasons why some Russian professors claim Russian literature to be the ‘fifth gospel’. Billington has done much research on Masonry in Russia, which is one of the things in the book that come almost as a surprise, since most works on Russia, both focusing on history in general and culture in particular, leave this part out. Ever since reading “War And Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy and its captivating chapters of Pierre’s conversion to Masonry, I’ve been curious about this part of religious life in Russian history, but never ever come across any mentioning of it in the many works I’ve read. Opening up something new, explaining something old in a new and exciting way – this is clearly what’s best in Billington’s work.

However, there are also some minuses to it. The biggest minus is due to Billington’s sometimes too scholarly language, to his too frequent use of the adjective ‘disturbed’, making the work difficult to read, especially to someone with another first language than English. The work could profit greatly from removal of at least half of its adjectives – they do not, as I can imagine Billington thought they did, add ‘color’ and ‘life’ to his work. Instead they weigh it down and make it hard to understand exactly what kind of ‘color’ and ‘life’ is intended. It is obvious that Billington wanted to write a book which would capture the reader, which would make the reader ‘feel’ Russia, to sense all of the different movements and ideas and influences going around in society at a given point in time, to get to know the main people in it as if were they living next door to you. Unfortunately, he tries to hard and in the end he fails. The book is thick and the language too tense, he tries to open it up by using poetry, but it helps little. Despite wanting to give the reader a broad panorama, he is better at just telling small fractions, or showing tiny, yet informative, details. Sometimes he forgets all about of his big ambitions, and focuses on just one idea, or one person, and then the book comes alive and the reader gets lost for many pages. For me, this happened mostly when Billington talked about music or literature. Less so when speaking on the subject of philosophy, I don’t know why, it could be all my fault – because I don’t know much about this subject. His method of telling about a period in time by comparing two influential personalities of that period is very effective – especially when he compares the painter Иванов [Ivanov] to the writer Гоголь [Gogol]. His explanation of the ‘Sophia-thought’ of Владимир Соловьёв [Vladimir Solovyov] is very impressive, and was enlightening, at least for me, someone who didn’t know much before at all about what went down during the «Серебреный век» [‘Silver Age’] in Russia at the turn of last century.

Despite all of this, I highly recommend the “The Icon And The Axe”. It might not be perfect, and it might be a little dull at times, but it throws light on many things that are usually forgotten. I think it should be considered as a side-dish, not as the main course, when it comes to getting to know Russian culture.