Steinberg Melancholy and Modernity

Melancholy and Modernity: Emotions and Social Life in Russia between the Revolutions
Author(s): Mark D. Steinberg

Source: Journal of Social History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Summer, 2008), pp. 813-841
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096558
Accessed: 29-04-2015 15:58 UTC
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SECTION I
SADNESS AND SOCIETY

EMOTIONS AND
MELANCHOLY AND MODERNITY:
SOCIAL LIFE IN RUSSIA BETWEEN THE REVOLUTIONS
By Mark D.
"The
University
Steinberg
the time of hell."
'modern,'
of Illinois, Urbana^Champaign
?Walter
Benjamin
In the years of uncertainty and driftfollowing the 1905 revolution inRussia, be

fore
the country
of total war
the maelstrom
entered
and
revolution,
life
public
was thickwith talk of emotions. In particular, the question of the obshchestvennoe

as the "social mood"
or the
it
"public mood"?became,
as at no time before. Talk
obsession
emotional
about
social
self, a public
feeling
to thoughts
concerns
in these years was
linked
of time?to
strongly
troubling
of the current
and the possibilities
about
the nature
for progress.
epoch
Every
it seemed,
shared these worries.
The
of the
one,
literary and civic "thick
journals"
nastroenie?translatable
as well
educated
as mass
tured poetry
of this
"our
Indeed,
circulation
"silver
and magazines,
cul
the highly
newspapers
in Russian
literature
and the crudest
boulevard
age"
fiction, all shared a quite public preoccupation with themeanings and moods of
times."
the diagnosed
among
of the age was
meanings
it had
that
become an unprecedented "epoch of moods" (epokha nastroenii)} Like famil

iardefinitions ofmodernity itself?a frame inwhich these emotions were often
were
fractured
and heteroglot
from ecstatic
moods,
interpreted?these
ranging
to
was
contem
suicidal
this
But
emotional
disorder
overshadowed,
joy
despair.
poraries felt,by a vague body of dark feelings that viewed the present and the
future with
Few
melancholy.
contemporaries,
to be
so precise
these moods
sure, gave
label.
Indeed,
though the Russian word melankholiia had been popular among educated Rus
sians
term
a century
earlier,
itself did not make
it was
now
it any
But
rarely heard.2
less apt. Contemporary
the archaicization
of the
commentators
Russian
on the social mood in the early 1900s seemed to be quoting endlessly fromdefini
tions of "melancholy"
"a tendency
centuries:
that had
to gloom
been
and
articulated
inWestern
a sense
of futility
discontented
a
and
sadness,"
pensive,
"gloomy,
and "self-loathing."3
"world-loathing"
In contrast with
these classic
definitions,
of "fear
Russian
olutionary yearswas a distinctly socialmelancholy.

its unprecedented
reach
across
society
and
in how
Europe
and
several
a mixture
despair,"
temper,"
melancholy
over
a mixture
of the
of
interrev
Itwas social feeling in both
itwas
understood
as an
inter
pretive category.Traditional definitions ofmelancholy have long insisted on the

of this mood:
groundlessness
melancholy
excess
"in
is justified by
of what
dency
Causation
laywithin?originally
as "sadness
without
the circumstances,"
as
cause,"
despon
as about
nothing.4
in the imbalance of physical "humors"; later,
814
summer 2008
journal of social history
in the
inward
self; now
of the
psyche
in neurobiological
illness.
was
This
a mal
ady of individual bodies more than of social ones. Russian melancholy
of the
a mood
reversed
these assumptions.
It was
understood
century
early twentieth
to exist
in the public
of course,
and were
existed,
(private moods
sphere
primarily
interest
than
and
but
much
less
the
"social"
attracted
"public"
recognized,
they
And
mood).
itwas
seen
the modern,
indeed
as social
as a
in its causes,
of the contemporary,
product
condition.
In part, this social melancholy echoed a largerand older history of "modern"

melancholy, defined by feelings of loss, especially of "lost good." and mourning.
InWestern Europe in thewake of the French Revolution, a "melancholy of his
has
tory" arose, as Peter Fritzsche
of the past and of epistemological
termed
by a sense of irreversible
and
the present.
Educated
it,marked
about
certainty
felt like "strangers" and "ex
sitive Europeans like Fran?ois-Ren? Chateaubriand

iles"
in this
"new
time,"
amidst
wandering
loss
sen
ruins." Madame
"shapeless
de Sta?l
felt that a new sense of dread had become "the illness of a whole Continent"
in the nineteenth
a mal-du-si?cle.5
century,
In Russia
too, Romantic
like
poets
Vasily Zhukovsky nurtured a pensive melancholy about a sick and fragileworld

filledwith loss. The spread ofmodern secular science and culture deepened this
sense
of aimless
ruins.
among
wandering
The
"mood"
dominant
of European
high culture in the nineteenth century, the philosopher and historian Robert
Pippin has argued, was shaded by death, loss,mourning, and melancholy, by
the "Oedipal shadings ofmodernity as trauma."7 Sigmund Freud would similarly
a
in melancholy,
which
could
result
of loss and mourning
centrality
a loved person"
but also the "loss of some abstraction
only the "loss of
of one,
such as one's
taken
the place
which
has
country,
liberty, an ideal, and
on Freud's
so on."8 Elaborating
and
brief essay on this theme,
the philosopher
diagnose
from not
psychoanalyst JuliaKristeva has described melancholy

from
of symbolic
values,"
often accompanies
Russia
between
an
upheaval
of "crisis."9
eras
in meanings
was marked
the revolutions
by
arising from the "razing
and
such
as
of living
in
significations,
sense
comparable
a landscape of ruins,but with a significant social difference.The sense of dread

thatwriters likeMadame de Sta?l believed had been feltby "a whole Continent"
had really been the illness of an educated elite and voiced chiefly in private
correspondence,
diaries,
memoirs,
fiction,
and
poetry.
By
the
early
twentieth
century, at least inRussia, this lingering philosophic dread had become urgent
daily news. It broke out of the confines of literature and letters to become a
remarkably public language reproduced by newspaper reporters, journalists, and
other writers foran increasingly broad readership. Translated and reinvented for
public discussion, and rethought against the background ofRussia's own intense
experience with modern loss and uncertainty, the melancholy malady of the
sensitive
intellectual,
as a dangerous
which
tation
of time?and
the question
public
emotions.
reborn
had
popular
not
been
without
its aesthetic
pleasures,
epidemic.
This melancholy was also distinctly less hopeful as an emotional

For many
was
of
Europeans
time was
attached
persistently
in the nineteenth
the
century
interpre
to talk
of
loss of the
past and of certain meaning opened the possibility of alternative subjectivities

and itineraries in the present and into the future.As Fritzsche has written, "the
ruins
of the past were
taken
to be
the
foundations
for an
alternative
present."
MELANCHOLY AND MODERNITY
815
to be liberated
in a perpetual
be "stranded"
from the weight
of
present meant
In the early twentieth
the past, and thus to turn loss into possibility.10
century,
commentators
Russian
read the melancholy
of their times much
less optimisti
not
at
convince
that their readers would
could
themselves
be
least, they
cally;
To
persuaded by optimistic pleas to live boldly in the present and to look to the
future with
and
imagination
was
Theirs
hope.
a melancholy
of modern
time,
will suggest,closer toWalter Benjamin's reading of Paul Klee's painting ?ngelus

Novus: the angel of history thrown forward by the storm of progress, its gaze
turned
staring
in alarm
many
and ruin:
Russians
its eyes
backward,
it seemed
Worse,
that when
the
they also saw catastrophe
in fact approaching
Russian
society was
at
the mounting
debris
and ruin.11
in time,
turned
their gaze forward
loss of the future as well as the past. That
a catastrophic
rupture
makes
this
sen
sibilitynot only a telling sign of troubled times, and of the painful acuity with
which theywere apprehended, but also perhaps an emotional force that itself
helped to undermine the strengthof the old.
-The social life of emotions
are coming
to recognize
of society
the
and expression?of
perception
examining
as a
in time and
situated
yield meaning,
subjectivity
Historians
emotional
of interpreting
importance
as a text that can
emotions
place,
as a form of so
and
cial practice with real causative effect in theworld. Often in dialogue with work
by
social-psychologists,
and
anthropologists,
some
scholars,
literary
historians
have been looking more intently at the role of sentiment and feelings in the
political and social life of communities and individuals. Especially influential
has been the view, developed in psychology and anthropology since the 1960s,
that
ally
with
are not
emotions
over
seethes
a separate,
and
private,
of consciousness
the world
and thought.
language,
an
stories and
images,
culture,
organized
into
by
Emotion,
experience
visceral
but
sphere
that
occasion
are
entwined
inseparably
in this view,
is a social practice
from the culturally
inseparable
situated language and gestures inwhich it is conveyed. The "old and vicious di
chotomy between intellect and emotion" is longer tenable,12 failing along with
such similarly insidious binaries as biology and culture, feeling and reason, self
some social
and society. Although
constructivists
that no emotion
exists
argue
most
and social production,
that the biological
apart from its cultural
recognize
cannot
on emotion
as
be completely
effaced. The
focuses
however,
emphasis,
a
as
as
and
but
and
construction,
also,
conceptual
perception,
interpretation,
it is this side of new
as so
emotion
that deserves
still more
theory
emphasis,
cial and cultural practice. As Lila Abu-Lughod

influential
about
parently
about
social
tive. Emotion
internal
"problems,"
discourse
"a form of social
and Catherine Lutz argue in an
of essays
collection
action
is only ap
"emotion
discourse
by anthropologists,
a discourse
it
is
state." More
"social
about
life,"
deeply,
and especially
is itmerely
about
power. Nor
interpre
can
and constitute
experience
help produce
that creates
effects in the world."13
reality;
it is
Until quite recently only a handful of historians have seriously examined
emotions
in social,
cultural,
and
political
history.14
Lucien
Febvre's
appeal
to
historians in 1941 to work to "reconstitute the emotional lifeof the past" had
relatively
little
immediate
effect.15 An
early
sign of new
attention
to emotions
816
summer 2008
in history was the appeal in 1985 by Peter Steams and Carol Steams for an
historical "emotionology," followed by their own work on histories of particular
emotions in theAmerican past.16Among recent historians,William Reddy has
most systematicallyworked with the newer anthropological and psychological
of the emotions.
theories
face human
that
Concerned
lose
and
agency
radical
can
constructivism
social
sight of the persistent
ef
of the unconscious,
power
of
the protean unpredictability of feeling,Reddy has argued fora view of emotional
as a
act
expression
performative
speech
the world,
that
material
used to engage
that
"translates"
interprets
diverse
but
experience
types of mental
also defines
it,
that reflectsbut also alters the self, that is shaped by a community's developed
"cultures"
emotional
but
also
of emphasis
among
can take from
historians
differences
tion,
these form and content.17

gives
recent
scholars
and theorists
this work
the useful
as
as social practice:
in dialogues
grounded
as
instrument
and
and
action;
performance,
of self and
tion,
influence;
Russians
times
in the
writing
not need
did
to explore
as reflec
society;
as both meaning
encouragement
emotion
fullyordering and disruptively heteroglossic.
Notwithstanding
of affect and emo
of their
about
the meaning
century
were
emotions
in social
life.
embedded
twentieth
early
that
convincing
They were preoccupied with the ubiquitous evidence of feeling in public life
and
these
viewed
as
emotions
signs
to be
read
to diagnose
in order
state
the
of their society, culture, and polity (though explicit talk of the political order
was much
this was
by censorship).
in which
attention
age
was
rampant.18
"emotion
talk"
courses,
public
concerned
whelmingly
intercourse
have
and self were not

all,
ignored. After
Psyche
to the self, in both
dis
literature
and public
was available,
this analytical
And
yet, though
language
call
and anthropologists
it) over
(as some psychologists
restricted
an
between
for too
phenomena."19
them as beside
the opposite
not
the
self and
long tended
For the
inward
society.
to "privilege
same
reason,
emotional
self as a separate
sphere but the
it has recently
been
Historians,
observed,
... emotions
as inward rather than social
historians
have
tended
to study. Russian
writers
the point or too elusive
a time in the history
At
of interpreting
direction.
to ignore
simply
were
in
inclined
emotions
when
biological and individual explanations predominated, it says a great deal that the
Russian commentators whose voices filled the public sphere (whether literatior
journalists or even medical doctors writing for the public) were inclined to look
instead
to the perceptual
mainly
and
the
social.
That
looking
at emotions
re
vealed truths about the psyche or the body seemed less compelling than that
one to see social,
at emotions
allowed
looking
at least, to make
such truth.
about
claims
public,
and
existential
truth?or,
Consequently, my focus here is less on the actual feelings of individuals than

on the double mirror of public discourse about public emotions, the social and
meanings,
philosophical
also
but
emotional
meanings,
that
emotions
evoked,
and the interpretive (including social-critical and political) uses towhich talk
commentators
Russian
put. Whether
is not the question
of their contemporaries
tional worlds
and
of moods"
their times as an extraordinary
"epoch
of emotions
emotions
The
were
to write
and
location
derstanding
them
read the emo

