Construction of a Utopian West: The Russian Nineteenth-Century Intelligentsia

Abstract

A person's image of a foreign country is often not related to an actual encounter, but limited and one-sided based on the environment of the person's native land. Consider, for example, the Russian elite perception of the West in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Peter the Great's reign shook Russia's traditional society and led to the spread of promiscuity and general immorality. Consequently, for many Russians, whether or not they traveled, the West, epitomized by France, was a place of erotic pleasures and easygoing life. By the beginning of the nineteenth century some members of the Russian elite started to question the political system of their native land. For some of them, like Peter Chaadaev, the West stood as a symbol of the ideal political institutions and Russia for the dead end of history.Even in the era of globalization and frequent international travel by millions, information about foreign lands is often quite limited. Many visitors are either tourists or students who expect to return to their place of origin fairly soon, or people whose exposure to daily life in the foreign land is extremely limited. Their vision is formed not so much by realitythe experience of people who live there as ordinary folkas by preconceived images constructed in their native land. This vision usually does not change during or after the visit, unless, of course, the person moves to the country permanently and begins to live the life of ordinary people. Thus, the construction of the image of a foreign land is due not so much to the availability of information, for example, or ease of travel (although this should not be discarded), as to internal changes in the country of origin. Consider, for example, the changes in the approach to the West of the Russian elite from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century.In Russia in the eighteenth century, after the revolution of Peter the Great, traditional morals and conduct were discarded. The general spread of immorality, sexual promiscuity especially, was related to the West as the model Russia should copy. The image of the West, mostly of France, was reinforced by the Russian elite traveling