FIN DE SIÈCLE У РУСИЈИ: ПОЛИТИКА И УМЕТНОСТ
FIN-DE-SIÈCLE IN RUSSIA: POLITICS AND CULTURE

Summary/Abstract: In this research paper, author discusses artistic responses to political turmoil from 1850 to 1917. This period in the Russian Empire was marked by a gradual striving for a radical and total social transformation initiated by, sometimes even violent, social reactions to the existing autocratic form of government in the mid-19th century, and completed by the Great Russian Revolution of 1917. The article dwells upon historical problems of social and cultural transformations of the Russian society and highlights artistic contribution in strive for modernization. In exploring the mode of adaptation of Russian society to the challenges of modernity, the possibility arose for the setting of three chronologically conditioned, but complex, cause-effect correlations of art and socio-political change: national-imperial, then (paradoxically named) larpurlartist-democratic and avant-garde-socialist correlation. These political and, at the same time, cultural platforms, are recognized as suitable for creating and strengthening a revolutionary climate in imperial Russia. Referring to the revolutionary nature of the artistic movements that preceded the Russian avant-garde, we insist that pluralism of styles and aesthetics in the socio-cultural sphere, as well as social engagement of artists, are factors that are of utmost importance in the preparation of the October Revolution in 1917.

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