correctly
here. That
they viewed
to read
tried
obsessively
into a story and an interpretation

of these times is.
for un
talk was ambiguous?a
important
point
sources. These
emotions
stories of public
developed
of this emotion
its objects
and

at a particular,
and
particularly
817
time
fraught,
and
the
place:
imperial
St.
capital
Petersburg in the years between the 1905 revolution and the outbreak ofWorld
in the periodical
and examined
I, as reported
press of the capital. This
speci
was
far from absolute.
On
the one hand,
the moodiness
of the
ficity, however,
an autocratic
to
Russian
conditions:
reluctant
age spoke of particular
monarchy
War
continue on the path of democratization
amidst
persistent
development
tensions
social
and rebellion.
growing
and
were
to make
any
enough
of emotion
also concerned
Russia's
ithad largely been forced to follow,
economic
disturbingly
rapid
cial backwardness,
modern
time
of
"modern"
condition,
but modernity
troubles
itself. Even
so
and
These
or
anxious
Russian
thoughtful
the whole
economic
conditions
depressed.
But
addressing
more
not
talk
only
specifically,
the "epoch ofmoods" described in the Petersburg press seemed at times to be a
as an economic
story, an echo of the city's distinctiveness
as a
modern
urban
creation
the
(and hence
deliberately
a century
and as the object
of nearly
of
leading
symbol of Russian
modernity),
and literary writing
about
the city that wove
the symbolic
poetic
together
pol
uniquely
Petersburg
and political
capital,
itics of place with canonical

into a cultural
souls
well
knew
and
Paris,
not
theirs
as the
"Petersburg
modern
in the empire
metropolises
to Russian
particularly
interesting
told. Literate
Russians
being
alone,
commentators
But
Text."20
(Moscow,
for example), and beyond the Russian empire (London,
were
Berlin
stories were
similar
was
that
and Odessa,
Warsaw,
images of bad weather, dark moods, and sensitive
myth known
there were
other
that Western
Europeans
well
about
writers),
anxiety
an
Gleitende,
felt a pervasive
also
which
that modern
knew
unsettling existential moving and slippage, such as Carl Schorske described of

fin-de-si?cle Vienna.21 In this light, the Russian capital often functioned as a
with
metonym
The
specific
which
o? larger questions.
of this "epoch"
of moods
speak
temporality
was
also
mentators liked to insiston the novelty of the public mood

on
a sense
such
of crisis
talk and
a new
not
seen
narrative
before.
But
frame
while
1905
(revolution,
ambiguous.
Com
in thewake of 1905,
gave dramatic
mass
upheavals,
to
stimulus
repressions)
inwhich to position talk ofmoods, similar feelings can be traced back into the
nineteenth century. Peter Chaadaev
(an influential philosopher and critic in
the early
1800s)
their own
nized
or
Fyodor
thoughts
to name
Dostoevsky,
and feelings
in much
have
two, would
recog
only
of the early twentieth-century
epoch ofmoods. What would have startled themwas the social ubiquity of these
as itwere?and,
the sense that this was
newsworthiness,
perhaps,
sign of some approaching
collapse.
cannot
We
of this Russian
than an
ignore the particularities
story; it ismore
eastern
echo ofWestern
fin-de-si?cle
it to Russian
reduce
angst. But we cannot
moods?their
the surest
particularity.Conditions
distinct
"the
inRussia focused people's thoughts and feelings,with
and urgency,
intensity
of modernity."22
conditions
on what
to be
understood
they often explicitly
sensation
of crisis and an approaching
The
end
was stronger than in theWest?justifiably,

itwould seem. But this remained a
local story steeped in a largerhistory of experiencing the unsettling disruptions
of modern
times.
Contemporary
commentators
looked
explicitly
to the social
landscape
of emo
tions to interpretRussian and modern life.They claimed to find themeaning of

these
times not
in people's
superficial
"consciousness"
(a favored
term on
the po
818
summer 2008
litical Left) or "worldview" (mirovozzrenie),but in their "moods," their "subjec

tive and instinctive feelings," their "psychological experiences," the "subjective
emotional" side of everyday life, their "world-feeling" (mirooshchushchenie)P
Emotion
was
because
itwas
seen
and
journalists
as an
among
other
not
of contemporary
least
analysis
of the contemporary
age. Literature,
no
truth in
argued,
longer
sought
essential
category
the defining
features
commentators
public
the visible and narrative world but in "emotional feeling" (chuvtsvovanie), "pas
sions,
"the
sensations,
world
The
and moods."24
of feelings,
love,
and
arts were
visual
toward
dreams,"
turning
"intuitive
toward
decisively
"in
perception,"
stinct," and the new "psychologism [psikhologizm]"said to characterize all "mod
ern
creativity."25
the actress Vera
Even
public
popular
Kommissarzhevskaia
such
entertainments,
and
the
as the stage work

Vial'tseva?
of
of Anastasia
singing
whose deaths in 1910 and 1913 evoked an outpouring of emotion, particularly

feelings of loss, and talk about all this emotion?reflected the reigning emo
tionality
of the day. Kommissarzhevskaia

"new moods"
of "modern
and
truth,"
the "subjectivism,"
expressed
sang with
life,"26 while Vial'tseva
"inner
such
"au
thenticity" (iskrennost') of feeling that even "the cold northerner" was moved
to tears.27The upheaval of religion and spirituality inRussia was also viewed
as
less a phenomenon
stincts,"
on
built
or belief
dogma
aspirations,
"aesthetic-psychological"
and more
a movement
"unmediated
feeling,"
of "in
and
nas
troennost'(state ofmind and feeling). Indeed, emotion itselfhad become a prime

tenet of revived and new belief.28
Urban public lifewas central to this story.Following years of economic and
urban development, the civic mobilization of the 1905 revolution, with its re
sulting
legal and social
and greater allowances
reforms,
for civic
including
organizations
of the reins of censorship

loosening
of opin
and the public
expression
ion, profoundly stimulated the Russian public sphere (and concerns about the
social and emotional state of civic life).29As such, the range of voices speaking
publicly about emotion was strikinglybroad: not only the familiar cohorts of
and
artists, philosophers,
literati, but also a small army of writers, many
poets,
writers
These
for
and magazines.
of them nearly
(both
newspapers
anonymous,
or
in other fields,
such as education
and professionals
journalists
professional
medicine, who wrote periodically for the public) were conscious of being at
the center of a bourgeoning network of public knowledge and communication.
They
wrote
for a wide
range
of publications
in the
capital,
from
commercial,
mass-circulation, boulevard newspapers like The Petersburg Sheet (Peterburgskii

listok,published since 1864) or thenew penny tabloid The KopeckNews (Gazeta
kopeika, founded in 1908), which tried to appeal toworkers and other common
readers
by
speaking
their
language
and
illustrated
magazines
voicing
their
interests
and
concerns,
to more upscale dailies like the ideologically conservative New Times (Novoe
vremia) or the liberal Speech (Rech\ associated with theConstitutional Demo
cratic
Party),
from popular
of "contemporary
life" or humor
likeThe Field (Niva) or Springtime (Vesna), to popular journals with enlighten

ingmissions like The New Magazine for Everyone (Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh) or
Life forEveryone (Zhizn dlia vsekh), to periodicals with a religiousmessage like
the St. PetersburgTheological Academy's Church Herald (Tserkovnyivestnik), to
intellectual "thick journals" like the political and progressive The Contemporary
(Sovremennik) or the apolitically artisticApollo (Apollon).
819
Though quite distinct from one another in cultural style and social reader
ship, all these publications were filledwith talk of nastroenie, ofmood, feeling,
emotion.
Writers
to agree
that
across
and philosophical
seemed
spectrum
political,
of the age was pensive,
disen
anxious,
emotionality
At
and uncertain.
the heart of this reading
of the
chanted,
tragic, debilitating,
own moods?lies
a reflection
a percep
of
mood?in
of
their
course,
part,
public
tion of modern
time as bringing more
into an uncertain
loss than gain, as moving
at all. This
ifmoving
future,
the social,
the prevailing
melancholy
was
sensibility
never
abstracted
from
the social: in itspublic volubility, in the social variety of itsvoice, in its iden
of causes.
tification
This
was
not
classic
without
"sadness
a social
but
cause,"
arising less from a disordered mind than from a disordered world,
melancholy
less from private
loss and
sorrow
than
from
shared
and
experience,
sufferedprivately than expressed aloud in public.30
to be
less
-Toska
In pondering
state
the emotional
of the
and
times,
seeking
to
vocabulary
speak of it,Russian writers continually talked of tosk?.Like theWestern notion

of melancholy,
this has
long been
like melancholy,
culture?hence,
an elusive
an
and
especially
ambiguous
useful one.
in Russian
category
Vladimir
Nabokov,
who spent his childhood and youth in St. Petersburg in the years before the
revolution (he was born in 1899), in commenting on Alexander Pushkin's re
peated use of the term in the early nineteenth century,defined toskacomplexly
("no single word in English renders all the shades of toska,"he noted). "At its
deepest
and most
painful,"
"it is a sensation
he wrote,
often without any specific cause. At
of great
spiritual
anguish,
lessmorbid levels, it is a dull ache of the
a
to long for, a sick pining,
a vague
men
restlessness,
longing with nothing
... a
or
tal throes, yearning
dissatisfaction_
feeling of physical
metaphysical
cases
or
itmay be the desire
In particular
for somebody
specific, nos
something
At
into ennui,
lovesickness.
the lowest
level it grades
s/cu/ca."31
boredom,
talgia,
soul,
this was
was characteristic
of nineteenth
largely an inward psychic malaise
as
was
it
of
the
classic
of melancholy.32
usages,
century
meanings
By the early
1900s this would
toska would
social causation
and a public
acquire
change:
place.
That
Observers of the public mood in the years after 1905 were struckby the ubiq
uity of toska?3The writer and philosopher Dmitry Merezhkovsky, walking the
streets of St. Petersburg after returning from abroad in 1908?he had left at
the end of 1905?noted
the "terrible toskaon people's faces.34He echoed what
were
The
Marxist
many
saying.
philosopher Georgy Plekhanov, forexample, in
1910,
put
melancholy
the
increasingly
familiar
[toskuiushchie]people
ward
toska."35 Contemporary
to
added,
encourage?toska.
written
almost
everything"
observation
literature
"Pain,"
today,
tersely:
are now
"There
many
in Russia, and stillmore are being led to

was
said
to echo?and,
"hopelessness,"
one critic wrote.36
"cold
The
many
and
decay
same was
accusingly
wafts from
said
about
the boulevard fiction so despised by high-minded intellectuals. The best-selling

work ofMikhail Artsybashev, forexample, was said to be marked by "something
nightmarish, painful, full of gloom and despair," and with "the color black," in
deed with a vision of the world as a "black room, inwhich someone languishes
and
cries."37
Newspapers
also
conveyed
this mood,
and
newspaper
columnists
820
had
summer 2008

to defend
themselves
accusations
against
that
they were
the
demoralizing
public with theirdaily reporting of life'sdark side: "The mirror isnot to blame,"
arguedOl'ga Gridina, an influential columnist with themass-circulation tabloid
Gazeta-kopeika, but merely reflects "life such as it is,"which is full of "horror,
and
cold,
egoism."38
A particularly troubling sign of this contemporary mood of black melancholy

was the "epidemic" of suicides that broke out in the years between 1906 and
the war.39 Suicide was defined not merely as a personal tragedy or a pathology
afflictingmany individuals, but as a sign of the age: as "one of themost cryingde
formities [vopiiushchikh
urodlivostei]"of a "fractured" (raz 'edinennyi),"deformed"
(urodlivyi), and "psychically abnormal age."40Widespread public toskawas of
ten cited
understood
as encouraging
to be a step
suicide
that most
the
(though
melancholies
act
of taking one's
life was
also
too debilitated
to take).
suicide were disproportionately
were
the fact that those who

committed
Interpreting
writers argued
that this was because
the young
young,
is "the barome
generation
terof the public mood," which is "depressed" (ugnetennyi)and filledwith feelings
o? "toska
But
and
ache."
the reasoning
Of
was
course,
the same:
not
took their
only the young
all generations
and all classes
in these
lives
breathed
years.
the same
fatal emotional atmosphere, filled with toska and sorrow (unynie), "shrouded
in a dark veil ofmelancholia
[melankholii]" "exhausted, worn out from think
In their final notes,
suicides
themselves
end."41
ing, at a dead
one
in
in a note
the
student
did
press, of
repeatedly
quoted
toska"*2
often
"toska,
as
spoke,
limitless
-Thoughts of time
a troubled
sense of time.
a social
often expressed
melancholy
phenomenon,
for the unreach
and hopes
for lost values
or, at least, a yearning
mourning
a disillusionment
underscores
with
the unnamable,
able and even
melancholy
notion
in a culture
of
influenced
the promise,
by the enlightenment
presumed
turn of the old year into the
is forward. The
annual
that time's passage
progress,
As
As
new naturally evoked thoughts and talk of time, of itspassage but also itsdirec
tion and purpose. The hope that the new would bring the better was explicit in
the
traditional
"For a new year and new happiness"

