Sorry -- I seem to have included the wrong file. Here is the book
review. There is also an excellent article on dueling in the Encyclopedia
Britannica, though restricted to western Europe.
Ritualized Violence Russian Style: The Duel in Russian Culture and
Literature.(Review)
Historian, Summer, 2001, by Peter C. Pozefsky
Ritualized Violence Russian Style: The Duel in Russian Culture and
Literature. By Irina Reyfman. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Pp.
xi, 364. $49.50.)
Dueling did not take hold in Russia in the late
seventeenth century, its heyday in Western Europe, in part because of its
foreign origins and also because the practice required a strong communal
identity within the elite. Noblemen would not fight individuals they did not
recognize as equals in honor. Meanwhile, Russian traditions of court favorites
and Peter the Great's Table of Ranks created rigid hierarchies within the
nobility that obstructed the development of a corporate identity and,
consequently, of a native dueling tradition.
The rise of dueling in
Russia came later and, for Irina Reyfman, parallels the evolution of its elite
into a modern nobility with a strong collective identity and a Western cultural
orientation. Peter the Great unintentionally established the moral foundation
for dueling in Russia. Believing that honor was essential to public service, he
attempted to instill the notion in the nobility. Peter did not foresee that a
sense of honor would eventually lead many nobles to resent an autocracy that
regulated their social relations and often imposed corporal punishment. The duel
was an expression of the nobility's aspiration to act independently.
Nonetheless, the duel as an alternative to both the brawl and the trial as a
means of defending one's honor and resolving personal conflicts found its
proponents only in the late eighteenth century as Catherine II westernized the
nobility and strengthened its sense of communal solidarity. Dueling became
fashionable still later, in the early nineteenth century, among officers
associated with the radical Decembrist movement. They found in dueling a means
for protesting the blows from the powerful that remained a regular feature of a
Russian nobleman's life and a source of considerable shame.
The duel also
played an important symbolic role in Russian culture. Several generations of
writers employed the image of the duel to raise questions about human dignity,
political oppression, and class identity. Reyfman focuses on the playwright,
Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, and the novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, in his works of the 1820s, was the first Russian writer to
make dueling a central theme. His descriptions of duels exerted a profound
influence on writers such as Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Turgenev. The
public looked to these same descriptions as a guide to dueling etiquette. A
Decembrist literary celebrity and military hero, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky was himself
a notorious duelist. While he often idealized the duel, he also highlighted its
shortcomings. The duel could defend personal space and honor gloriously, but it
could also rob participants of their freedom, compelling them to submit to
grisly rituals over a trifle.
Dostoyevsky's protagonists never actually
fight duels. Nonetheless, several enter them only to withdraw, either from
cowardice, ignorance of procedure, or moral courage. While Dostoyevsky deplored
violence, he acknowledged the duel's role in defending human dignity in a
society that seldom respected it.. Reyfman believes that this pervasive
disregard for human dignity accounts for the prominent place of dueling in
Russian culture and its persistence into the twentieth century, when it had
already lost much of its significance in the
West.
Reyfman emphasizes the nineteenth century, but she
pursues her subject through the twentieth century. Her interdisciplinary study
is theoretically informed by cultural anthropology, literary theory, and
historical sociology; yet her prose is clear and jargon-free. Her
interpretations of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Dostoyevsky, and other writers are
complex, graceful, and innovative. While her historical chapters are somewhat
schematic, they are also informative and provocative. She has much to say to
readers interested in dueling, Russian novels, Russian social life, ritual
violence, and the complex relations between literature and
life.
Peter C.
Pozefsky The College of Wooster
COPYRIGHT 2001 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society,
Inc. in association with The Gale Group and LookSmart. COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale
Group