Year: 2016
Author: Gary M. Hamburg
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300224192, 0300113137, 9780300224191, 9780300113136
English language
Format: PDF
Interactive table of contents: Yes
Number of Pages: 900/912

This book, focusing on the history of religious and political thinking in early modern Russia, demonstrates that Russia’s path toward enlightenment began long before Peter the Great’s opening to the West. Examining a broad range of writings, G. M. Hamburg shows why Russia’s enlightenment constituted a precondition for the explosive emergence of nineteenth-century writers such as Fedor Dostoyevsky and Vladimir Soloviev.
G. M. Hamburg is Otto M. Behr Professor of History at Claremont-McKenna College. His previous books include Politics of Russian Nobility, 1881–1905;Boris Chicherin and Early Russian Liberalism; and (as editor) Liberty, Equality, and the Market: Essays by B. N. Chicherin. He lives in Claremont, CA.
“This patient and persuasive book is the indispensible prehistory to the Russia we think we know, a country whose politics constantly disappoints. Hamburg does not whitewash that politics. But he does remind us that the Kantian values of autonomy, self-mastery, and secular reason are not the only Enlightenment possible; however imperfectly realized, more potent in Russia have always been the ideals of spiritual illumination and applied Christian ethics. This is intellectual history at its most empathetic, full of personal stories but without ever losing its analytic edge.”—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University
(Caryl Emerson)
“This is the first comprehensive, in-depth survey of political thought in Russia from medieval times until the end of the eighteenth century. Hamburg does not subscribe to the usual interpretation of ever-increasing secularization and Europeanization. His account is more refined, and more convincing: Western thought sharpened Russian conceptual categories without completely erasing them. There was an enlightenment, but an indigenous one. This book will not be surpassed for years.”--Manfred Hildermeier, University of Göttingen
(Manfred Hildermeier)
"Closely examining every important Russian thinker over a period of more than three hundred years, including several autocrats, Professor Hamburg has produced a magisterial grand narrative, from which there emerges a fresh interpretation of the Russian Enlightenment that will have enduring value for students of Russian intellectual history."-- Derek Offord, University of Bristol
(Derek Offord)

CONTENTS:
Acknowledgments
ONE. Searching for Enlightenment
PART I. Wisdom and Wickedness, 1500–1689
TWO. God and Politics in Muscovy
THREE. A Question of Legitimacy
FOUR. Visions of the State at Mid-Century
FIVE. Church and Politics in Late Muscovy
PART II. Ways of Virtue, 1689–1762
SIX. Church, State, and Society under Peter
SEVEN. Virtue and Politics after Peter
PART III. Straining toward Light, 1762–1801
EIGHT. Catherine II and Enlightenment
NINE. Nikita Panin and Imperial Power
TEN. Denis Fonvizin and Political Art
ELEVEN. Gavriil Derzhavin: Poetry and True Belief
TWELVE. Ideas on Church and State
THIRTEEN. Law and Enlightenment: Ivan Tret’iakov and Semen Desnitskii
FOURTEEN. Novikov and the Moderate Enlightenment
FIFTEEN. Radishchev and the “Radical” Enlightenment
SIXTEEN. The Enigma of Mikhail Shcherbatov
SEVENTEEN. Karamzin’s Enlightened Conservatism
Conclusion. Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment
Notes
Index

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