(S novym
to a close
In
this
schast'em).
spirit, as each old year was drawing
writers
their
and columnists
offered
the start of a new one, editorial
new
year's
wish
s novym
godom,
or just after
own
about
the "contemporary
thoughts
o? the new. Very often they expressed
that the new and the better
trapped,
new
and
described
year's commentators
itwas
crushed.
"Time,"
said, "has
"at the threshold"

moment"
(naporoge)
sense that time was
a troubling
somehow
to appear.
In quite
refused
terms,
startling
as broken
of "new happiness"
the promises
shattered
the foundations"
for hope,
such
that therewas no "exit from the dead end intowhich the deformed conditions
of our
New
life have
contemporary
and
year's editorialists
led us."43
columnists
regularly
tried
to appeal
to readers
to
be more hopeful and optimistic, to resist themelancholy of the age.44 But most
also
that
recognized
"depressed"
and
journal
and
they
were
"despondent"
writers
admitted
was too
into the gale. The
"social mood"
shouting
to
to mere
Some
newspaper
respond
appeals.45
to sharing
In 1908,
the journalist
these moods.
821
and author Mikhail Engel'gardt, writing in the new year's issue of the weekly
Free thoughts(Svobodnyemysli), opened an essay characteristically titled "No
Exit" with an epigraph from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, "Our eyes failed,
looking in vain forhelp."46What followed was his own jeremiad inwhich he
saw only a dark future: "Before us lies a long, black, stinking corridor, the end
of which cannot be seen."47 Similar was the new year's day essay in 1913 by
one of the mostly widely read columnists of the tabloid The Kopeck Gazette,
"The Wanderer"
under
the pseudonym
who wrote
(Skitalets).
not only
for "new happiness,"
he observed,
previous
produced
year's wishes
no "new"
no
as all, nothing
"a
bitter
aftertaste
but
besides
happiness
happiness
over
i razocharovanie).
the past year, he
and disillusionment"
(gorechi
Looking
O.
Blotermants,
The
concluded
away
to be
that
is dismal,
the year's
results
reality
for happiness,
than offer new wishes
In fact, few were
silent. Russian
melancholy
"our
are nil,
from us." Rather

silent."48
and
flew
hope
he
suggested,
in these years
"better
tended
to be garrulous.
-Disenchantment
Notions
of disillusionment,
describe
vanie*9?helped
laws?political
of
revolution
of
this
disaffection?of
at the possible
razocharo
of contem
causes,
closing
the troublesome
parliament
and
rewriting
the electoral
acts many viewed as marking the decisive end of the brief era
and
reform?a
term,"
"special
essay
newspaper
razocharovanie,
Disenchantment
depression."
and hint
In the late summer of 1907, the summer that began with
porarymelancholy.
the government
and
disenchantment,
the texture,
could
noticed
for talking
be understood
as
recent
the
about
the
political
appearance
"social
spreading
disillusionment
and disaffection, as the loss of the political enthusiasms and ideals that inspired
so many in 1905. But the "prevailing disenchantment" of the age51 was not
to mourning
In
confined
for recently
shattered
dreams
and
political
ideologies.
as
in
observers
described
"lost
terms, diverse
quite
sweeping
people
wandering
the darkness
without
"all
the
senselessness
and
any ideals,"52 understanding
pur
to stand on, no clear perspectives,
of life,"53 feeling "no solid ground
poselessness
no defined
sense
hopes
of loss and
and
loss of faith?or
as an
zocharovanie
the future.
has
and
writers,
a strong
disenchantment
denoted
of bearings,
loss of meanings,
loss of ideals,
was desired:
ra
failure ever to have
found what
In this sense,
lost?loss
the
perhaps
"emotional"
In a word?and
alone?"humanity
"the emptiness
Religious
dreams."54
of being
failure
note
the
lost hope,"
pointlessness
concerned
to find any
reluctance
leaving
of life."56
with
the
"ideal"
to limit
in the human
spiritual
state
in life,55 to believe
in
to Russia
this despair
soul only
of
society,
a sense
were
espe
of
cially sensitive to the spreading "disillusionment of the heart" (razocharovanie

serdtsa).51The loss of religious faithwas sometimes viewed, even by non-Church
writers, as a major component of this existential despair. People seek God but
they cannot findHim, argued the essayist "Ashkinazi" inThe New Magazine for
Everyone (Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh).58 But even many religious writers felt this
loss of faith to be more profound thanmere theological disillusionment. A deep
existential skepticism seemed to have infected the public mind. An editorial in
the theological academy's journal in 1913 described the "mood" of the present
822
summer 2008
Journalof social history

as the most
"epoch"
in the history
"skeptical"
as an
of humanity,
essential
part
of the "disorder of contemporary life."No less important, unlike the skepticism

(skepsis) o? old, which was largely theoretical and speculative, contemporary
skepticism entailed a "deep lack of faith in anybody or anything, a complete dis
with
enchantment
This
around
one,
everything
one
the "ruling"
"for people
was
mood
in what
and
hopelessness
of our epoch."
For
will
"modern
be."
man,"
thiswas the chiefway of emotionally perceiving theworld (mirooshchushchenie).

In consequence,
the "fateful mark"
lessness" was now everywhere.59
of "skepticism,
and
disenchantment,
hope
Secular liberals offeredmuch the same diagnoses. Nicholas Rubakin, for ex

ample, a well-known specialist on popular reading, reflected in 1912 on the
letters he had
many
received
in response
to his
recent
articles
on
self-education.
especially struckhim were thewidespread feelings that lifehad lostmean
What
and
ing, sense,
a result,
purpose.
As
in which
Rubakin
people
no
longer
truly
as his
live but,
cor
respondents often said of themselves, watch as "life passes by" (zhizn prokhodit),
an
cial
expression
culture
found
"inward
horror."60
Even
mass
commer
the atmosphere
A
however
of disenchantment.
reflected,
crudely,
in a cinema
from a "novel
in
of moods,"
paper,
fragment
published
presented,
a
times:
clich?d
hero
of
the
the
characteristic
"tormented
toska
form,
suitably
by
of solitude, by bitter feelings of disenchantment, by the consciousness that all is

and
vanity
of no
crisis,
-Tragizm,
use,
by the pettiness
and
catastrophe
of everything
around
him."61
This disenchanted and skeptical view of time tended toward the tragic and
even
An
catastrophic.
essay
on
the mood
among
Petersburg
intellectuals
at the
beginning of 1909 spoke of theirconstant talk of "the tragic" (tragizm).62But this

mood was not limited to intellectuals. An article in the left-wing journal Sovre
mennik in January 1912 described "a deep sense of tragizmin the air."63An edito
rial in the journal of the theological academy likewise argued that the "modern
cultural
and
view
world
bewilderment"
was an essentially
one
of the majority"
"tragic"
a
i
mood
marked
what
rasteriannost'),
(raspad
by
of "collapse
Dostoevsky
had called unadryv" (tormented, damaged, hysterical feelings).64 This "tragic

mark of the times"was reflected in literatureand the arts.65But itwas also found
in everyday
example,
life. In an article
Ol'ga
metropolitan
theater
could
on poverty
in St. Petersburg,
for
and homelessness
that ordinary
the columnist
for Gazeta-kopeika,
argued
of tragizm than any tragic actors or
life offered a greater expression
Artistic
"is only a pale
she
shadow,
convey.
argued,
only
tragedy,
Gridina,
child's play before thatwhich lifecreates."66

A redemptive sense of the tragic can be seen in some of this talk about mod
ern
view that suffering is inescapable

and inevitable
but also
classic
tragizm?the
tran
toward
elevates
the human
the soul, and perhaps
points
spirit and deepens
as the
Rozanov
Yet for many,
and
scendence.
put
Vasily
journalist
philosopher
"hell of anxiety,
and
could be found, only a permanent
torment,
it, no salvation
or aesthetic
in this use, became
less a philosophical
sys
Tragizm,
perplexity."67
a way of perceiving
tem than a mood,
crisis
all around,
and
the
specifically
deep
one
it became
in motion
toward
cathar
less a thing
carrying
through
anguish
stasis.
of life in infernal
and redemption,
than a feeling
sis, sublime
pleasure,

This
sense
tragic
into notions
shaded
easily
823
of "crisis."
"crisis
of the
spirit"
(krizisdushi) was described as especially strong among the intelligentsia who ei
ther
in "boredom
languished
and
or
confusion"
art,
everything?science,
social
the crisis
But
internal
"We
life, religion.70
in "decadence,
of the cultural
lost themselves
and pornography."68
pessimism,
of many
faces of an "intense
anarcho-mysticism,
elite was only one
live
that
crisis"69
in an
afflicted
of crises,"
epoch
an essayistwrote in the "progressive" journal Sovremennik in 1912, "of the visi

ble and complete collapse of principles, systems,and programs," of a "huge gulf
between
was
exists
what
an age,
and what
a conservative
not
so
long ago we
commentator
agreed,
so
fervently believed."71
marked
by "dissatisfaction
This
and
discontent" with everything from the past, all ofwhich seemed to have "passed
into decrepitude and worthlessness," and by the failure to find anything satisfy
ing in the new.72
was part of this
The
of apocalypse
of crisis. Petersburg
approach
vocabulary
a
in 1909 commented
article
in this case,
intellectuals,
newspaper
(mockingly,
and
impatience
with
the ubiquitous
about
contemporary
was
melancholy
also
of the discourse
part
about it),never stopped talking about "Apocalypse and the end of theworld."73
Essays
literature
similarly
noted
that many
leading
writers,
such asMerezhkovsky, Fyodor Sologub, and Leonid Andreev, along with leading
modernist
critic
painters,
regularly offered "apocalyptic"
described
this mood,
writers
contemporary
moods
and
and
visions.74
artists were
"crying
As
one
out
'We
"
are on the eve of a great shock.' Although public life seemed outwardly calm,
compared notably to 1905, the creative intelligentsia seemed to feel that this
was
the
"calm
before
the
storm."7
Or
worse.
in an
Merezhkovsky,
in the
essay
liberal newspaper Speech at the end of 1908, reported that he felt "the famous
'feeling of the end'" as he walked through the streets of the capital and read
the daily
For religious
of course,
whom
believers,
among
papers.76
apocalyptic
were
in these years,77 catastrophic
and growing
time
expectations
widespread
was
time. Deeper
and deeper
crises would
in a new heaven
culminate
redemptive
and
a new
earth. Many
shared
this
sense
of deepening
crisis,
though
found itdifficult to have faith that itwas leading to a new world.
they often
-Uncertainty
was also
The
of melancholy
darkness
The
absence
of "clar
epistemological.
trau
with
alarm.79
ity" (iasnostJ, iarkost') was repeatedly
observed,
always
Nearly
was
seen at the heart of the
matic
In ev
"uncertainty"
"ruling mood
today."80
ery area ofmodern "mental" life "nothing [was] vividly clear or defined."81 "All
objective marks of truth" vanished, leaving only the "hopeless 'apotheosis of
"82
groundlessness.'
Even
everyday
life, as portrayed
in the daily
papers,
seemed
"wild, frightening,and incomprehensible."83 All that is solidmelts into air, they
might
have
said,
but with
far more
emotional
resonance,
pessimism,
and
panic
thanMarx ever intended in this classic trope defining capitalist modernity.84

Not surprisingly,in themany letters thatNikolai Rubakin received from read
ers, the question "what am I living for?"and the answer "forwhat, I don't under
stand
...
I can
Metaphorically,
find no
was heard
purpose"
as we have
seen, people
and again.85
again
to be
felt themselves
"wandering
in
the darkness,"86 treading on unsolid ground,87 and finding that the "founda
824
summer 2008
tions"
had
so "shattered"
been
by
as
"time"
to have
left only
"indeterminacy"
(neopredelennost').8SThe words just quoted came from religious writers, but the
secular Left shared these views. In an essay in the journal The Contemporary
(Sovremennik) in 1912, the liberalMarxist Ekaterina Kuskova found truth in
o? a character
the cri de coeur
in a story published
the previous
year
in the same
journal byMaxim Gorky: "Everything stands on sand, everything floats in the

in Russia
air,
is no
there
no
foundation,
spiritual
on which
ground
one
might
build temples and palaces of reason, fortressesof faith and hope?everything
is
same views
it is barren."89
The
there is only sand?and
crumbly,
a columnist
were expressed
wrote
in the daily papers. All
about contem
around,
in 1908,
"more
and more
there was
porary culture
[razlozhenie]."
disintegration
and
unstable
was
is frightened"
and feel
"unstable."90
everyone
Everyone
"Suddenly
feeling
in 1910,
beneath
their feet, a newspaper
essayist wrote
ing the ground
unsteady
or flood."91
"as in a time of natural
disaster
such as plague,
earthquake,
so elusive
in these times,
If one turned to literature
for the truths that seemed
as Russians
crit
be disappointed.
often did, one would
literature,
Contemporary
was
ics warned,
chaos"
and
full of the
or confusion,"92
the same "shifting
as contemporary
of values"94
life.
same
the
"muddle,"93
"emptiness
same
"anarchy
The fiction and plays of Leonid Andreev, who was among themost widely read
and
influential
tain Zeitgeist.
writers
The
of the era,
well-known
seemed
socialist
literary
of this uncer
characteristic
especially
critic V
L. L'vov-Rogachevsky
described Andreev's work, with dismay and even disgust, as filledwith "vacilla
tion
and
it seemed
doubt, with
uncertainty,
spiritual
to many
observers
of the culture
in a "multiple
tor iness" was
-Laughter
chaos
of trends
the essential
in a time
confusion,
of the era
and
that
as to reach
so divergent
of modern
culture."96
chaos."95
Generally,
the necessity
of living
of contradic
the point
"tragedy
of plague
No one was much surprisedwhen the silent film comic Max Linder, dubbed
the "king of laughter,"

told a Russian
in 1913,
that, unlike Western
Petersburg
sian capital was a "city without
fun" (neveselyi
in Russia
St.
reporter, after visiting

the Rus
metropolises,
without
"any real, sincere,
newspaper
European
gorod),
happy [zhizneradostnaia] laughter."97Linder was likely only repeating what ten

dentious locals had told him. The well-known poet Alexander Blok recorded in
his
diary
a melancholy
conversation
about
the fact
that
"Russians
don't
know
how tohave fun" (vRossii ne umeiut veselit'sia).98More grimly, in 1910, the news
paper
columnist
Ol'ga
Gridina,
commenting
on
the recent
death
of Mark
Twain,
observed that, as anAmerican, he had faced thehardships ofhis lifewith humor.

