The Icon and The Axe

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This is an interpretive history of modern Russian thought and culture. It is the product of one man’s scholarship, reflection, and special interests. There is no illusion—and I hope no pretense—of offering an encyclopedic inventory of the Russian heritage or any simple key to understanding it. This is a selective account which seeks to provide new information and interpretation and not merely to codify an already established consensus: to open up rather than to “cover” this vast subject.

The period under consideration is the last six hundred years, during which Russia has emerged as a powerful, distinctive, creative civilization. The narrative will deal with some of the anguish and aspiration as well as the achievements of Russian culture; restless dissenters as well as ruling oligarchies; priests and prophets as well as poets and politicians. No attempt will be made to provide a complete picture of any individual cultural medium or personality, or to make the quantity of words devoted to a given subject a necessary index of intrinsic cultural quality. This work will draw on those materials which seem to illustrate best the distinctive central concerns of each era of Russian cultural development.

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