one of the earliest literary journals (Industrious Bee, 1759). Lomonosov excelled at
poetry, developing the ode in particular. Trediakovskii, Sumarokov, and others did
yeoman’s work in introducing educated Russians to European literature in their
translations and adaptations of French, English, Italian, and German novels,
histories, plays, and poems; playwright Sumarokov was particularly wide-ranging
(Amanda Ewington calls him Voltairian), publishing religious and secular poems
and essays that popularized current trends in European philosophy and literature or
explored Russian history. Particularly in poetry, these three authors’language was
complex, even esoteric; they struggled to shape Russian content into classical genres
like the ode; in the 1780s Gavrila Derzhavin worked out a“lighter”register of
narrative prose that paved the way for Karamzin’s and Pushkin’s more vernacular-
based Russian literary language.
By mid-century journals of literature and social commentary were appearing;
most survived only briefly, but editors’willingness to try again testifies to ongoing
interest. In 1759 both Sumarokov’sIndustrious Beeand a Cadet Corps publication
(Holiday Time) came and went, struggling economically with a limited reading
public and distribution network. Nevertheless, that reading public made its pres-
ence known in the second half of the century, supporting publications and shifting
its tastes towards European belles-lettres and other topics of personal edification.
Gary Marker’s study of eighteenth-century printing and“intellectual life”found
that publications in religion steadily declined (46 percent of all publications
1725 – 55, 20 percent 1756–75, 17 percent in 1787) in favor of belles-lettres
(16 percent 1725–55; 17 percent 1756–75; 30 percent in 1787), history and
geography (6 percent 1725–55; 10 percent 1756–75; 14 percent in 1787) and
secular philosophy (1 percent 1725–55, 11 percent 1756–75; 16 percent in 1787).
The foundations were laid for an efflorescence of intellectual and literary life in
Enlightenment mode in Catherine’s time by the state itself. Literary and satirical
journals revived in 1769 when Catherine II openly patronized such work and many
were founded. Often anonymously, she supported and contributed to journals
from 1769 through the 1770s, sparring in debates about morality and social
criticism. She wrote a great deal, usually of didactic content expressed allegorically.
In theTale of Prince Khlorus(1781), dedicated to her grandson, wise Tsarina Felitsa
models to the young prince the virtue of taming one’s passions and the triumph of
reason; in a series of plays Catherine satirized corrupt officials, boorish gentry, and
Masonic“superstition.”Catherine encouraged lively discourse, in print and in
salon society, even permitting satire and“humorous”critique of herself as long as
it did not cross the line into political opposition. Nikolai Novikov and others
sparred with her in satirical journals; at his press at Moscow University Novikov
also published an array of geographies, histories, dictionaries, primary sources from
Russian history, children’s literature, medicine, and pedagogy. Theater also bur-
geoned as a forum for modeling Enlightenment civility: Denis Fonvizin’s comedic
genius inBrigadir(1769) andThe Minor(1783) spelled out a morality based on
religion, education, and service.
The Synod, the Academy of Sciences, and Moscow University controlled most
printing into the 1770s. A few private printing presses were permitted in the late
438 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801