Had Twain been a Russian, she argued, he would have hanged or shot himself.99
Russians did laugh, of course (including about theirown melancholy). News
papers
and magazines
regularly
included
humor,
and
some were
almost
entirely
devoted to it. Press stories of city life, especially nightlife, were filled with ac
counts
of restaurants,
(from wrestling
bouts
rinks, cinemas,
skating
one could
cales where
miniature
spectator
sports
theaters,
gardens,"
"pleasure
to spectacular
air shows),
roller
sports clubs,
lo
and other
balls and parties,
caf?-chantants,
at the circus
cabarets,
find what,
in the capital,
was
called
"fun-loving
Peters
825
burg" (VeseliashchiisiaPeterburg).100The motto of a masquerade ball at theMalyi

in January
theater
Fun
and
war
time, with
1914?a
Russia's final days?was
that many
looming,
would
as old
view
typical: "Down with Boredom and Spleen! Long Live
Laughter."101
in fact, pervasive
was,
in city
Laughter
life and
its share
attracted
of interpre
tive attention. A journalist in 1912 observed that "suddenly all Russia

is ... shakingwith gay,uncontrollable laughter [khokhot]"such that one "might
think thatwe have finally reached the kingdom of bright joy and tranquil well
this comment
As
being."102
however,
suggests,
many
felt that
this
was
laughter
not as light-hearted as it seemed. Freud, in his 1915 essay on melancholia,

warned
against
thinking
that
but
view
states
"manic"
of "joy
and
exultation"
were
as dif
ferentas they appeared from "the depression and inhibition ofmelancholia."
was
a common
such
made
delight
similar
false
a person
in a manic
action
is so
because
he
"that
in movement
and
observations,
though
often more
darkly. One
It
state
of this kind finds

"103
Russians
'cheerful.'
essayist,
for example,
writing in 1912 in themagazine Life forEveryone, warned that themanic laugh

terof the day should not be confused with real joy and happiness. The ubiquitous
was only a superficial
he warned,
(vidimost')
guffawing,"
"appearance"
a dark abyss of "suffering"
In modern
and "sadness."
Russia
masking
is transformed
into a smile and a bitter
into an outburst
smile
"suffering flows
"modern
o? gaiety
of trembling, terrible,hysterical laughter." Indeed, he concluded, "laughter and

are
sadness
the two
leitmotifs
of the modern
mood."
But,
sadly,
there was
ing redemptive in this laughter,forno truehumor produced thismanic

Instead,
actionary,"
this writer
concluded,
without
direction
laughter
or
hope.104
in these
The
years was
mood
noth
laughter.
and "re
"pessimistic"
of "fun-loving
Petersburg"
struckmany observers as another sad example of what Pushkin had famously

called "feast in the time of plague" (pir vo vremia chumy).105Laughter and fun,
much like religion and politics (which were also seeing new vitality), looked
its presence.
but did not deny
away from the darkness,
In this spirit, ironic laughter
itwas
seemed
the most
fitting. And
at least among
In an essay entitled
the educated.
which
"Irony,"
on
the rise,
appeared
in
the liberal newspaper Speech in 1908, Blok described a "terrible illness" among
"the most
alive
sensitive
and
children
or our
age."
Its symptoms
were
"fits of
exhausting laughter,which begin with devilishly mocking and provocateurial

smiles and end with riotous behavior and blasphemy." One might fight against
such a mood but for being infectedwith it oneself: "I too am locked up in a
fortress,in a stuffyroom,where the incredibly repulsive and incrediblybeautiful
prostitute Irony brazenly undresses herself in front of me."106 The writer and
literarycritic Kornei Chukovsky, also writing in Speech, went further,claiming
to see inboth recent literatureand in everyday lifenothing but an endless "ironic
?107 '
grimace.
Irony
arose
laughter
made
from
the
same
sources
as disenchantment
and melancholy.
What
has been said ofWestern Europe could be said of Russia: "irony ... seemed to
be the fundamental characteristic ofmodern life,an aspect of the breakdown
of a fixed cosmos and a language linked to it."108But irony, like laughter and
fun, also lightened the weight of melancholy and disenchantment. This was
poignant
not
simply
because
it occurred
during
"a time of plague"
826
summer 2008
Journalof social history

itwas
but because
part of that plague.
as one Russian
Or,
critic
cultural
it in
put
1912, itwas good to "make themelancholy city-dweller laugh" without having

to deny the truthof thatmelancholy.109
-Explaining melancholy
What is striking about Russian melancholy in the decade before the war is
not only that depression had become intensely public and even popular, but
also that itwas so insistentlydisplaced from its conventional moorings in self
and psyche. In the flood of talk about loss, doubt, despair, and disenchantment,
rarelywas this diagnosed as a malady of the self and will, as arising from the
illnesses of individual
private
instead of a social
ably wrote
was
mood
a consequence
to be
thought
invari
and bodies.
Commentators
almost
psyches
Russia's
social causes. Urban
illness with
depressed
of, and
a commentary
the depress
on,
ing condition ofRussian life.Modern Russia, inRubakin's metaphor (thinking

of the evidence of the letters readers sent him) had become a "gigantic factory
was
But what
of senselessness."110
the
specific
machinery
loss of
this
producing
bearings and meaningful direction?

The upheavals of 1905 and their repressive aftermathwere often blamed for
the dark
producing
contemporary
mood.
Of
course,
was
melancholy
not
discov
ered inRussia only in the wake of 1905. Russian literature, and especially the
literatureof St. Petersburg, had long been dwelling on feelings of toska, tragizm,
confusion,
uncertainty,
and
chaos,
death,
to note
these
were
not
time, the urban press had begun
on
and melancholy
meaninglessness,
depression,
commentators
from empha
did not prevent
this history
of ennui,
the marks
urban
And
catastrophe.111
only literary images.Already by Dostoevsky's

But
dwellers.112
sizing the emotional novelty of the era after 1905. Perhaps they had forgotten
this past.
a message
Many writers attributed themelancholy
ideals
and
enthusiasms
in the
"coup"
liament,
along
summer
with
tionaryRussian
"liberation
former
in the wake
of
of
1907
against
social
the growing
society.Compared
No
less, they had
pervasive.
to the argument.
essential
no more
of "the age" to the loss of political
1905,
new
after
especially
political
breakdown
liberties
and
the government's
the new par
and
in postrevolu
disorder
to the public mood at the highpoint of the

writers
in 1904-1905,
movement"
enthusiasm,
more
the problem
had become
was
in which
difference
Certainly,
to convey
rosy hopes,
no
now
certainty
tended
to see
in one's
of that
"none
own
strength."113
This storyof faith turning to dismay after 1905 quickly became an established
trope for explaining the dark mood of the times. To be sure, formost people,
this "faith" had itselfbeen only a fragile construct born not long before the up
heavals of that year of heroic political and social protest (though a much older,
and much smaller, radical movement had long tried tonurture faith in the possi
bility of dramatic positive change inRussia, and continued to do so after 1905).
But
its loss?a
critical
component
of modern
the anxieties
melancholy?made
of the prerevolutionary years pale before the black mood after 1905.
These
arguments
writing
about
society
today
the
were
given
explicit
surprisingly
after the French
As
revolution.
the political
revolution
restrictions
and
at
the
on
"end
of every revolution," a columnist in Peterburgskii listokargued in 1908, Russian

was
experiencing
"widespread
demoralization,"
"cynicism,"
and

a mood
827
Russians
Educated
approaching
"apathy."114
a certain
to know how
to live and act
inability
ness,
now
a certain
"feel
in these new
empti
conditions."115
Workers and young people were similarly said to feel the terriblecollapse of their
once
"passionate
to appear
before
faith"
that
them,
that
some
was about
(velikii neob"iatnyi)
"great vastness"
their lives on the alter of happi
they were
"laying
ness descending to earth."116 Following the intoxication of 1905, thiswas the

"epoch of the hangover" (pokhmeVe).nl Of course, conservative writers judged
thishangover to be a useful sobering up.Where liberals and socialists viewed the
aftermath
as a time of a tragic loss of ideals, conservatives

saw the "dis
loss of "revolutionary
illusions."118
years as the healthy
to be
found
these conjunctural
commentators,
however,
explanations
of 1905
enchantment"
Many
too narrow
of these
and
about
superficial.
the causes
argument
causes
of disenchantment
culture,
type as
even
some Russians
in what
the gloomy
to make
a more
at least, they wished
far-reaching
of public melancholy.
writers
Some
claimed
that the
in
and depression
Russia's
essential
national
lay deep
Or,
"Russian
soul,"
along with many Westerners

in any particular
rather then
liked
to stereo
moment
in its
history.Our folk songs are filled with "brooding and melancholy" (razdume i
toska), the tabloid columnist "The Wanderer" observed, and our poets have
on city
of "despondency
and powerlessness."119
A writer
long written
politics
an
likewise
"in
found the roots of Russian
Russian
the
melancholy
psychology":
a traditional
as
endemic
view of individuals
"fatalism,"
"insignificant
particles
of the whole
conviction
ancient
the mere
and
that nothing
formula
"vanity
as it were,
to a
of Providence,"
playthings,
leading
was
could
be changed
but that the truest wisdom
the
to
of vanities,
all is vanity."
this face
Seeking
explain
of Russian culture, Vasily Rozanov provocatively placed the blame on Chris

tianity. "Christ never laughed," he observed in a published talk at theReligious
Philosophical Society in the late fall of 1907, "and I don't know whether Christ
ever
is visible
in the
the sorrow of ash,
Gospels."
of family or earth, but death
the
and the
earthly happiness,
pleasures
ideals" of the Christian
he maintained.121
grave are the "main
worldview,
Most
not as a reflection
viewed
Russia's
of
however,
interpreters,
melancholy
smiled.
The
mark
of sorrow,
not
Not
the nation's
as a symptom
Chulkov
historical
unique
of the "modern"
nor
experience
of the Russian
of what
condition,
cultural
the writer
and
soul, but
critic Georgy
in 1914 called "the cultural conditions of modernity."122 Here, Rus
and moods
became
at
crisis. Constant
experience
part of a larger social
to the conditions
tention
was
one
of city life as nurturing
sign of
melancholy
as a
this reading
of melancholy
of the modern.
Those
who
grow up in
malady
sia's
cities,
one
journalist
in an
wrote
called
essay
"Without
Spring,"
naturally
be
come "sickly,wasted, weak-willed, and listless_This

is the death sentence of
our age."123The image of the city, and especially the
capital, as a place without
the
spring?under
in
arguments
peated
shadow
of darkness
about
but
the depressing
also
effects
re
from nature?was
divorced
of the urban
environment.124
The solitude and loneliness (odinochestvo) of city dwellers, "the alienation of the
said to be a "quite new
(otorvannost'
lichnosti) that was
tic of modern
also produced
When
society,125
melancholy.
to his
Liberson
solicited
letters in response
publicly
proposal
self"
disease,
characteris
the civic
to create
activist
a civic
M.
or
ganization for the lonely, he was impressed by the flood of lettershe received
as
evidence
of
the widespread
"pain
and
toska
among
us."126
Urban
poverty
828
summer 2008
made thisworse. The tabloid columnist Ol'ga Gridina linked her own feelings
of "dreadfulmelancholy" (toska) to thinking about the brutal poverty afflicting
somany in the city?notably the terrible sufferingof the homeless, whose lives
reminded her of the "ninth circle of human hell."127 The poor, of course, also
writer put it in a melodramatic
toska, as another
feuilleton,
them as they struggled
loneliness,
against
unemployment,
sad memories,
and thoughts
of death.128
Of course,
the melancholy
of
poverty,
even of the poor
was not
a
the city dweller,
proletarian,
always
simple and natu
felt this
"that
toska?the
over"
loomed
ral reflection of social experience. As I have argued elsewhere, for literate urban
workers
who
wrote
sively,
it was
out
of them did, often

