The Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks by Jeffrey Brooks (review)

Dwelling on popular literature and culture, including some cultural gems that have gained more popularity abroad than inside the country (such as Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring), Jeffrey Brooks explores the connections and mutual inspirations between Russian high and folk cultures over the period 1850–1950, which he calls the "Age of Genius." Using the metaphor of a "cultural ecosystem" for his approach (P. xvii), Brooks covers the interplay between the state, the reader, and the publisher, the reciprocity between folk and high cultures, and the enduring motives, or meta-themes, of Russian culture.

The book's title takes on three meta-themes – freedom, boundaries, and the relationship between reality and art – symbolized by firebirds and foxes. As symbols, the meta-themes are profoundly embodied in other creatures with equivalent or similar meaning: wolf, Humpbacked Horse, and Ivan the Fool. But whether it is a fox, a fool, or a puppet like Buratino (P. 245), they all embody a struggle for creative freedom. Brooks emphasizes that these meta-themes are crucial for understanding Russian culture. They convey meanings of both low and high cultures and are persistent through time and ideology (although artists became more constrained by the Soviet system of censorship and repression).

Freedom demands rebellion, entails order, and exists in different forms, ranging from an expression of free will to the freedom of artistic creativity (P. 6). Boundaries are crucial for drawing the lines between "the Self and the Other; the Russian and the foreigner; … the audience for art and those outside that audience" (P. 6), which, as the author shows in Part III, will be later deployed in arts by the Soviets against internal enemies (P. 7). The questions concerning the role and the class origins of artists, whether they are a "cast" that should share certain privileges, are connected to questions concerning the responsibility of artists, or the intelligentsia, in what Brooks identifies as the third meta-theme, the bond between reality and art (P. 7). Despite its approach, the book is not deficient in historical context, which the author skillfully incorporates into the enduring meta-themes.

The book consists of three parts divided by a clear chronological watershed: before (Parts I and II) and after the Bolshevik Revolution (Part III). Part I engages with imperial art, the artists and their subjects. It traces the conditions in which subjects were given the right to speak for themselves. It also focuses on the figure of the Fool, whose changing image depended heavily on its relation to imperial authority. Part II is devoted to the radical switch in arts in times of political turmoil. It analyzes the emergence of modernism as an aesthetic response to an overly politicized environment. It also deals with the celebrity culture consequently appropriated by the Bolsheviks. Part III concerns the transformations of art under the Bolsheviks and the use of mocking tactics such as irony and satire as the only devices that were available for artistic critical self-expression under the constraints of ideological censorship. I should emphasize that each of the book's twelve chapters deserves separate attention. The choice of chapters examined below reflects my personal interest and by no means implies that they are worthy of more attention than the others. Being aware that this review might appear somewhat sketchy, I have decided not to burden the reader with the analysis of the other chapters.

Brooks states that 1917 marked an inexorable and irreversible change in the relationship between the state and creative people (or intelligentsia). In Part I (chapters 1–5), "Emancipation of the Arts (1850–1889)," he sets up the framework for the analysis. It starts with an analysis of the changing role of the Fool, the personified figure of a rebel. The Fool does not exist in a vacuum, but always, as an embodied freedom, appears in relation to authority. Influenced by societal and political...