patriarchy, while the institution of serfdom was hardly ever questioned. Patriarchy
within families was to be softened by love andfilial duty. A particular theme of
satirical literature, as in comic plays by Denis Fonvizin, for example, was rejection
of Francophilia, construed as excessive luxury and moral weakness, and pride in
Russian identity, construed as duty, service, and order. Modern nationalism was
still in the future.
Eighteenth-century intellectuals were conscious that they were living in a“new”
era that required conscious self-fashioning, and their versions of familiar Enlight-
enment genres reflect Russian specificity. Those who had turned to the lives of
country gentlemen, including P. B. Sheremetev and Vasilii Tatishchev, penned
handbooks for estate management, couched in terms of military discipline and
moral control rather than improvement of crops, tools, and agrarian techniques.
Diaries, from Catherine Dashkova’s revealing memoir to Nikolai Karamzin’s
epistolary account of his travels in Europe, criticize the disorder and strife they
perceive in Europe. Anna Labzina’s memoir of her youth as a provincial noble-
woman in the 1790s, written a generation later under influence of her husband’s
Masonic circle, depicts her as deeply pious, independent minded, and enlightened;
Sergei Aksakov, in his family chronicle, provided the perspective of a satisfied
country gentleman. Comic theater skewered abusive serf owners, foppish youth,
corrupt officials, and ignorance in all forms. Historical works in all genres—
Lomonosov’sunfinished ode to Peter the Great (1760), Sumarokov’s historical
tragedies, Iakov Kniazhnin’sRosslav(1783) andVadim of Novgorod(1793), Mikhail
Kheraskov’sRossiada(1779)—used Russian history to build a national myth and
allegorically to explore leadership and government.
Through the 1780s Russia’s intellectual life was critical and lively. The theater in
particular became, according to Wirtschafter, a forum in which“Russians self-
consciously imagined themselves as members of a social collective.”The same was
happening across Europe: in the revolutionary atmosphere of 1788–92 in Poland,
for example, performances of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz’sReturn of the Deputyin
the provinces spread fervor for opposition. In Russia, theater did not inspire direct
political discussion as much as moralistic paths to self-fashioning. In St. Petersburg
theatrical performances occurred in the private theaters, noble homes, and imperial
palaces. Empress Elizabeth sponsored a theater and opera troupe that found a
resplendent home in Catherine II’s beautiful Hermitage Theater (completed
1787). In Moscow the Great Stone Theater (1783) had a capacity of over a
thousand. Theaters in major provincial cities in European Russia—Iaroslavl’,
Kaluga, Vologda, Tambov, Riazan’, Tambov, even Irkutsk—and in noble estates
(an estimated 155 between the 1760s and mid-nineteenth century) became focal
points for provincial sociability. Intellectual life in the provinces alsoflourished in
salons, clubs, and reading circles; in the last quarter of the century provincial presses
in European Russia published the same range of materials as was popular in the
capitals, with belles-lettres leading the way, followed by religion, history, geog-
raphy, and philosophy.
Other institutions also engaged the literary elite. Masonic lodges served as
centers of sociability and political discussion for foreigners and Russians alike, as
444 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801