poetry, which
surprising numbers
of a dialogue
between
material
facts and discovered
compul
language
that they constructed a poetics of everyday life suffusedwith the vocabulary of

sadness,
muka,
sorrow,
gore, skorb\
unynie,
suffering
(grust', pechaV,
toska.129
and, most
frequently,
was
more
Russian
said to nurture melancholy
cities, St. Petersburg
a
in
"are
other:
commented
1913,
reporter
"Petersburgers,"
typically
depression,
muchenie,
Among
than any
grief,
stradanie)
sorts of judgments
eternally filledwith ennui" (vechno skuchaiushchie).13?These
were
to real
attached
and
as well,
at politics
hinted
social
sclerotic
increasingly
as poverty
such
urban
and
experiences
blight. They
the depressing
of the authoritarian
presence
given
were
state. No
of a well
echoes
less, though,
they
established tradition of literarydiscourse about St. Petersburg, which has been

as
described
"an
obsessive
utterance
melancholic
that
refuses
to complete
the
work ofmourning."131 All of thiswas framed by St. Petersburg's significance as

the symbol of Russia's path intoWestern modernity and thus as themain site
meant
for Russia.
for considering
what
that modernity
even one with
as much
socioeconomic
and sym
The metropolis,
however,
as St.
was only part of the terrain of the modern.
bolic weight
Thus,
Petersburg,
to the larger spiritual
commentators
crisis of
and emotional
returned
repeatedly
"modern
reality,"
as a pseudonymous
which,
essayist
wrote
in 1909
in The New
Magazine for Everyone, "has filled the human soul with indescribable sorrow."
Indeed, he concluded, despite all the progress humanity has made in knowl
as
as "unhappy
and dissatisfied
has never
been
humanity
was a general
cri
of contemporary
European
unhappiness
a crisis of "modern
crisis of the
sis of "modern man,"133
the "spiritual
culture,"134
and
dissatisfac
Commentators
blamed
"discontent
modern
variously
epoch."135
worn out and broken,"136
is everywhere
confusion
and
tion with
the old, which
edge and technology,
the heart
now."132 At
doubt in the face of collapsed assumptions and values,137 and widespread "melan
choly longing [tos/ca]formeaning in life" after science laid down its "heavy
authors
Some
ignorabimus."138
saw
the mental
pathology
of modern
life as aris
ing from the innovativeness and perpetual pursuit of the new that defined it. It
was
one
of the "curious"
qualities
of the modern
age,
a magazine
essayist
argued
in 1914, that the rapid replacement of one newly discovered theoryby stillnewer
theories
has
led not
to greater
faith
in progress
but
to "disenchantment"
and
"weariness [utomlenie]with 'bigquestions' and with the rapid, quickened tempo

ofmental life."139
When Georgy Chulkov asked "what are the cultural condi
tions
of modernity?"
his
answer
echoed
what
were
becoming
commonplaces:
the decline in religion, the "instability of the formsof social life,"political ten
sions,
and
the
anarchy
of production
and
consumption
(as
in many
writings,

was
capitalism
unnamed
and
accidentality
but
often
829
rise to
all "give
in these descrip
which
present),
implicitly
is nothing
There
original
incoherence."140
tions of themodern; they are the clich?s of itsEuropean definition. But clich?
did not enable distance or detachment. The ubiquity and even familiarity of
modern
disenchantment
The
modern
the more
it feel all
made
was
condition
seen
also
inescapable.
self and
to weaken
In The
will.
New
Magazine forEveryone in 1909, a physician diagnosed the "contemporary gener

as
ation"
from one
suffering
of the primary
of thewill" (obezvolene?literally
step one meets
isolated
amidst
wrote
individuals
who
noise
the very
of a contemporary
These
are weak
and
of the age:
"the weakening
and without
who
will,
feel alone
and
of life."141 Other
writers
intensity
similarly
in the will."142
of the will"
and "darkness
"catastrophe
returned
arguments
illnesses
the loss or deprivation ofwill). "Now at every
to
melancholy
its original
as a disease
definition
of
the inward self; they also suggested an implicit judgment, given the still common
coding of will as a masculine spirit,143ofmelancholy as a mark of the feminine
and
of emasculation.
But
this
a view
remained
of the
self
debilitation of the selfwith social causes.

-Conclusion:
The
movement
it?as
both
of modern
was an
"progress"
least the increasingly
that
at
social
ofmodern time
themelancholy
troubling
sense
growing
lic mood?or
in society?a
time overshadows
illusion
marked
these
reflections.
The
Russia's
melancholy
pub
accounts
of
desperate,
even
depressed,
and time and as consciousness
of
particular
place
course
a Russian
of modern
time itself. As
both
and a
on
commentary
the lost and wandering

of progress was
its enchanting
allure. Russian
trope, the myth
European
losing
or
commentators?whether
tabloid
whether
highbrow
philosophers
journalists,
or liberals, whether
conservatives
secular or religious?perceived
the same wide
movement
disillusionment
with
time as progressive
toward happiness
spread
and perfection,
and often
shared
this sensibility.
Of course,
the awareness
that
time can paradoxically
refuse to move
forward was not a Russian
it
discovery;
was
at the core of critical
to theorize modern
efforts inWestern
already
Europe
time.Nietzsche had described a "demon" creeping up toman
to warn
that
life continually
repeats,
that
"there
will
never
in his loneliness
be
in it."144
Walter Benjamin described the temporality ofmodern
city life, as a
newness
and
modern
constant
"terrifying
progress,
phantasmagoria"
in fact
while
that
"the
face
new
anything
life,especially
deceptively
promised
never
of the world
... the newest

in every respect,
the same." As
'mod
alters,
remains,
such, "the
ern'
its never-ending
with
and never-changing
[is] the time of hell,"
punish
its mythic
with
echoes
of Tantalus,
and the Danaides.145
ments,
Rus
Sisyphus,
sian writers
era would
of the interrevolutionary
have
recognized
Benjamin's
metaphors
(mostly
quotations
from nineteenth-century
of the contemporary social mood

ing the ground
in place,"
as
texts)
as familiar
images
they sought to describe: modern life as "paw
"lingering
catastrophe,"
as "frozen
death
throe."146
They would also have recognized Benjamin's descriptions (again, echoes of older
texts)
of the emotional
life, deep
depressions,
consequences
boredom,"147
in such times:
of living
"weariness
with
the view that "life is purposeless
and ground
less and that all strivingafterhappiness and equanimity is futile."148The
literary
830
summer 2008
was one of many Russian

critic Yuly Aikhenval'd
writers
of the
saw in modern
time the chief source of modern
ary years who
as in theWest.
Russia
"The monotonous
in
melancholy,
the same occurrences,
of ever
repetition
interrevolution
the tireless battle of life'shours" leads naturally to toska,he wrote, though he

held out hope that strong selves might endure more boldly the hellish repeti
tiveness
of modern
some
For
certain
time.149
Russians,
that
faith)
as for Benjamin
revolution?democratic
some
(if not
dream
remained
years later, hope

or socialist?would
redeem
ing and sufferinghumanity from this hell. Vladimir Lenin and other revolu
tionaries bluntly insisted?and after 1917 decreed this to be the only politically
correct
mood?that
the proper
was
worldview"
"proletarian
filled with
"enthu
siasm," "optimism," "bold confidence," and "life-affirmingfeeling," though they

not
could
that actual
deny
as distinct
workers,
conscious
from properly
"prole
tarians," were stillmore likely to view the world with "unenlightened melan
choly [bezprosvetnaia toska]and impenetrable skepticism."150Others insisted on
the promises
of salvation
that
were,
ally hopeful
avant-gardes
a strong current.
against
emotion
faith promised.151
But
these
themselves
often felt, pressing
upstream
characteristic of the social mood was Merezhkovsky's feeling in 1908
More
the overwhelming
that
religious
as
they
"absence
of change"
explained
the modern
mood
one
why
in
"see
could
"152
the face of city lifewhat doctors call fociesHippocr?tica, the 'face of death,'
or Aikhenval'd's sense of witnessing the "thawing drip [/capei']of life."153For
most
cal
Russians
wrote
who
about
in mind?time
and
experiences
European
time was
felt to be
zsche's
God,
"time
without
dead.
we
time."154 Whether
The
view
of
had
age
the
had
modernity,
both
age?with
to move;
ceased
become
with Max
lo
like Niet
a bezvremene,
a
as
"the
Weber,
d?mythification and disenchantment of the social world," or with Benjamin, as

the oppressive
and
of social
remytruncation
dehumanizing
the "disen
forms,155
chantment with life" so pervasive in the public discourse of urban Russia can be
seen
as an emotionalized
of this history.
interpretation
so it seemed
to those who made
Russians?or
of urban
come
in print?had
the public mood
capture
were
a
in
disenchanted
dead
and
living
to know,
time.
Sadly,
Certainly,
large numbers
to try to
it their business
or at least feel, that they
was
this recognition
not
heroic unmasking of themythic dreamworld ofmodernity's false promises, lead

ing to a new
transcendent
such
consciousness,
as Benjamin
(as did many
desired
Russian political and religious believers), but the painful sadness of recognizing
that
and
the disenchantments
were
the only
reality
and
that
life
of modern
reenchantments
phantasmagoric
there was no exit.
There could be comfort in all this.Writing about melancholy can offer solace,
source
Russia,
to
"antidote"
depression.156
of pleasure
and
inspiration,
we
as in the rest of Europe,
It can
an
even
even
of "reverie
find
in these
be,
as
the Romantics
knew,
In
sadness."
and
voluptuous
years a lingering
Romantic
tra
dition among the educated ofmusing on sufferingand especially on the suffering

soul
as a reassuring
reminder
ethical virtue.Melancholy
about
the melancholy
writing
and ethical
protest
against
some,
itwas
also
style and
of one's
sensitivity
and hence
of one's
spiritual
and
could also be political: as a genre of public empathy,

public
the world
a stance.
mood
as
And
and
itwas
its causes
could
(and, one may

itwas newsworthy,
be
argue,
part
an
aesthetic
is). For
of the sensa
still
831
tionalist landscape of writing and reading about the dark face of city life, such
as could
in every major
city of fin-de-si?cle
Europe.
a reading
too positive
of these voices,
about
about
skeptical,
or defi
to comforting
notions
of solace,
talk of melancholy
reducing
pleasure,
ance. These
too are enchantments
in the face
that were often difficult to sustain
be
found
I am
however,
of insistent uncertainty and doubt. I find relatively little reverie or pleasure in

these
public
ubiquitous
assertions
o?
toska,
and
razocharovanie,
tragizm. Rather,
I find a great deal of anxiety and fear,pointing, ifonly implicitly inmost cases,
toward a philosophical skepticism about both the condition of Russian lifeon
the eve ofwar and revolution and about the "conditions ofmodernity" inwhich
was
its particularities,
This
evaluative
the
situated.
mood
echoes
of
farmore
Arthur
than the traditional
op
pessimism
progressive
Schopenhauer
or even
timism of the Russian
the ordinary
optimism
bourgeois
intelligentsia158
for all
Russia,
we expect to find in the public sphere of a developing capitalist society.

