Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (Paperback)

Figes starts with a wonderful account of the building of St Petersburg in the 1700s, and goes on to discuss the meaning of Europe to Russian culture in the eighteenth century. Europe caused a split in the Russian national identity - and much of Russian culture in the nineteenth century was concerned with how to reconcile the two almost contradictory halves of the Russian character: the native Russian (or Muscovite) and the European (or Petrine).

The next chapter takes up the story of 1812, when Russia's writers and artist first began to think about the ways of developing a distinctively "Russian style" in contrast to the West. This is when the Slavophiles were born. There are lots of fascinating details here - on the Russian customs of child-rearing, on interior design and Russian fashions.

The next three chapters explore various facets of Russian culture in the nineteenth century: the Moscow tradition; the romantic fascination with the Russian peasants (which Figes explores as a search for nationhood); and the influence of the Orthodox tradition on Russian literature and art.

Then there is a speculative chapetr on the cultural influence of the Asiatic steppe/ For me, this was the most original and the most interesting chapter in the book (Rachel Polonsky, in her hatchet-job review in the TLS doesn;t even mention it). In this chapter Figes digs down deep into peasant culture and folklore, showing how the shamanic beliefs of the steppeland nomads (the "Decsendants of Genghiz Khan") left their trace on the Russians/

Finally there are two long chapterson the twentieth century when Russian culture was divided into two: the first on Soviet culture and the last on the emigration to the West. I didn't quite agree with Figes's argument - that in the end Soviet culture was peripheral and failed to change the underlying Russian cultural traditions (represented by Akhmatova). But I was moved by the tremendous emotional impact of these final chapters, which (more than anything I've ever read before) assert triumphantly the endurance of the Russian people and their culture over politics.

I am not surprised that Figes has his critics. He writes too well, too flamboyantly;he tackles bigger themes than most academics dare. But for the general reader Natasha's Dance is a rich delight. On every page there is something new and fascinating. There are sumptuous illustrations. And for those who want to read more "heavyweight" volumes there is a comprehensive guide to further reading at the end.

In sum- this is a wonderful, enriching book, for anybody with a psssing interest in Russia, its history and culture.

The answer is no. Let's not confuse "long" with "comprehensive."

In fairness to Figes, this book has a lot of strengths, particularly his discussion of the relationship between nineteenth century Russian operas and the texts from which their libretti were drawn, his emphasis on the Old Believer schism, and his treatment of Vassily Grossman, still relatively unknown in the West. However, it has some glaring omissions for a work which wants to be comprehensive.

First, Figes basically ignores all literature, architecture, and applied art prior to the period around the founding of St. Petersburg. This means that he fails to address, among other things, the _Tale of Igor_, the literary impact of Slavonic hagiography, icons and their influence on secular painting (other than a lick and a promise to Andrei Rublev's work), and any of Ivan IV a/k/a the Terrible's perorations. This omits a necessary context for the Westernizers (such as Peter I a/k/a "The Great") and the Slavophiles.

Second, I think his treatment of _Oblomov_ would not communicate the importance of this work in the public imagination to anyone who was not familiar with this work, and Figes doesn't even mention _The Precipice_, which Goncharov regarded as his true masterpiece. He also doesn't discuss the rift between Goncharov and Turgenev as a result of the similar themes in _The Precipice_ and _Fathers and Children_. This really was an unfortunate omission. This was big news in the nineteenth century.

Third, I thought that Figes did not devote sufficient attention to the nineteenth-century anarchists, particularly those of the upper-classes, and slighted Yurij Dombrosky, though I grant you that these might be quibbles.

Fourth, given his emphasis on Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and emigre and returnee literature, I was expecting to see more discussion of Solzhenitsyn, who rates only a cursory mention. Solzhenitsyn's work neatly demonstrates and extends virtually all the points that Figes is making, which is why his failure to discuss him at greater length is so odd.

Fifth, there were occasional odd minor lapses in scholarship. For example, at one point Figes notes that the word "robot" is "not coincidentally" similar to the Russian verb _rabotat'_, or "to work". However, a few minutes with the Oxford English dictionary told me that the first reported use of the word "robot" was by a Czech playwright, Karel Capek, in the play "R.U.R." released circa 1921, and that "rabota" means forced labor in Czech. In fact, In the days when Czechoslovakia was a feudal society, "robota" referred to the two or three days of the week that peasants were obliged to leave their own fields to work without remuneration on the lands of noblemen. However, that fact does not fit with Fige's theory. It makes me fret about what Figes did in the course of assembling his book with other facts (and artists, such as ones noted above) that do not fit his theory.

Finally, his offering of Natasha's dance at the end of _War and Peace_ as the central image of the authentic pure Russian soul revealing itself beneath the veneer of European culture really bothers me. It bothers me because an equally central image of Natasha Rostova and her reaction to Art is Natasha at the opera earlier in the book, suffering _ostranenie_, or a sense of estrangement, from the opera's artifice. Moreover, the final image of Natasha in _War and Peace_ that Tolstoy creates for us is to show her stout, jealous, with a faint mustache, which has always stuck me as cruel both to poor Natasha and to the patient reader. It begs the question to say, as Figes does, that Tolstoy's view is simply that Natasha is "estranged" from Western art, therefore it is bad, and that she responds "naturally" to Russian art, therefore it is good. As Figes admits elsewhere in this book, Tolstoy was far more complex in his personal beliefs than this, and his writing improved when he could abandon his didacticism. Natasha's dance and her reaction to the opera are both examples of a Tolstoyan rigidity into which Figes periodically slips.

Conclusion: read it together with _The Icon and the Axe._