The Face of Russia: Anguish, Aspiration & Achievement in Russian Culture

by James H. Billington

Explores Russia's art and culture in relation to the country's political processes

Genres: Russia

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

James Hadley Billington, the Librarian of Congress Emeritus, was a leading American academic and author who taught history at Harvard and Princeton before serving for 42 years as CEO of four federal cultural institutions. He served as the 13th Librarian of Congress after being nominated as 13th by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, and his appointment was approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate. He retired as Librarian on September 30, 2015.
(Source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book about Russian Culture and how it was influenced/influences Russian history, politics, and society. People in the West tend to be somewhat ignorant of Russia, and there tends to be a deep rooted suspicion of them.

Somebody once said that if Russians looked as different as they think from Western Europeans then they'd be probably treated better, but since they resemble us in so many ways (culturally and not making this simply racial focused) we find it jarring when they diverge with us after seeming so familiar at a distance. Russians even self-identify with this ambivalence by sometimes talking about their "Eurasian" identity. Scholars like Huntington suggest excluding them from The West for their culture not being shaped by the Renaissance and the Classical Greco-Roman civilization, despite its claims of succession as the Third Rome (a definition that more or less is designed to exclude Eastern Europe).

I like to include Eastern Europe into the West, and think of it as the rather neglected and marginalized third leg of the proverbial stool. Russia's importance is that it's the biggest part of the Orthodox East, and as a result cannot be ignored in the way that say Romanian or Bulgarian culture is (Westerners care more about Greece's Hellenic past more than the Orthodox Byzantine culture that succeeded it). The weird thing is that Russian culture itself is a rather young one on the World Stage, its historic record only beginning around 1000 AD which for Western cultural spheres of France and Italy was the Middle Ages.

The author makes a point Russia's cultural youthfulness causes problems as it seeks to express itself, but finds itself constantly in admiration of elder societies, often borrowing their final forms (be it Orthodox Christianity, Baroque architecture, or even Marxist philosophy) seeking to find its own meaning through them. However this causes problems since such forms aren't indigenous or original and tend to break down over time. Oswald Spengler himself said that Russia was victim of "Pseudomorphosis" in which Russian culture was suppressed by the weight of the West. Geography and history also fit in because of Russia's insecure borders (it sits on a giant plateau barring the Urals which made it rather defenseless to barbarian hordes like the Mongols) and its turmoils from civil war, tyranny and invasion.

Some may wonder what this has to do with anything, but culture in its various forms (music, movies, painting, architecture) does impact society. Despite the pretentious claims by one too many mediocre art students grating our nerves, there is still truth in the matter. So Russia's complicated political problems of endemic corruption, lack of transparency, and authoritarianism do not exist in a vacuum, and Tolstoy's writings or Tchaikovsky's music is not divorced from politics either. Indeed Imperial Russia's obsession with the Baroque seen in St.Petersburg encapsulate Peter the Great's obsession with the West and attempt to emulate it and surpass it. Soviet art did the same with Modernism. As Russia struggles to move past its brutal self-repression of the Soviet Era, it will have to look to its culture in order find understanding as it seeks to build an authentic and functional civic society, and Billington provides a great window to readers of that culture.

[Yelizaveta Price · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, an incredibly interesting interpretation of Russian cultural history. Throughout the book, the author needlessly inserts his own American-supremacy mindset, but that is to be expected.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author James Billington, American academic and one of the world's leading non-Russian experts on Russia, tells the biography of the country through Russian art and culture. Starting with paintings, in particular religious icons, he moves on to artchitecture, literature, music, and film. I am not a Russophile, but I do appreciate a good writer, and Billington writes well, interweaving the works of major cultural figures such as painter Rublev, architect Rastrelli, writer Gogol, composer Musorgsky, and director Eisenstein with both their impact on Russian thinking and how Russian society and politics changed their art in response. To be honest, I found the artistic perspective a little pretentious, and yearned for the prose of a standard history book: I love reading about dates and battles and military strategy and real-life political intrigues. However, the artistic perspective was a novel approach that gave a different appreciation of historical events, bringing a more human touch to the way war and other societal upheavals affect a nation. The book was published just before the turn of the millennium, when Boris Yeltsin was in charge; it might be time for a new edition, with the events of the past 14 years showing their effects on the culture of this fascinating, tumultuous, and ever-changing country.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I skimmed this. I don't see the point of it though Billington says it multiple times: the Russians take over a creative medium from a "more advanced" culture, then they make major, original works and then once they've done this, they toss it out, breaking it up. I don't see it. Of course he makes his argument by choosing which artists to focus on. But I still just don't see it. It seemed tedious to me.