This
dark
was
skepticism
prescient,
we
know. World
war would
make
images
of disintegration, loss, incomprehensibility, and modern hell quite real and im

mediate. Revolution, though inspired by a new upsurgence of hope and faith,
would also bring a great deal of sufferingand good reason to doubt themyths
of
time
shevik
as progress
leaders
the people's
and
would
often
as
of modernization
anxious
express
all too melancholy
happiness.
and
increasingly
None
mood.159
Not
surprisingly,
concern
aggressive
of this, of course,
Bol
with
could
be known in 1908 or even 1914. Itwas not the cataclysm to come thatmost
worried
Russian
commentators
on
"the
times,"
but
the one
they knew
and were
already experiencing: the erosion of ideals and faith; the ubiquitous feelings of
"groundlessness,"
and "catastrophic"
modernity.When
tions
Russian
courage
obstacle
are more
writers
"indeterminacy,"
experience
and "chaos";
the "hopeless"
"disintegration,"
of both Russian
life and the larger conditions
of
theydid look into the future, itappeared dark.Of course, emo

than
representations.
and
figures
public
the melancholy
optimism,
to progress.
can have
effective
force. As many
They
well
hence
their efforts to en
understood,
was
"social mood"
itself a social and political
Department ofHistory
309 GregoryHall
810 S.Wright Street
Urbana, IL 61801
ENDNOTES
I am grateful
the University
comments
on earlier drafts of this paper
at
by my colleagues
of Illinois, Roshanna
at DePaul
Sylvester and her colleagues
University,
in the Research
intellectual
Triangle
history seminar, Louise McReynolds,
for critical
participants
and Jane Hedges.
1. Molover,
"Epokha
Stolichnaia pochta).
nastroenii,"
Vesna
1908, no. 6 (10 February):
44
(reprinted
from
summer 2008
832 journal of social history

2.
I. lu. Utekhi melankholii.
Vinitskii,
1310.
gLcheskogolitseiaNo.
3.
Seriia:
Vypusk
2 of Uchenye
(Moscow,
Filologiia.
kuVturolo
zapiski Moskovskogo
107-289.
1997),
to late nineteenth-century
ranging from classical Greece
Jen
Europe.
:From Aristotle toKristeva (New York, 2000),
ed., The Nature
ofMelancholy
Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl,
11, 30, 46, 71. See also Raymond
Klibansky,
Definitions
nifer Radden,
quotations
Saturn and Melancholy:
Studies in theHistory ofNatural

Philosophy, Religion, and Art (New
From Hippocratic Times toMod
and Depression:
York, 1964); Stanley Jackson, Melancholy
ern Times (New Haven,
and theCritique ofModernity:
1986); Harvie
Ferguson, Melancholy
S0ren Kierkegaard's
1995), chap. 1.
Religious Psychology (London,
4.
Radden,
5.
Peter
ed., The Nature
Fritzsche,
(Cambridge,
6.
Vinitskii,
7.
Robert
Mass.,
Stranded
2004),
in the Present: Modern
"Nietzsche
165-68
and
and
theMelancholy
of History
and passim.
of Modernity,"
the Melancholy
(Summer 1999): 495-520.

8.
and Melancholia"
Freud, "Mourning
tion of theComplete Psychological Works
(1915,
published
Freud,
of Sigmund
(London, 1957), 14: 243.
9.
Time
e.g. 8, 30, 45, 75, 90.
Utekhi melankholii,
Pippin,
10-12.
ofMelancholy,
Black Sun: Depression

Julia Kristeva,
171, 221-22.
123, 128 (quotation),
Social Research
66:2
in The Standard Edi

1917),
trans, and ed. James Strachey
and Melancholia
(New
York,
esp. 5-6,
1989),
10-14,
10.
11. Walter
chael
in the Present,
Stranded
Fritzsche,
"On the Concept

Benjamin,
et. al, 4 vols. (Cambridge,
Jennings
3 passim.
96, and chap.

of History"
Mass.,
(1940),
1996-2003),
Selected Writings,
4:392.
ed. Mi
inAnthro
of Emotion
C. Solomon,
"Getting Angry: The Jamesian Theory
on
A.
eds.
in
Richard
Shweder
and
Culture
Emotion,
Mind,
Essays
Self,
Theory:
pology,"
and Robert A. Levine
Eng., 1984), 252.
(Cambridge,
12.
Robert
13.
Catherine
(Cambridge,
S. Lutz
and the Politics of Emotion

eds., Language
Z.
and Carol
16, 88, 12. See also Peter N. Steams
and Emotional
the History of Emotions
Standards,"
and Lila Abu-Lughod,
1990),
Eng.,
quotations
Steams,
American
Clarifying
"Emotionology:
Historical Review, 90:4 (October
Rosaldo,
essays by Michelle
1985): 813-836;
inCulture Theory: Essays on Mind,
Robert Levy, and Robert Solomon
Self, and Emotion;
Rom Harre,
12-13;
1986), esp. chaps.
(Oxford,
ed., The Social Construction
of Emotions
Emotion
and Keith Opdahl,
as Meaning:
The Literary Case
forHow We
Imagine
(Lewisburg,
2002).
in History," American His
"Worrying about Emotions
In Russian
arguments
history, John Randolph's
(June 2002): 821-45.
about the intimate life of Russian
about the need to "think historically
thought" represent
in the Russian
an important and still rare example of historical work on emotions
past.
and the Intimate
"That Historical
Family': The Bakunin Archive
John W. Randolph,
14.
See
Barbara
torical Review
Theater
574-94
H. Rosenwein,
107:3
in Imperial Russia,
of History
1780-1925,"
in theGarden: The Bakunin
and his House
Russian
Review
Family and
63:4
theRomance
2004):
(October
lde
of Russian
833
brief discussion
of the historiography
and history
(Ithaca, NY, 2007). For a valuable
see Sheila Fitzpatrick,
in Soviet Russia,
of emotions
and Toska: An Essay in
"Happiness
in Pre-war Soviet Russia," Australian
the History of Emotions
Journal of Politics and His
alism
357-58. On Freud and Russian history, see Martin Miller, Freud and the
tory 50:3 (2004):
in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union
Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis
(New Haven,
1998). Also
in pointing toward the need to engage questions
of "feelings" in rethinking Rus
valuable
sian social history isAnna
the Spontaneity-Consciousness
Krylova,
"Beyond
Paradigm:
'Class
Instinct'
2003),
1-12.
15.
Lucien
d'autrefois?"
16.
Steams
as a Promising
Category
of Historical
Analysis"
Slavic Review
et l'histoire: Comment
reconstituer
"La sensibilit?
d'histoire sociale 3 (January-June
1941): 520.
Febvre,
Annales
62:1
(Spring
la vie affective
idem, Anger: The Stuggle for Emotional Control

"Emotionology;"
1986); Peter Steams, Jealousy: The Evolution of an Emotion
inAmerican History (New York, 1989);
idem., Battleground ofDesire: The Struggle for Self
inModern America
Control
(New York, 1999); among other writings.
inAmerica's
and Steams,
History
(Chicago,
in the Era
and Its Erasure: The Role of Emotions
17. William
Reddy, "Sentimentalism
of the French Revolution,"
Journal ofModern History 72:1 (March 2000):
109-52;
idem.,
The Navigation
Eng.,
of Feeling: A Framework for theHistory of Emotions
(Cambridge,
2001).
18.
Laura
A Cultural
19. Gail
Modern
and
Engelstein
(Ithaca,
2000); Mark
inRussia,
1910-1925
History
Kern
Passions:
Sandier,
eds., Self and Story in Russian History
Stephanie
Proletarian
and the Sacred
Imagination:
Self, Modernity,
Steinberg,
(Ithaca,
of Psychiatry
2002), chap. 2; Irina Sirotkina, Diagnosing

in Russia,
1880-1930
(Baltimore,
2001).
Literary Genius:
and Mary Floyd-Wilson,

Paster, Katherine
Rowe,
eds., Reading
in theCultural History of Emotion
2004),
Essays
(Philadelphia,
the Early
13.
20. See, especially, N. P. Antsiferov, Dusha Peterburga (Petrograd,

1922); V. N. Toporov,
and Julie A.
2003);
Peterburgskii tekst russkoi literatury: izbrannye trudy (St. Petersburg,
St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and City shape (Princeton,
Buckler, Mapping
2005).
21.
Carl
22.
Georgii
polon
Schorske,
Fin-de-Si?cle
Vienna:
Politics and Culture
i sovremennost'
Chulkov,
"Demony
66.
1914, no. 1-2 (January-February):
(New York,
(mysli o frantsuzskoi
1961),
19.
Ap
zhivopisi),"
are Peterburgskii listok, 3 October

i eroti
"Politika
1905; Mikhailov,
1; Zapiski S.-Peterburgskogo
1907):
Svobodnye mysli, no. 21 (8 October
religiozno
idumy," Tserkovnyi vestnik 1913,
2; "Sovremennost'
filosofskogo obshchestva, vyp. 1 (1908):
23.
Quoted
phrases
ka,"
no. 31 (1August): 946.

24.
vich,
102.
no. 7-8 (1912-1913):

B. Shaposhnikov,
"Futurizm i teatr," Maski,
"Literatura nashego
vremeni," Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh 1909, no.
29-30; L. Gure
3 (January):
100,
25. Vladimir Markov,

iskusstva," Soiuz molodezhi, no.
"Printsipy novogo
"Zhenskie
6, 10; no. 2 (June 1912):
5-6; Sergei Makovskii,
portrety
no. 5 (February 1910):
russkikh khudozhnikov,"
11, 12, 15.
Appolon,
1 (April
1912):
sovremennykh
26. Zhizn dlia vsekh1910,no. 3 (March): 135-37.

summer 2008

27.
Pamiati A.
"'The
D.
[1913]), 3. See
and the Culture
Vial'tsevoi
(St. Petersburg,
Anastasia
Vial'tseva
One':
Incomparable
Goscilo
ed. Helena
and Beth Holmgren
Women,
Culture,
94; David MacFadyen,
Songs for Fat People: Affect, Emotion,
McReynolds,
in Russia,
of Personality,"
1996), 273?
(Bloomington,
Popular Song, 1900-1955 (Montreal, 2002).

28.
"Bludnyi
also Louise
and Celebrity
in the Russian
vestnik 1914, no. 22 (29 May):

652; Zapiski S.-Peterburgsko
"O starom inovom
obshchestva, vyp. 1 (1908): 6; S. A. Askol'dov,
syn," Tserkovnyi
go religiozno-fihsofskogo
soznanii," Zapiski S.-Peterburgskogo

religioznom
religiozno-filosofskogo
i samoubiistvo
6 (meeting of 3 October
(1908):
1907); "Religioznost'
burgskii listok, 19 January 1913, 3.
obshchestva,
molodezhi,"
vyp. 1
Peter
into Citizens:
Societies, Civil Society, and Autocracy
Joseph Bradley, "Subjects
Review
107: 4 (October
and
Russia," American Historical
2002):
1094-1123,
Edith Clowes,
Samuel Kassow,
and James West,
eds., Between Tsar and People: Educated
1991).
Society and theQuest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia (Princeton,
29.
See
in Tsarist
30.
In a related vein, Eric Gidal
notions
has written of eighteenth-century
of "civic
that pointed
"less toward Freud and more
toward Durkheim,
less, that is,
melancholy"
"Civic
toward theories of the subject and more
toward theories of society." Eric Gidal,
and French Enlightenment,"
Studies 37:1
Eighteenth-Century
English Gloom
26. See also Wolf Lepenies, Melancholie
und Gesellschaft
(Fall 2003):
(Frankfurt am Main,
and Society (Cambridge, Mass.,
Il'ia Vinitskii
has
1992).
1969), translated as Melancholy
as "about modern history, about
Russian melancholy
described
early nineteenth-century
Melancholy:
the dangerously
31.
V Nabokov
mir Nabokov,
1:25.
32.
See
sick world."
Utekhi melankholii,
Vinitskii,
165.
trans, and commentary

Pushkin, Eugene Onegin,
by Vladi
and
1975), 2:141, 337. See also 2:151-56
ed., 4 vols. (Princeton,
inAlexander
revised
also Vladimir
1882), 4:422.
Dal',
slovar'
Tolkovyi
zhivogo Velikoruskogo
iazyka (St. Petersburg,
of toska in the 1930s, see Sheila Fitz

the persistent, or revived, "omnipresence"
in Pre-war Soviet
and Toska: An Essay in the History of Emotions
"Happiness
its per
365-71. On
357-59,
Russia," Australian Journal of Politics and History 50:3 (2004):
sistence in the immediate post-revolutionary
years, see Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination,
144, 278.
esp. 134-35,
33.
On
patrick,
34.
D. Merezhkovskii,
35.
G.
byt' pustu," Rech',
21 December
1908,
2.
1909), quoted with agreement

Plekhanov,
Sovremennyi mir (October
by V. Bru
138.
"Literaturnaia
khronika," Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh, no. 15 (January 1910):
sianin,
36.
"Peterburgu
M. Nevedomskii,
"Chto stalos' s nashei
literaturoi," Sovremennik
1915, no. 5 (May):
"Pis'mo o russkoi poezii," Appolon
also N. Gumilev,
1914, no. 5 (May): 36.
254. See
37.
L'vov-Rogachevskii,
pt. 2, 32, 35-36.
"M. Artsybashev,"
38.
O. Gridina,
ne vinovato,"
39.
See discussions
(Ithaca,
N.Y.,
"Zerkalo
1997),
in Irina Papemo,
94-104,
109-10,
Sovremennyi mir
Gazeta-kopeika,
Suicide as a Cultural
121-22,
158-59;
1909, no.
31 October
11 (November):
1910, 3.
Institution inDostoevsky's Russia

and
"Suicide
Morrissey,
Susan

in Late
Civilization
Imperial Russia,"
835
Jahrb?cher f?r Geschichte
Osteuropas
43
(1995):
201?
Russia (Cambridge,Eng., 2007).

