Elusive Empirehood: Subtleties of the Portrayal of Pan-Slavism in 'Anna Karenina'

• In Event: Tolstoy’s Novels: Lived Experience in Text

Abstract

Looking into the textual genesis of "Anna Karenina"’s concluding part, the paper seeks to contextualize, in political and biographical terms, Tolstoy’s rebuke of Russian public enthusiasm that erupted in 1876 as the anti-Ottoman Slavic insurgency and outright war unfolded in the Balkans. Much of the argument focuses on what, and why, the novel’s polemical tone shares with contemporary dissenting voices of a few high-positioned, aristocratic officials in St. Petersburg whose wariness about the Russian Empire’s Pan-Slavist expansionism stemmed from a particular understanding of empirehood rather than moral, religious, or philosophical considerations.

Author

• Mikhail Dolbilov, U of Maryland, College Park