6 августа – Татьяна Филиппова выступила с сообщением на Круглом столе «Revisiting the Eastern Front: A Centenary Perspective on Russia's Great War»
Программа:
Revisiting the Eastern Front: A Centenary Perspective on Russia's Great War (Roundtable)
Chair:
Melissa Stockdale, U of Oklahoma,USA
Participants:
Dominic Lieven, Trinity College, Cambridge U, UK. "The Origins of Russia's Great War"
Yoshiro Ikeda, U of Tokyo. "Russian Health Resorts and Visions of an Empire during the First World War"
David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Brock U, Canada. "What Russia Wanted in the Great War"
Yaroslav Shulatov, Hiroshima City U, Japan . "Russia's Great War on the Pacific"
Tatiana Filippova, Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS. "Caricaturing Russia's Great War".
Сообщение Татьяны Филипповой
"Enemy from the East", "Enemy from the West":
Caricaturing Russia's Great War:
"It is better to laugh than cry", - these words by Nadezhda Teffi, the great Russian humorist writer, became a motto for all of her colleagues – the humorist journalists. During the World War I they succeeded in creating a wonderful, cruel and controversial world of "Friend" and "Enemy" images. In caricature, feuilletons and satiric poems Russian journalism accomplished a task that seemed impossible before that – combining the "lower" style of satire with the "higher" style of tragedy. The "Human Dimension" of war, politics and social catastrophe where the essence of their vision of the Century.
The value of the satiric magazines of that time lay in them being an indispensable attribute of the daily routine. This is because they were mainly intended for city residents, intellectuals and well-read provincial citizens. The most popular and mass magazines - «Новый Сатирикон» (The New Satiricon), «Шут» (The Fool), «Будильник» (The Alarm Clock), «Стрекоза» (The Dragonfly), «Осколки» (The Debris), «Забияка» (The Bully), «Бич» (The Whip), «Пулемёт» (The Machinegun) etc. reflected the sort of "domestic liberalism" of their creators and readers. Set far away from the higher level of political and parliamentary disputes, these magazines existed in space of everyday free-thinking inherent to Russian mentality, especially in times of war.
Just note: the authors - the writers and artists - of the circle kept themselves far from the pathos of the state order, and all of the Black Hundred's style of criticizing everything foreign. These magazines chose their own image-driven language in pictures and texts. This was a vivid indication of Russian satire experiencing its own brilliant "Silver Age".
Let us concentrate mainly on the visual part of magazines – caricatures – as the most graphic and vivid material of the satiric genre.
Working with this source allowed us to identify a significant difference in interpreting the Enemy images – in the whole diversity of the "Enemy's" national, cultural and confessional identities. It is important that "The German", "The Turk", "The Austrian" and "The Bulgarian" as satirical embodiments of wartime foes played different symbolic roles in the "repertoire" of the satirical magazine criticism. This was formed not only by the military and political reality, but also by tradition of perception of two oldest mythologemes – the ones of "the Enemy from the West" and «the Enemy from the East". For a long time have they existed in the "cultural depots" of historical memory of Russian social environment. Journalists' capability to reflect these traditions largely determined the efficiency of the Enemy images they created in caricature.
It is also worth mentioning that not only did these magazines reflect the historical-cultural stereotypes of the enemies of Russia, but they also did semantisize spontaneous wartime phobias, thus helping to overcome them to some degree. In other words, this aspect of magazines' work may be summarized as an answer to the question of who exactly was loathed, criticized and mocked in wartime Russia, and why.
In this sense "The Austrian" was since the very beginning of the war depicted in two criticism strategies: 1) as a pampered but cruel officer from aristocracy drinking champagne on the ruins of Belgrade among the corpses of dead civilians (and with a woman's head impaled on his rapier) and 2) as a monstrous macabre skeleton throwing people into the flames of the war he kindled himself. What was behind these two firm images multiplying from one issue to another and travelling through different magazines?
The first thing is the cultural rivalry between two traditional empires, two dynasties, two capitals and two elites. The image of brilliant aristocratic Vienna, the capital of luxury and pleasures, transformed into a wretched image of a sadist aristocrat, the executor of Balkan civilians. The second is the ancient political rivalry between Hapsburgs and Romanovs. It formed an easily recognizable cultural image – the one of "dance-macabre" skeleton, the monster empire. The artists make it clear for the viewer: the Hapsburg Empire is too persistent in not wanting to go away and vanish into political nom-existence, and keeps doing evil even in death – both to its people and its neighbors.
In constructing the image of "The German" as the Enemy the satirists faced a serious problem. The positive image of a German in Russia as a symbol of culture, education, order and comfortable household had for two centuries coexisted with a negative image of a Teuton, a traditional aggressor, an enemy of Slavdom, a synonym for militarism. The realities of war and the unprecedented cruelty of warfare strengthened the latter image – the negative one. The "German Pig" – the most known and recognizable cliché – stampedes European cities on pages of magazines, turning them into ruins...