17 and Suicideand theBody Politic in Imperial
i bor'ba s nim," Zhizn' dlia vsekh 1912, no. 12 (Decem

Iagodin, "Samoubiistvo
16 February
"Dukh
1881; Vadim,
zla," Gazeta-kopeika,
1913, 3; "Razval
dukha,"
1412; V. Shirokii,
Tserkovnyi vestnik 1911, no. 45 (10 November):
"Cherty sovremennoi
russkoi zhizni," Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh 1914, no. 1 (January): 45.
40.
B.
ber):
41.
Lavretskii,
14-15:
(from Rech'), Vesna

1910, no.
in Samoubiistvo:
Sbornik obshchestvennykh,
sovremennoi
"Tragediia
106-7; Abramovich,
molodezhi"
"Samoubiistvo,"
i kriticheskikh
statei(Moscow, 1911), 113;Aikhenval'd, "O samoubiistve,"in
filosofskikh
Samoubiistvo:
1.
42.
Sbornik,
Lavretskii,
15: 107.
123; Brusilovskii,
sovremennoi
"Tragediia
Sovremennoe
"Trevoga,"
molodezhi"
slovo,
(from Rech'),
11 March
1910,
1910, no.
Vesna
"S novym godom," Tserkovnyi vestnik 1908, no. 1 (3 January): 1;V Shirokii,
43.
sovremennoi
russkoi zhizni," Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh 1914, no. 1 (January): 45.
14
"Cherty
For example, N. V "Itogi minuvshogo

44.
1908, no. 1 (6 January):
1; N.
goda," Vesna
"S novym godom"
the
editorial
"S
and
Nikiforov,
novym
schast'em," Peterburgskii
(poem)
listok, 1 January 1914, 2.
45.
1908, no.
"Itogi minuvshogo
goda," Vesna
vestnik 1908, no. 2 (10 January): 43.
N. V
mysli,"
46.
Plach
47.
Mikh.
leremii (Lamentations
Bible]) 4:17.
Al.
48.
Skitalets,
49.
The
breaking
50.
also,
of Jeremiah
Engel'gardt,
"Bez vykhoda,"
"Molchanie,"
Gazeta-kopeika,
Russian
term, also translated

which enchants,
(raz-) ofthat
53.
"K voprosu
ideal," Sovremennik
o sovremennykh
"Khristos Voskrese!"
1 January
35
(7 January
1908):
1.
1913, 3-4.
as "disappointment,"
1912, no.
zadachakh
N.
Rubakin,
"K voprosu
"Dlia
Teosoficheskoe
chego
o sovremennykh
(15 December): 1572-73.

55.
Svobodnye mysli, no.
in the Russian
or
indicates
the collapse
(from the verb ocharovat').
captivates
2. See
strakhi," Svobodnye mysli 1907, no. 13 (13 August):
"Mnimye
Vesna
1908, no. 2 (13 January): 10-11; Tserkovnyi vestnik 1910, no. 1
3 (on razocharovanie
of last four years); Delevskii,
antagonizmy
"Sotsial'nye
(June):67.
54.
[the title of Lamentations
fascinates,
(15 December): 1573.

52.
1; "Novogodnye
B. Bazilevich,
for example,
(7 January):
i obshchestvennyi
51.
1 (6 January):
Tserkovnyi
Tserkovnyi
vestnik 1914, no.
1 (January):
pastyrstva,"
obozrenie,
no.
Tserkovnyi
7 (April
ia zhivu na
svete," Novyi
zadachakh
pastyrstva,"
5 (30 January):
252.
vestnik 1911, no.
1908):
488.
zhurnal dlia vsekh
Tserkovnyi
50
1912, no.
vestnik 1911, no.
137-40.
50
summer 2008

56.
Teosoficheskoe
57.
"Sovremennoe
58.
individualizma
(April 1909): 107.

59.
60.
"Dlia
Rubakin,
(June):67.
63.
i religiozno,"
"Religioznost'
Delevskii,
sovremennoi
"Tragediia
31(1
iz romana
(otvryvok
also "Umiraiushchie
vestnik 1909, no.
67.
Zapiski
"PredeP
S.-Peterburgskogo
ingof 15October 1907).
68.
2.
M.
Pritykin,
69.
Pchela,
70.
"Bludnyi
"Krizis
"Kul't
skorbi," Gazeta-kopeika,
religiozno-filosofskogo
intelligentskoi
razvrata,"
syn," Tserkovnyi
dushi,"
Peterburgskii
27
13 September
obshchestva,
listok, 8 December
22 (29 May):
iobshchestvennyi
Iu. Delevskii,
"SotsiaPnye
1 (January): 252.
72.
naia
"Bludnyi syn," Tserkovnyi vestnik 1914, no. 22 (29 May):

i khristianstvo,"
kul'tura
Tserkovnyi vestnik 1914, no. 23
73.
Liubosh
Tserkovnyi
in Slovo, no. 686, summarized

vestnik 1909, no. 5 (29 January):
and discussed
(3 July): 809.
1910, 3.
1 (1908)
vyp.
44
(meet
(24 March
1908):
2.
1908,
71.
no.
antagonizmy
1912, no.
zhurnal dlia vsekh

i Leonid
krasoty
Svobodnye mysli, no. 46
vestnik 1914, no.
135.
ideal," Sovremennik
For example,
L. Gurevich,
"Literatura nashego
vremeni," Novyi
no. 3 (January):
"Ideia
103, and V P. Speranskii,
tragicheskoi
Andreev,"
1908): 71-79.
Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh, no. 1 (November
Gridina,
Peter
nastroenii),"
1909,
Ol'ga
fialki," Peterburgskii
65.
66.
948.
1912, no.
5 (29 January):
vestnik 1914, no.
kul'tury," Tserkovnyi
321.
945-46,
August):
zhurnal dlia vsekh
iobshchestvennyi
antagonizmy
"SotsiaPnye
1 (January):252.
64.
Tserkovnyi
11 (12 March):
zhurnal dlia vsekh, no.
Novyi
svete," Novyi
Aleksandr
62.
vestnik 1909, no.
vestnik 1913, no.
...
Lukoianov,
"Ty pomnish'
19
March
2.
See
1911,
burgskii kinematograf,
kinemoteatry 1913, no. 7 (25 January): 2.
61.
113-14.
k bogostroitel'stvu,"
ia zhivu na
chego
1907):
Tserkovnyi
i dumy," Tserkovnyi
"Sovremennost'
N.
3 (December
bogoiskatePstvo,"
"Ot
Ashkinazi,
no.
obozrenie,
649-54.
ideal," Sovremennik
651.
See
(5 June):
also
1912,
"Sovremen
682.
in "Religioznost'
i religiozno,"
135.
"Literatura nashego vremeni," Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh 1909, no. 3 (Jan
74. L. Gurevich,
of Revo
and the Appeal
uary): 102. See also Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal,
"Eschatology
lution: Merezhkovsky,
Slavic Studies, vol. 11 (1980):
105-39; V P.
Bely, Blok," California
iutopiia (Moscow,
Shestakov,
1995); L. Katsis, Russkaia eskhatologiia i russkaia
Eskhatologiia
literatura (Moscow, 2000); Ekaterina Mel'nikova,
ozhidaniia
"Eskhatologicheskie
sveta ne budet?" Antropologicheskii
vekov: Kontsa
forum, no. 1 (2004):
XIX-XX
rubezha
250-66.
837
of an exhibit
the discussion
see, for example,
painting,
inOgonek
and N. Rerikh,
Vodkin
1913, no. 3 (20 January).
of paintings
On
"Mysli ob
75.
S.
76.
D. Merezhkovskii,
Isakov,
Pritykin,
80.
Zhbankov,
"Polovaia
81.
"Tragediia
sovremennoi
82.
Ashkinazi,
6 (April):
no.
Sh,
(January):
"Ot
22
2.
1908,
651.
(29 May):
"Dlia
"Khristos Voskrese!"
87.
"K voprosu
"S novym
43.
27
(3 July): 811.
zhurnal dlia vsekh 1909,
Novyi
is to Lev Shestov's
book, Apofeoz
(St.
bezpochvennosti
as a sign of hope.
sees the disillusionment
with modernity
reference
discussion,
russkoi
see Marshall
o sovremennykh
1572-73.
godom,"
Berman,
obozrenie,
Teosoficheskoe
zadachakh
Tserkovnyi
zhurnal dlia vsekh
zhizni," Novyi
1914, no.
is Solid Melts
All That
intoAir:
zhurnal dlia vsekh 1912, no. 6 (June):
ia zhivu na svete," Novyi
chego
86.
(15 December):
7 (July): 64.
vestnik 1914, no.
sovremennoi
influential
85. Rubakin,
65-66.
1909, no.
Sovremennyi mir
The ExperienceofModernity (New York, 1982).
88.
53.
individualizma
105. The
"Cherty
46.
For an
84.
vestnik 1914, no.
prestupnost',"
1905), which
Petersburg,
83.
1 (January):
Fedorov, "V nashi dni," Peterburgskii kinematograf, 22 January 1911, 2. See also
"Krizis intelligentskoi
1908): 2.
dushi," Svobodnye mysli, no. 46 (24 March
Al.
79.
Petrov
the reports "Antikhrist,"

Peterburgskii listok, 12 February 1914, 4;
i p'ianstvo
Malen
kaia gazeta, 18 December
telesnoe
dukhovnoe,"
syn," Tserkovnyi
"Bludnyi
21 December
byt' pustu," Rech',
"Peterburgu
77. See, for example,

and Putnik, "P'ianstvo
1915,2.
78.
zhurnal dlia vsekh 1914, no.
iskusstve," Novyi
by K.
no.
7 (April
pastyrstva,"
vestnik 1908, no.
1908):
Tserkovnyi
1 (3 January):
488.
vestnik 1911, no.
1. See
also no.
50
2 (10
January):
89.
M.
verit'
90.
original
91.
Gor'kii,
(nabroski
Sovremennik
"Zhaloba,"
(1911),
quoted
imysli),"
Sovremennik, no. 5 (May 1912):
Portugalov,
Kaled,
Tserkovnyi
"V oblasti
inNovoe
appeared
Lev Pushchin,
93.
Gurevich
"Kak
in Zaprosy
1908,
no.
"Vo
chto
zhe
1 (6 January):
(the article
vremia).
"Ivanushkovtsy,"
vestnik 1910, no.
92.
kul'tury," Vesna
in E. Kuskova.
266.
S.-Peterburgskie
50
(16 December):
zhit'," Novyi
vedomosti,
1586-87.
9 December
zhizni 1909, no.
1 (18 October):
1910,
5 (May):
2. See
81.
30.
also
summer 2008

94.
Genrikh
(na puti k novomy
Futurizm
Tastevin,
simvolizmu)
95.
V L'vov-Rogachevskii,
"Novaia
drama Leonida Andreeva,"
10 (October):
See also Gurevich,
"Literatura nashego
254-55.
102.
dlia vsekh 1909, no. 3 (January):
96.
"Tragediia
97.
"KoroP
Blok,
99.
Ol'ga
v Peterburge,"
smekha
talets, "Deti
98.
sovremennoi
vremeni,"
Gazeta-kopeika,
"Dnevnik"
(26 November
and Leningrad, 1963), 7:184.

"Bez
Gridina,
21 November
(3 July): 811.
1913, 3. See
sochinenii v vos'mi
11 April
rulia," Gazeta-kopeika,
zhurnal
Novyi
also Ski
1913,3.
Sobranie
1912),
27
5.
1913, no.
Sovremennik
vremeni,"
vestnik 1914, no.
Gazeta-kopeika,
7 December
1914),
(Moscow,
tomakh (Moscow
5-6.
1910,
reports, such as Peterburgskii listok, 15 January

phrase, often used in newspaper
series of books on prerevolutionary
entertain
1910, 4-5, was the title of Iurii Alianskii's
ments
1992- ). See also Louise
in St. Petersburg, Veseliashchiisia
Peterburg (St. Petersburg,
Russia at Play: Leisure Activities at the End of theTsarist Era (Ithaca, 2003).
McReynolds,
100. The
101. Doloi
2.
skuka i splin! Da
102. L. Logvinovich,
103. Freud,
"Smekh
"Smekh
i p?chai',"
Zhizn'
and Melancholia,"
"Mourning
i smekhl Peterburgskii
zdravstvuet vesel'e
i pechaP,"
dlia vsekh,
1912, no.
listok, 4 January
1 (January):
1914,
107.
254.
Zhizn
dlia vsekh, 1912, no.
1 (January):
107-14
"Polovaia
of this phrase, Zhbankov,
105. For some examples
Sovremennyi
prestupnost',"
mir 1909, no. 7 (July): 64; A. Zorin, "Rabochii mir," Zhizn' dlia vsekh 1911, no. 8 (August):
1075.
106. A.
Blok,
"Ironiia,"
Rech',
108. Ferguson, Melancholy

"Dlia
Rubakin,
chego
theCritique
i pechaP,"
(1922),
20 December
ofModernity,
Zhizn
1908, 3.
34-38
dlia vsekh, 1912, no.
1 (January):
zhurnal dlia vsekh
svete," Novyi
107-14.
1912,
"Kul't
in Shvo,
reprinted
razvrata,"
no.
in Antsiferov,
of literary images of St. Petersburg
:
Pe
P. Antsiferov,
uNepostizhimyi gorod" Dusha
1991), 47-175.
(St. Petersburg,
Peterburg Pushkina
reprinted
Suicide as a Cultural
113. K. Arsen'ev
114. Pchela,
Rech',
ia zhivu na
terburga, Peterburg Dostoevskogo,

112. Papemo,
2.
see the discussion
111. For example,

Peterburga
and
"Smekh
(June):67.
Dusha
1908,
"O khikhikaiushchikh,"
107. K. Chukovskii,
110. N.
7 December
inN.
162-202.
Institution, esp. 81-94,

inVesna
Peterburgskii
1908, no.
2 (13 January):
listok, 8 December
1908,
410.
2.

