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Bunyn - копия

During the post-Ivan Time of Troubles, Russian literature was limited to Old Church Slavonic, but the Romanov era saw the introduction of Western literature through translations and printing. Peter the Great's reign (1682-1725) accelerated Westernization, leading to the secularization of literature and a cultural divide between the nobility and the general populace. His reforms, while modernizing Russian literature, came at a significant cultural cost, as they distanced the elite from traditional Russian language and folklore.

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9 views1 page

Bunyn - копия

During the post-Ivan Time of Troubles, Russian literature was limited to Old Church Slavonic, but the Romanov era saw the introduction of Western literature through translations and printing. Peter the Great's reign (1682-1725) accelerated Westernization, leading to the secularization of literature and a cultural divide between the nobility and the general populace. His reforms, while modernizing Russian literature, came at a significant cultural cost, as they distanced the elite from traditional Russian language and folklore.

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distortion504
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During the post-Ivan Time of Troubles, literature in Russia was confined to Old Church

Slavonic, though the people clung to folktales and Russianized Western romances.
Under the first Romanovs, every Western form of literature except theology began to be
translated and widely promulgated with the advent of Russian printing in 1564. In 1678,
Simeon Polotsky, tutor to Czar Alexei’s children, introduced a syllabic verse system,
solemn and even pompous, that dominated Russian poetry for a century.

Westernization accelerated under Peter the Great, who, during his reign from 1682 to
1725, reformed every aspect of Russian civilization. The czar personally directed this
mammoth invasion of Western thought, but he enforced its adoption by ruthless, even
barbaric means. Peter’s unprecedented debasement of the Church removed schools
and literature from religious control, and from 1708, all nonreligious texts were
published in a simplified Russian alphabet rather than in Old Church Slavonic. West
Russian syllabic verse, originally panegyric or didactic, became fashionable among
Peter’s courtiers as an instrument of amatory and pastoral poetry, in imitation of French
and German models. Peter’s reformations were implemented at enormous cultural cost.
The secularization of literature contributed to the dangerous rift opening between the
general population and Peter’s sophisticated nobility, who largely abandoned the
language and the folklore of the exploited populace.

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