Vladimir Putin’s announcement this week that “we need to place aside political and other differences” in “the changeover to carbon neutrality” may perhaps have been characteristically double-edged (each a dig at the G7 nations and an advert for Russian gas) but it also highlights how crucial character, land and landscape are to the self-identity of a lot of Russian men and women. “Russia has colossal potential in our forests, tundra, agricultural lands and swamps,” Putin ongoing, though his govt cracks down on individuals who find to protect these kinds of ecosystems from possessing their “potential” extracted for vast income.
It was in the course of the 19th century that Russian writers (Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev) and artists (this kind of as Levitan, Nesterov, Savrasov and Shishkin) cast enduring one-way links involving nature and country. But, while some these kinds of as Turgenev and Shishkin ventured into the deep backwoods, a lot of expended significantly of their time on place estates that had presently been landscaped in accordance to prevailing (European) preferences. Russian Parks and Gardens by back garden historian Peter Hayden is a abundant and fascinating overview of these wonderful, challenging destinations and the people who formed them – from squabbling Russian aristocrats to deceitful Scottish architects.
At the exact same time, landscape painters of the late 19th century sought to elevate the mundane in buy to create a distinct and reliable Russian character (birch trees, puddles) in distinction to the additional set up and superficially dramatic points of interest of European landscapes. This gradual change is at the centre of Christopher Ely’s superb review This Meager Character. The book’s title is a line by Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev (“Long suffering land, / Land of the Russian men and women!” it proceeds). This combination of humility and grandeur has ongoing to influence Russian conceptions of character – from the “village prose” writers of the 1950s such as Vladimir Soloukhin ideal up to major landscaping assignments such as the new Zaryadye Park in Moscow.
It echoes Putin’s emphasis on the variety of Russia’s numerous landscapes and ecosystems. Amongst these, it is the steppe and the forest that are the two most highly effective archetypes: the steppe a boundless space of infinite freedom the forest, a primal place where every thing is at after very clear and fearfully complicated. Freshly translated by Arch Tait, Vladimir Bibikhin’s The Woods requires us into the dim psychological corners of this self-taught Soviet-era philosopher.
Bibikhin’s impact can be traced in Ivan Novikov’s brilliantly counterintuitive essay “I Want to Be Frightened of the Forest”, released in Cosmic Change, a vast-ranging compendium of modern Russian art crafting edited by Elena Zaytseva and Alex Anikina. “Trying to find the Other in the world of crops is the only way to generate a new sort of artwork,” writes Novikov, sweepingly. With contributions from Boris Groys, Maria Kapajeva, Alexander Brener and Oxana Timofeeva, this is full of gems. Pavel Pepperstein’s sci-fi limited story “The Skyscraper-Cleaner Pine Marten” is pretty wonderful in its lingering weirdness.