115. "Nastroenie
1908, no.
Vesna
intelligentsii,"
839
35
5 (3 February):
(reprinted
lichnaia pochta).
116. A.
1911, no.
mir: Vera,
[Gastev] "Rabochii
8 (August):
1069, 1075.
117. OPga
Gridina,
Zorin
118. Bazilevich,
"Bez
10 April
liudi," Gazeta-kopeika,
"Bodrye
imaterial'naia
120. L. A. Vilikhov,
"Idealizm
Gorodskoe Mo
1912, no. 11-12
obozrenie"),
121. Doklad
V V Rozanova,
1910, 5.
1907, no.
strakhi," Svobodnye mysli
"O sladchaishem
13 (13 August):
2.
1911, 4.
kul'tura"
(1-15
zhurnal dlia vsekh
opyt," Novyi
11 April
rulia," Gazeta-kopeika,
"Mnimye
119. Skitalets,
otchaianie,
from Sto
to "Munitsipal'noe
(introduction
June):
742-43.
Isyse i gor'kikh
mira"
plodakh
(21 Novem
ber 1907), ZapiskiSankt-Peterburgskogo

obshchestva,
vyp. 2 (1908):
Religiozno-filisofskogo
20-25.
122. Georgii
polon
i sovremennost'
Chulkov,
"Demony
66.
zhivopisi),"
123. Al. Fedorov, "Bez vesny," Peterburgskii kinematograf, 19 March

1911,
essay of 26 January 1911,2
(St. Petersburg as a place of "hunger, half-light,
124. For example,
"Vesna,"
Argus
1913, no.
5 (May):
2. See
Ap
also his
and despair").
39.
125. L. Gurevich,
"Literatura nashego
zhurnal dlia vsekh, 1909. no. 3
vremeni," Novyi
"Ob odinokikh," Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh, 1909, no. 7 (May):
(January): 102; G. Gordon,
"Ot individualizma
85, 88. See also I. G. Ashkinazi,
zhurnal
Novyi
dlia vsekh1909,no. 6 (April): 106.

126. M.
Stradanie
Liberson,
127. OPga
Gridina,
128. "Umiraiushchie
129. Steinberg,
pismennost',
20.
13 September
1910, 3.
kinemoteatry
1913, no.
7 (25 January):
esp. 76, 165-66,
175.
skorbi," Gazeta-kopeika,
fialki," Peterburgskii
Imagination,
1909),
2.
vecherniaia
gazeta, 24 February
1913, quoted A. E. Parnis and R. D.
'Brodiachei
Pamiatniki
sobaki,'"
kul'tury: novye otkrytiia:
1983 (Leningrad,
iskusstvo, arkheologiia. Ezhegodnik
1985), 208. See also K.
Zhizn dlia vsekh 1909, no. 12 (December):
94.
"Fiziologiia
Peterburga,"
131. Buckler, Mapping

132. Ashkinazi,
"Ot
no. 6 (April): 105.

Isakov,
134. "Bludnyi
(St. Petersburg,
"Programmy
Barantsevich,
133. S.
"PredeP
Proletarian
130. Voskresnaia
Timenchik,
odinochestva
St. Petersburg,
individualizma
"Mysli ob
21.
iskusstve," Novyi
syn," Tserkovnyi
Novyi
zhurnal dlia vsekh
vestnik 1914, no.
22
(29 May),
1 (January):
651.
1909,
54.
summer 2008

135. "O dukhovnom
krizise
sovremennoi
epokhi,"
July):913-14.
136. "Bludnyi syn," Tserkovnyi vestnik 1914, no. 22 (29 May):

i khristianstvo,"
kul'tura
Tserkovnyi vestnik 1914, no. 23
651.
naia
1911, no.
vestnik
Tserkovnyi
See
also
30
(25
"Sovremen
(5 June): 682.
137. For example,

Isakov, "Mysli ob iskusstve," Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh 1914, no. 1 (Jan
and
53,
Kaled,
1910, 2.
vedomosti, 9 December
uary):
"Ivanushkovtsy,"
S.-Peterburgskie
138. Ashkinazi,
6 (April):
"Ot
no.
zhurnal dlia vsekh 1909,
Novyi
ignoramus et ignorabimus (we do not know and will not
phrase
in the nineteenth
of the limits on
century to speak pessimistically
individualizma
106. The
know) was often used

scientific knowledge.
139. P. Cher-skii,
zhurnal
sovremennosti,"
"Paradoktsy
Novyi
cause by the overstimulated
(April): 51. The nervous exhaustion
urban
Sociology
vsekh
famously by Georg Simmel,

Simmel, trans, and ed. Kurt Wolff
i sovremennost'
Chulkov,
"Demony
66, 70-71.
141. G. Gordon,
"Ob odinokikh,"
Novyi
111., 1950).
(Glencoe,
of Georg
140. Georgii
polon
no.
1914,
of modern
atmosphere
and Mental
Life"
"The Metropolis
life had been noted
[1903], The
dlia
zhivopisi),"
7 (May):
Ap
87.
in Samoubiistvo:
"O samoubiistvakh,"
55-56.
142. Rozanov,
Sbornik, especially
Vas. Nemirovich-Danchenko,
"Zhizn' deshevo!
(ocherki epidemii otchaianiia),"
See
zhizni1910,no. 10 (7March): 588.
and Barbara Evans Clements,

Rebecca
Keys toHappiness,
inHistory and Culture
eds., Russian Masculinities
(New York,
also
Zaprosy
143. See Engelstein,
Friedman,
and Dan
2002).
Healey,
144. Friedrich
etzsche
The Gay Science

Neitzsche,
of Modernity,"
the Melancholy
and
in Pippin,
and discussed
(1882),
quoted
Social Research
66:2
(Summer
1999):
"Ni
509.
S 1,5, D10a,4);
544-45
Project, esp. 101-19,
(quotations
ed.
du XIXeme
si?cle: Expos?," Das Passagen-Werk,
"Paris, Capitale
2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main,
Rolf Tiedemann,
1:61; The Arcades
1982),
Project, 15. See
time in Susan Buck-Morss,
of modern
The Dialectics
of Benjamin's
discussion
conceptions
The Arcades
145. Benjamin,
Walter
Benjamin,
of Seeing: Walter
Benjamin
and theArcades
Project
(Cambridge,
Mass,
1989),
79,95-97,99,
103-9, 178;Graeme Gilloch, Myth andMetropolis:Waiter Benjaminand theCity (Cam
bridge, Eng.,
in the Present.
Conceptual
For a related argument,

1996),
106-8,
118, 121-22.
See also Reinhart Kosselleck,
"Progress and Decline,"
History:
Timing History,
146. Benjamin,
The Arcades
147. Benjamin,
The Arcades
Spacing Concepts
Project,
111,
108
Project,
113,
(Stanford,
115 (D5,7,
(D3a,4).
See
218-35.
2002),
D6a,l,
also
see Fritzsche, Stranded

in his The Practice of
D8,6).
104-5
(D2,2,
D2,5),
(D4a,2).
148. Benjamin,
149.
The Arcades
Iu. Aikhenval'd,
"O
Project,
105
samoubiistve,"
(D2,8).
in Samoubiistvo:
Sbornik,
123.
110
841
150. See Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination, esp. 100-101

of the ac
(the characterization
among many workers was offered by the Bolshevik
organizer and worker Alek
in 1909).
sei Gastev
tual mood
151. See Mark
and Heather
Steinberg
Russia (Bloomington,
ality inModern
Coleman,
eds., Sacred
Stories: Religion and Spiritu
Ind., 2007).
152. D. Merezhkovskii,
1908, 2. Faci?s Hip
"Peterburgu byt' pustu," Rech', 21 December
is the appearance
of the face as a person approaches
death?sunken
eyes and
in some debilitating
conditions
that re
temples, pinched nose, and tense hard skin?or
of death.
semble the approach
pocratica
153.
Iu. Aikhenval'd,
"O
in Samoubiistvo:
samoubiistve,"
Sbornik,
123.
154. For example,
I. Brusilovskii,
slovo, 13 March
1910,
"SmysP zhizni," Sovremennoe
Kovalevskii,
"Zatish'e,"
705; M.
Zaprosy zhizni 1911, no. 12 (23 December):
"Iz sovremennykh
formatsii i
Slobozhanin,
part 3: "Ob estetikh noveishei
perezhivanii,"
estetizme voobshche,"
461. I have trans
Zhizn dlia vsekh 1913, no. 3-4 (March-April):
1;Mikhail
lated
this term literally. Its conventional

dictionary meaning
a difficult time" (Ushakov)
is commonly,
stagnation,
cultural
as "untimeliness."
into English
155. See
Susan
156. Kristeva,
Buck-Morss,
Black
Ferguson, Melancholy
157. Daniel
Charles
1989),
Sun,
and
The Dialectics
of Seeing,
of "a time of social

if imprecisely,
and
translated
252-53.
and Melancholia,"
145, 170; Freud, "Mourning
theCritique ofModernity,
20.
251.
See
also
en France au XVUle
Le Romantisme
si?cle (Paris, 1912), quoted
in
Mornet,
Sources of the Self: The Making
Mass.,
of Modern
Identity (Cambridge,
also Vinitskii, Utekhi melankholii
of Melancholy).
(Solace/Pleasures
Taylor,
296. See
158. See,
for example, Aileen

1998), 326?
Kelly, Toward Another Shore (New Haven,
the tradition of pessimism
the intelligentsia
among
(though
stretching from Petr
in the early 1800s to the "decadents"
Chaadaev
of the early 1900s reminds us of a strong
44
counter-tradition).
159. Steinberg,
Proletarian
Imagination,
esp. 283-84;
Fitzpatrick,
"Happiness
and Toska."

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Melancholy and Modernity: Emotions and Social Life in Russia between the Revolutions

Author(s): Mark D. Steinberg

SADNESS AND SOCIETY

In the years of uncertainty and driftfollowing the 1905 revolution inRussia, be

was thickwith talk of emotions. In particular, the question of the obshchestvennoe

of the age was

become an unprecedented "epoch of moods" (epokha nastroenii)} Like famil

olutionary yearswas a distinctly socialmelancholy.

Itwas social feeling in both

pretive category.Traditional definitions ofmelancholy have long insisted on the

in the imbalance of physical "humors"; later,

journal of social history

ady of individual bodies more than of social ones. Russian melancholy

In part, this social melancholy echoed a largerand older history of "modern"

felt like "strangers" and "ex

sitive Europeans like Fran?ois-Ren? Chateaubriand

Vasily Zhukovsky nurtured a pensive melancholy about a sick and fragileworld

psychoanalyst JuliaKristeva has described melancholy

arising from the "razing

a landscape of ruins,but with a significant social difference.The sense of dread

This melancholy was also distinctly less hopeful as an emotional

past and of certain meaning opened the possibility of alternative subjectivities

of the past were

MELANCHOLY AND MODERNITY

will suggest,closer toWalter Benjamin's reading of Paul Klee's painting ?ngelus

cial and cultural practice. As Lila Abu-Lughod

"a form of social

and Catherine Lutz argue in an

Until quite recently only a handful of historians have seriously examined

journal of social history

sight of the persistent

the protean unpredictability of feeling,Reddy has argued fora view of emotional

these form and content.17

fullyordering and disruptively heteroglossic.

and self were not

Consequently, my focus here is less on the actual feelings of individuals than

read the emo

into a story and an interpretation

MELANCHOLY AND MODERNITY

continue on the path of democratization

ithad largely been forced to follow,

the "epoch ofmoods" described in the Petersburg press seemed at times to be a

itics of place with canonical

for example), and beyond the Russian empire (London,

images of bad weather, dark moods, and sensitive

unsettling existential moving and slippage, such as Carl Schorske described of

mentators liked to insiston the novelty of the public mood

inRussia focused people's thoughts and feelings,with

was stronger than in theWest?justifiably,

tions to interpretRussian and modern life.They claimed to find themeaning of

journal of social history

litical Left) or "worldview" (mirovozzrenie),but in their "moods," their "subjec

stinct," and the new "psychologism [psikhologizm]"said to characterize all "mod

as the stage work

whose deaths in 1910 and 1913 evoked an outpouring of emotion, particularly

of the day. Kommissarzhevskaia

troennost'(state ofmind and feeling). Indeed, emotion itselfhad become a prime

of the reins of censorship

mass-circulation, boulevard newspapers like The Petersburg Sheet (Peterburgskii

likeThe Field (Niva) or Springtime (Vesna), to popular journals with enlighten

MELANCHOLY AND MODERNITY

arising less from a disordered mind than from a disordered world,

less from private

sufferedprivately than expressed aloud in public.30