Zhuravel Olga D.,
Doctor of Philology, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Andrei Borisov – Old Believer writer of the Enlightenment
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2020-2-10
The article is based on the writings of Andrei Borisov, an Old Believer, head of the Vyg community from 1780 to 1791. The article is devoted to the problem of the connection of Old Believer culture with the general Russian cultural context. The author develops a view of Andrei Borisov as a person who, according to R.O. Crammey, “lived in two cultural worlds”. The author draws attention to the fact that the works of this writer reflected commonplaces and key concepts of not only the Russian Enlightenment, but also sentimentalism. Sentimentalism in Russia was the result of the literary culture of the 18th century, the logical conclusion of the Enlightenment program. Anthropocentricity, which was characteristic of the aesthetic program of Russian sentimentalism, was reflected in the image of the author. The author in the works of Andrei Borisov is not a conditional rhetorical image. New ways of representing the personality of the leader of the Old Believer community, who appears as an ordinary person endowed with the ability to feel and empathize, even experience physical pain, are shown. Rationality is combined in the image of the author with emotionality and moralism, this is a real person, a being as emotional as moral and thinking about civic duty (“Regrettable Behavior”, The Life of Andrei Denisov and other works). The article shows that Andrei Borisov focused on the problem of morality. The key category in his work is “virtue”. Virtue was the most important concept in the program of Russian sentimentalism. From the standpoint of morality and virtue, Andrei Borisov even solved polemical problems (the problem of prayer for the emperor), he argued that secular morality and virtue are more important than correct faith, and that is why Old Believers can pray for the emperor. The article notes the closeness of the work of Andrei Borisov to the official church sermon of the late 18th century. Andrei Borisov’s contemporary, Metropolitan Plato (Levshin, Metropolitan since 1787), in his sermons interpreted the Enlightenment as a virtue, in his texts morality and feeling are put in the first place, as in sentimentalism. Thus, the style of the era extends not only to secular literature and art, but also to church preaching, and to Old Believer creativity of the late 18th century. The article offers new arguments in favor of the view that the Old Believer culture was part of Russian culture, and not a self-sufficient island of traditionalism, isolated from a changing society.
Publishing: 29/04/2020
How to cite: Zhuravel O.D. Andrei Borisov – Old Believer writer of the Enlightenment // Historical Courier, 2020, No. 2 (10), pp. 131–144. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2020/ISTKURIER-2020-2-10.pdf
Links: Issue 2 2020
Keywords: Old Believers; Vyg; Andrei Borisov; Enlightenment; Sentimentalism