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1 A fictional monk cautions his followers about the corrupting consequences of human pride by affirming the presence of the divine in the “untroubled joy” of more humble creatures. A middle-aged revolutionary chronicles the hardships of agrarian life and an abusive father by recalling the agonies of a beaten workhorse. And a famous journalist underscores the brutality of death and survival in a besieged city during World War II by dramatizing the plight of dogs and cats. These epigraphs highlight the contradiction be1H intrOdUCtiOn Integrating the Animal jane costlow and amy nelson Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things . . . Love the animals: God gave them the rudiments of thought and an untroubled joy. Do not trouble it, do not torment them, do not take their joy from them, do not go against God’s purpose. Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals: they are sinless, and you, you with your grandeur, fester the earth by your appearance on it, and leave your festering trace behind you—alas, almost every one of us does! —Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Father attached a nail to the end of the knout. When he whipped the horse with this knout she hunched up, trembled, and staggered, with her mouth gaping and teeth bared. Her right groin, haunch and flank became covered with welts and scars the thickness of a thumb, from which blood flowed. By dinner time she stood still: she could not even tremble when they beat her. Father was gloomy and vile-tempered, tears gleamed in his eyes, and from my hiding place behind the cart, I sobbed whenever I looked at [the horse]. —Ivan Vol’nov, Povest’ o dniakh moei zhizni There was hardly a cat or a dog left in Leningrad by late December. They had all been eaten. But the trauma was great when a man came to butcher an animal which had lived in his affection for years. One elderly artist strangled his pet cat and ate it, according to Vsevelod Vishnevsky. Later he tried to hang himself, but the rope failed, he fell to the floor, breaking his leg and froze to death. The smallest Leningrad children grew up not knowing what dogs and cats were. —Harrison Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad costlow nelson text4.indd 1 6/23/10 8:40 AM 2————JAne COstlOw And Amy nelsOn tween the spiritual summons for interspecies compassion and communion, on the one hand, and the gritty violence of human and animal lives, on the other hand. They also define a key dynamic of human-animal histories in general and the way these experiences are inflected in Russia in particular. For they suggest the extent to which animals are implicated both in human lives and in the stories humans tell in order to make sense of the world and their place in it. Following William Cronon’s observation that nature, while “lacking a clear voice of its own,” is “hardly silent” as a historical subject, this volume looks at how interactions between humans and animals have helped shape the narratives of Russian history and culture. Like the broader category of “nature” to which they are often assigned, animals play an important real and symbolic role in human lives. Our interpretations of these interactions may vary tremendously and certainly reflect human values, but the consequences of these encounters are real for humans and animals alike.1 How animals shape and inform the human experience in real and symbolic ways is a main concern of the rapidly growing field of animal studies , an interdisciplinary project inspired by such foundational texts as John Berger’s “Why Look at Animals” and Claude Levi-Strauss’ dictum that “animals are good to think.”2 A growing body of scholarship provides ample evidence of the exciting possibilities for cross-fertilization between various fields in the humanities. Inspired by this example, the editors of this volume enlisted scholars trained primarily in humanities and social science disciplines . We found that the various approaches to integrating “the animal” into our predominantly human-centered fields opened up exciting possibilities for interdisciplinary dialogue and new approaches to social history and cultural analysis.3 At the same time, we see projects such as ours as productive beginnings in...

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