Sergey Polskoy | National Research University Higher School of Economics (original) (raw)

Papers by Sergey Polskoy

Польской С. Читатель и чтение в России «долгого» восемнадцатого века // Slověne. 2023. Vol. 12, No 1. C. 344–362.

[Rev. of: Reading Russia. A History of Reading in Modern Russia. Volume 1. Edited by Damiano Rebe... more [Rev. of: Reading Russia. A History of Reading in Modern Russia. Volume 1. Edited by Damiano Rebecchini and Raffaella Vassena. Milano: Università degli Studi di Milano, 2020]
The first volume of the collective monograph “Reading Russia. The History of Reading in Modern Russia”, is focused on the ‘long’ eighteenth century. It includes a preface by D. Rebecchini and R. Wassena to the entire three-volume edition and eight chapters written by famous researchers of Russian culture, literature and history. In the first chapters, D. Waugh considers the history of reading in the pre-Petrine period, G. Marker problematizes key issues of studying the history of reading in eighteenth-century Russia, K. Ospovat traces the dynamics of reading policy from Peter I to Elizabeth I. R. Bodin discusses the main changes in the reading habits in the second half of the century, A. Zorin demonstrates the «revolutionary» changes among the nobility due to the sentimentalism literature, E. Kislova researches the reading habits of the educated clergy, and B. Grigoryan studies the reader's image development in the Russian magazines of 1760–1830-ies. S. Franklin's chapter discusses the urban graphosphere in three different centuries: from the triumphal arches of Peter the Great, through the commercial signs of the mid-nineteenth century, he arrives at the inscriptions of the Soviet city. Overall, like the entire publication, the reviewed volume is the first major study of the history of reading in Russia, covering a long period and summarizing results of individual studies.

Clementia Augustae: милосердие и "нелепый обет" императрицы // Новое литературное обозрение. 2023. Т. 184. № 6. С. 329-351, 2023

From 1744 to 1764, all capital punishments were suspended in Russia de facto. Contemporaries and ... more From 1744 to 1764, all capital punishments were suspended in Russia de facto. Contemporaries and historians associated this measure with the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna’s vow, made by her on the night of 25 November 1741. However, all known facts contradict this myth, which has proved unusually persistent, as has the refusal to rationalize the empress’s actions in historiography. There is no doubt that all the Empress’s “moves” towards the abolition of the death penalty and mitigation of punishment policy were political and discursive, i.e., it were aimed at achieving specific goals and, most importantly, were comprehended in the categories of politics, law, reli- gious ideas and literature of her epoch, and the key concept around which the interpretation of her actions in the presented article is based is mercy (clementia). The history and interpretation of the concepts of cle- mency, its connection with the monarchical language of the epoch allows us to contextualize the empress’s actions and deprive them of their mystical aura.

Manuscript translation and the formation of a secular political language in Russia (1700s-1760s), 2022

The author in the chapter shows that until the 1760s almost all the translated “political” litera... more The author in the chapter shows that until the 1760s almost all the translated “political” literature in Russia was distributed in manuscripts. Obviously the interest in political writings of one of the commissioners of translations of that type of literature, Prince Dmitrii Mikhailovich Golitsin, explains to some extent the abundance of the copies of handwritten translations in Russia at that time, but the case of Golitsin also clearly highlights the interest for this literature among the Russian aristocracy and the leading place of the manuscript book in its distribution. It is clear that this manuscript form of translations cannot be explained solely by the fear of censorship. There is another reason: the importance of the manuscript tradition at the time and the relatively narrow circle of readers of this literature. The author wonders why it was necessary at all to commission a translation, when many of the aristocrats who did so were capable of reading political treatises in their original language? The reason was probably the need to see hard-to-define concepts expressed in their native language and thus to “appropriate” for themselves the text of the treatise, making it their own and more understandable. In the second part of the article author analyzes the main features of the transfer of concepts and translation “modes” that have been developed in Russia. Within the framework of the period that he discusses in the article (1700-1760s), the author distinguishes three periods in the development of translation practices, which are related, on the one hand, to the gradual development of literary language, and on the other hand, to a change in the approach to the translation of terms, from «foreignization» to «domestication». He also shows that choice of language by the translator (Church-Slavonic, hybrid, business and bureaucratic language) depends directly on the education he received. Another important conclusion is that precisely in the translations, not only in those of political literature of course, a new Russian language had been formed. This language was simple and clear and at the same time abandoned the practice of calquing and transliterating foreign expressions and concepts that had been a striking feature of Russian translations, for example in the Petrine period.

«Examination in accordance with the law of nature…»: : The Legitimisation of Violence and the Emergence of a Rational Political Language in Eighteenth-Century Russia, 2018

Общим местом в историографии стало утверждение о том, что в России XVIII века зарождается рациона... more Общим местом в историографии стало утверждение о том, что в России XVIII века зарождается рациональный и светский политический язык. Очевидно, однако, что религиозная риторика не исчезла и параллельно использовалась в официальном дискурсе власти, но зачем понадобилась также и рационалистическая трактовка монархии в XVIII веке, а вместе с ней новый язык и новый понятийный аппарат? Нуждался ли абсолютизм, если он существовал, в рациональном обосновании? Как формируется это новое дискурсивное поле и на каком интеллектуальном основании? Почему Феофан стремится объяснить «неразумным» политические истины? Было ли причиной тому несовпадение традиционных объяснительных моделей с новой реальностью? Или подданные также пережили интеллектуальную трансформацию сознания в «преображенном царстве»? Кому прежде всего была адресована официальная правительственная речь? Дать ответы на вышеперечисленные вопросы можно, лишь поместив известные тексты в языковой и понятийный контекст эпохи, выявив аргументацию авторов и распознав в нюансах полемики употребляемые ими европейские концепты. Проблематика статьи связана с происхождением и становлением секулярного рационального дискурса в официальном языке российской власти в XVIII веке. В рамках настоящей статьи рассматрвается два вопроса, во-первых, каким образом происходит дискурсивное преодоление кризиса легитимности, порожденного насильственными действиями власти в отношении наследника престола; во-вторых, как решается проблема принадлежности власти и ее преемственности в рамках политического языка эпохи. Кризис 1718 г., вызвав к жизни целый ряд проблем, которые невозможно было решить, опираясь на старые практики легитимации, стал таким образом ключевым для политической мысли XVIII века. Продуктивным ходом представляется сравнение теоретических обоснований, с помощью которых преодолевался этот кризис в 1722 г., и легитимации низложения монарха в 1762 г. Это позволит установить, почему через 40 лет понадобились существенные изменения в «новом» политическом языке власти.

