Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Slavic Languages and Literatures
First Advisor
Clark, Katerina
Abstract
Drawing on extensive archival research and a comprehensive body of scholarship, this dissertation offers a critical reimagining of early 20th-century Eurasianism through the prism of literature and art. Beginning with the proto-Eurasianist schema introduced by Konstantin Leontiev in the 19th century, I argue that the influence of his deeply aestheticized combination of politics and religious thought is essential to understanding the work of Eurasianism’s founders Petr Savitsky and Petr Suvchinsky, the figures around whom the ideology’s major split occurred. This dissertation challenges the way Eurasianism has often been understood and portrayed in scholarship, and simultaneously presents an original argument about the explanatory power of applying a synthetic Eurasianist framework to some of the Modernist masterpieces of the early 20th century. Each chapter uses a particular figure as a pivot point for examining trends which collectively make up what I call the Eurasianist literary complex, a heterogenous but unified structure that anticipates and helps to define some of the most important intellectual and artistic trends of the 20th century, including structuralism, geopoetics and ornamental prose. My analysis begins with a comprehensive overview of each thinker’s output on literary matters (both published and unpublished), followed by a closer analysis of texts that exemplify their vision of “Eurasianist writing” in practice from authors including Avvakum, Leonid Leonov, Andrei Bely, Aleksei Remizov, Marina Tsvetayeva, and Boris Pilnyak. This dissertation argues that approaches to Russian literature on both sides of the Eurasianist schism and the Soviet border ultimately come together to form a rich and unified tradition.
Recommended Citation
Stachelski, John Anthony, "“The geopoetics of an undiscovered continent: Eurasianism as a writing practice”" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1297.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1297
