Russian Idleness, European Business: Work and Commerce in 19th-Century Russian Idealism
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Russian Idleness, European Business: Work and Commerce in 19th-Century Russian Idealism
Speaker: Andrea Zink, University of Innsbruck, Austria
The construction of national stereotypes, comparisons between Russians and Western Europeans, in the first place Germans, but also English and French, were common in Russian literature long before the Realist age. Aleksandr Pushkin’s romantic tale Pique Dame is one well-known example of a text emphasizing the differences between a German and his Russian counterparts. The story focuses on the mercantile mentality and rational thinking of the German hero, yet his decline after his lapse into gambling – a risky anti-economy apparently better suited to the Russian way of living – seems only logical.