Authors

Discussion

This paper examines the anthology Bee. A Collection for Popular Reading (1865–1881), compiled and published by the Russian poet Nikolai Shcherbina. Based on unpublished archival materials, I argue that Shcherbina’s ideological and educational publishing project should be viewed within the paradigm of the disciplinary and civilising formation of the narod as a subject, including as a readership category. By exploring how Shcherbina’s project sought to promote the Russian idea and belief in Slavic brotherhood within the Western and Southwestern provinces, my paper makes a timely contribution to our understanding of the role of literature in consolidating Russian imperial identity from the 19th century to the present day.

My analysis foregrounds the role of The Bee as a vehicle for fostering political loyalty among the lower-class audience of the Western provinces in the aftermath of the Emancipation Reform of 1861 and the Polish Insurrection of 1863. With the extensive state support, Shcherbina’s anthology substantiated and justified the policy of Alexander II and the desire to retain Western lands that were considered primordially Russian, to Russify the population of these territories and to unify them culturally and religiously. Shcherbina regarded the strengthening of Russia’s position in these lands as an embodiment of the “Russian Orthodox cause” (‘russkoe pravoslavnoe delo’) and God’s will, with the section called “Common Slavic” (‘obshcheslavianskoe’) in the anthology devoted to explaining Russia’s hegemony among the Slavs (and those deemed Russian) by the means of a mythologised historical narrative about the common past. In line with imperial Pan-Slavists, Shcherbina promoted the historical myth of the Slavs’ spiritual birth through conversion to Christianity, seeing this both as a focal point of their blood and religious kinship and as proof of Russia’s mission to safeguard its Slavic brothers (the “weaker tribes”). Engendering political and dynastical loyalty among the empire’s Western peasantry required Shcherbina to construct a plausible explanatory narrative about Russia’s historical struggle for the Western region and to provide its population with support for national, cultural, and linguistic self-identification in the common historical past. In such a turbulent time, when the regime was apprehensive of Polish influence, The Bee could serve as one of the tools aimed at integrating the empire’s Western Slavs into the Great Russian nation.

By unfolding some of the explanatory mechanisms created and deployed by Shcherbina, we can deduce that similar narratives are widely used by Putin’s propaganda to justify cultural and military violence, as well as the war that Putin’s government unleashed upon Ukraine in February 2022.