Modernism as archaism. Nationalism and the search for modernist aesthetics in Russia

The book is devoted to the interpretation of the interaction of aesthetic searches of Russian modernism and nation -resistant ideas and interests that develop in the educated community in the late imperial period. It covers the time from the formation of the World of Art group (1898) to the period of the First World War and includes in its analysis of the sphere of fine art, literature, music and theater. The main object of interpretation in the book is the metadiscure of Russian modernism - criticism, essays and software declarations in which the idea of ​​the “national” in the field of aesthetic was formed. The dependence of the Russian cultural tradition of the last two centuries from the West, becoming a source of tension and internal conflict in the "era of nationalism", led ideologists and practitioners of modernism to search for ways to actualize autochthonous (folk, pre -Petrine) traditions and to proclaim a return to "national roots" as the meaningful meaning of an aesthetic experiment. This act of cultural constructivism was significant for both the artistic and intellectual history of Russia, its analysis changes the idea of ​​the cultural dynamics of the late imperial period and the place of experimental art in it