Description:
The West has been accused of seeing the East in a hostile and deprecatory light, as the legacy of nineteenth-century European imperialism. In this highly original and controversial book, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye examines Russian thinking about the Orient before the Revolution of 1917. Exploring the writings, poetry, and art of representative individuals including Catherine the Great, Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Borodin, and leading orientologists, Schimmelpenninck argues that the Russian Empire's bi-continental geography, its ambivalent relationship with the rest of Europe, and the complicated nature of its encounter with Asia have all resulted in a variegated and often surprisingly sympathetic understanding of the East among its people.
Review Quotes:
"This insightful and elegant study offers the first full survey of Russia's Asian imagination in the imperial era. With a wonderful touch for texts and personalities, David Schimmelpenninck reveals how Russian views of 'the East' were at once similar and different from what we're used to thinking of as a European Orientalist norm. In fact, as he argues, there was no single unmoving framework for perceiving Asian cultures, neither in Russia nor in the West. Instead, what is truly distinctive about the Russian case - and what Schimmelpenninck helps us to see in a new and full light - is how important Asia became to the Russians' understanding of themselves. Anyone interested in the history of identity and culture in Russia will find much to take from this book."--Willard Sunderland, author of Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe
--Willard Sunderland