This strategy was enhanced by one more theme. The common accusation against "The German" was in being cruel and immoral not only to their enemies, but to their allies as well. Kaiser's regime brutally exploits its own subjects (e.g. Wilhelm II serving hogwash of his army's victories to the table of the poor – a paraphrase of Henry IV famous saying). But the apogee of such criticism lies within interpretation of "German's" treating of his own ally – "The Turk".
But firs it is worth mentioning that "The Turk" as an enemy has the longest lasting legacy in Russian satirical tradition. He embodies the centuries of Russian phobias of a nomad, a "stepnyak", a hordesman, a "krymchak" etc. This image got actualized and "filled with blood" with every new war against the Ottoman Empire. But by the beginning of the Great War this sinister image "ran out of steam" to some extent. The "Europe's sick man" – the Ottoman Empire – was greatly affected by the latest wars it fought – the Libyan war and two Balkan wars. Also, the Young Turk Reforms allowed for another perspective in the perception of Turkey with its attempts to get modernized and reformed on the European model.
This caused concern amongst the journalists and called for new criticism strategies. After all, that modernization was based on German model and usually took forms of militarizing the old empire. With the outbreak of war the "Bosporus romance" (a traditional joke amongst the satirists depicting "German seducer" and "naïve Turkish odalisque") became a cruel reality of the Caucasian Front. Cynical pragmatism of "German's" attitude towards "the Turk" became a common subject of jokes. A pathetic and hapless "Turk" gets thrown out of a balloon by "the German" as useless ballast; he gets swung around like a bat; he gets thrown head first at Russian bayonets to divert Russian forces from the German Front...
It is clear that such rhetoric was closer to sympathy, rather than criticism towards the "Eastern neighbor". This attitude among the satirists gets stronger with time. "The Enemy from the East" in the context of the Great War becomes a victim of "The Enemy from the West" openly manipulating their Eastern "allies" in war against Russia. Summing up, the East in Russian satire leans towards becoming a victim of the West – in context of reforms, revolutions, modernization and wars.
The image of another Enemy – Bulgaria – turned out to be less developed in Russian satire. This wasn't an accident. The image of a country and its people that took that much Russian blood to liberate, was traditionally perceived as a friend in Russian consciousness. Bulgaria joining the Central Powers was taken as a shock – a betrayal of both Russian and Slavic interests. But the most hatred was drawn not by "the Bulgarian" but rather by Ferdinand Coburg, the ruler of German origins. A distinctive little figure of Bulgarian Tsar bustled through Russian caricatures for a short time and quickly found some unreliable shelter among its unreliable allies...
The internal crisis in Russia, the events of 1917 and the theme of "German trace" in Russian Revolution brought some corrections into interpretation of the "enemy from without" image. The "inner" enemy working for "the outer" one steps forward. Shortly after February 1917, while the censorship disappeared, "Nicholas Romanov" and "Alice of Hesse" were depicted as such enemies and blamed for all the afflictions Russia had been suffering. A wretched image of a former Tsar joining company of "has-beens" –Turkish Sultan, Shah of Persia and King of Portugal – is a typical theme for caricatures in the spring of 1917. Bolsheviks and their leader Lenin gradually become the main enemy. Now they are perceived as total evil bringing German project of destroying Russia to life – "for thirty pieces of silver". Satirists suggest that they are directly responsible for the worst – revolutionary – perspective of solving the Russian crisis, for disruption of liberal and democratic perspective of its development.
But the history of Russian wartime satire ends with another turn of the Enemy images theme. Shortly before closing of the last of magazines – they would have never had fit into the Bolshevik ideology – works of journalist begin to voice a late but important thought. The last bitter feuilletons by Arkadiy Averchenko, this "golden quill" of Russian satire, are devoted to it. No outer enemy or its internal accomplice could have had hurt the country that bad if only the society itself (in which journalist included themselves) had ever been able to protect their world, their culture and their state. This insight became an honest and merciless sentence journalists imposed on themselves.
So, what did Russian satirical magazines of the Great War era bring into history and culture? Perhaps, the notion of the war itself not being "Europe-centric". The equality in depiction of heroes and villains of both Asian and European war theaters, the diversity of "geographical" images of war made its whole picture become deeper.
It is equally important to mention what Russian satire did not include.
The criticism of German, Austrian, Turkish, Bulgarian regimes did not bear nationalistic or racial tones – it was mostly political and did not usually involve the people.
The faith wasn't a subject of ridicule either. "The Turk", for instance, got criticized for stupidity of behavior, cruelty, alliance with Germany, but never for being Muslim. The sacred names and traditions of Islam were never targeted by these magazines. (In these sense Russian caricaturists were not likely to get involved into a caricature scandal any soon).
But the main thing which satirical tradition of old Russia brought into this world was the ability to, despite the crises, overcome the dependence on the image of "demonic Other" along with capability for self-criticism and admission of guilt for the doom that came upon Russia. This is a property of brave people and strong intellect. Alas, these features of Russian satirical journalism had to carry on with in exile.