"The duty of the prince-patriot" : Russian manuscript translations and monarchical discourse of the Enlightenment in the third quarter of the XVIII-th century, 2018

The article examines three translations made in the 1750s-1760-s from French into Russian. The fi... more The article examines three translations made in the 1750s-1760-s from French into Russian. The first is François de Fenelon’s Directions pour la conscience d'un roi, which was translated by prince Mikhail Shcherbatov (1758), the second is the anonymous Pensées politiques sur les devoirs d’un roi citoyen, which was the work of an unknown translator, most likely by the order of Roman or Mikhail Vorontsov (between 1754 and 1756), and the last one is known in two copies and was done from the French translation of Idea of a Patriot King by Henry Bolingbroke (first half of the 1760s) - one of them belonged to the brothers Nikita and Pyotr Panin.

Studying the Russian translations of Western political writings allows us to reconstruct the intellectual context in which a new discourse of power emerged in the third quarter of the XVIII-century. These texts reflected the “state of mind” of the Russian ruling elite, who, under the influence of the Enlightenment ideas, demanded «freedom of the Nobility» and «moderate monarchy». Circulation of these translations in handwritten form showed a limited circle of readers for whom these books were intended. All three texts are characterized by an almost messianic expectation of a perfect monarch, who will improve the morals and manners of his subjects and return their liberties by the establishing of a true «uchrezhdenie» (constitution). The Russian educated nobility had a common way of thinking and it was very similar to the political conceptions of the Western European elite, which actively produced in the Age of Enlightenment an updated monarchical discourse, at the centre of which was the idea of the «king - citizen/patriot», who dedicated himself to society’s good. At the same time, the “common good” in this conception always coincided with the basic interests of the ruling elite.

Political Reason and the Language of Change: Reform and Improvement in Early Modern Europe, 2022

The support for reform that characterised nineteenth century “progressives” is reflected in curre... more The support for reform that characterised nineteenth century “progressives” is reflected in current historical accounts of this period. Historians have made free use of the concepts of reform and counter-reform in describing historical development, and Russian historians are no exception: they have represented the history of Russia from Ivan the Terrible to Alexander II as a struggle between supporters and opponents of reforms. But was the modern concept of reform one that the people of Ancien Régime Europe and Russia were familiar with? In this study I will try to consider how changes, improvements and corrections in eighteenth century Russia were designated and described by their contemporaries - the changes and innovations that were in the later nineteenth century retrospectively called “reforms”, and so legitimating those changes and innovations by inventing historical precedents. Almost all of Russian texts from the 1700s to the 1780s shared a conservative concept of "restoring order". The perception that contemporary morals were increasingly corrupt, and that the restoration of ancient justice and moral order, in part through the establishment of new institutions, became the leitmotif of “reformists” in this epoch.

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History

"Dividing their people into different estates…”: Legal fixation of the Russian nobility’s estate ... more "Dividing their people into different estates…”: Legal fixation of the Russian nobility’s estate status in the mid-eighteenth century

The article examines how the Legislative Commission members (1754-1766) went about constructing social categories, taking the example of the projects on the nobility’s rights and privileges. In these projects, noble reformers of the era strived to create a well-ordered state (un État bien policé) ensuring the nobility’s primacy. In the 1750s, Russian enlightened nobles used Montesquieu’s concept of “moderate monarchy” (monarchie tempérée) to disprove assertions that the Russian political system was despotic by nature, and justify legislative authorization of the nobility’s privileged status. In what was a new precedent in Russian history, the Elizabethan Legislative Commission gave detailed descriptions of the nobility’s and merchant’s rights and liberties. This stemmed from the development of the aristocratic elite’s political ideas in the mid-eighteenth century, and demonstrated that the nobility was familiar with European political theories and was deeply aware of its social interests as expressed in westernized terms and concepts.

The Russian ruling élite in the political crisis of 1730 This article studies the Russian ruling... more The Russian ruling élite in the political crisis of 1730

This article studies the Russian ruling elite’s social characteristics and self-identification between the late seventeenth century and the first third of the eighteenth. How did the participants of the 1730 political crisis perceive the structure of society? How did they define their “self-identity”? Analysis of the way in which they viewed their own social group shows that the composition of the gentry did not conform to the official Table of Ranks and reveals a parallel unofficial structure which the aristocracy tried to fix legislatively through bills proposed by verkhovniki (members of the Supreme Privy Council). This informal structure consists of three groups: the aristocracy (famil´nye, i.e., representatives of the old Muscovite elite who had kept key posts in government), the middle nobility (dobroe shliakhetstvo, successors of the Muscovite and provincial nobilities), and the petty nobility (podloe shliakhetstvo, the poor nobility dependent on the autocrat and the patronage of famil´nye). In fact, this informal structure was more real for the people of the first half of the eighteenth century than the formalized system of ranks, which had not yet made its way into mentalities.