A Window to the West: Russian Imperial Theatres

Abstract

The development of the national theatre in Russia is closely linked to the dichotomy between the construction of the imperial identity beginning with the reforms of Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century and the search for the Russian national character that became especially prominent after the defeat of Napoleon in 1812. As Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis suggest in their study of National Identity in Russian Culture, the tension between the definitions of the empire and the nation-state never got resolved in Russia, resulting in a problematic approach to the notion of Russianness or Russian nationalism. This tension lies in the inherent differences between the imperial and national identities, ‘or more precisely, between geo-political and ethno-cultural criteria of self-definition’.¹ It has been argued that the Western European principles of ‘nationalism’ and ‘nationhood’ do not apply to the Russian empire since its ‘geo-political’ and ‘ethno-cultural’ boundaries do not coincide. The construction of a multi-ethnic empire with its ever-expanding territories and political influences necessitated the creation of a ‘Great Russian identity’ — or rather, an imperial identity — almost as an ideological imperative.² This identity, however, was not based upon the existing culture of the old Rus’ with its centre in Moscow (or Muscovy) and its roots in Byzantine Orthodoxy. It was being constructed under Western cultural influences that brought neoclassical forms as well as the ideals of the enlightened monarchy into Imperial Russia.