Russian Culture

"Russian Culture" — the last book published posthumously by the outstanding Russian scientist-philologist, academician Dmitry Likhachev. This is his "legacy", the result of many years of reflection on Russian and world culture — and on Russia itself: astonishing, dual, and always seeking extremes…

The future academician was born before the revolution, in 1906. He retained memories of all of 20th century Russia — from the "artisans and ballerinas" of the tsarist era to Stalinism, the siege of Leningrad, and the "thaw". He knew Russia over the course of a century — but writes as if he lived for a thousand years and condensed its history into a single point: in his book, Yaroslav the Wise and Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Sergius of Radonezh, the icon painter Dionysius and Ivan the Terrible "cohabitate". However, when addressing the past, Likhachev invariably seeks answers for the present — and calls for responsibility for it.

The author writes about literature and language, painting and architecture, the national character of Russians — and about culture as a "holistic environment", from which one cannot extract one part without destroying the whole. But this is not a cold game of erudition, but a reflection on good and evil, the individual and the crowd, freedom in an era of cruelty and the selflessness of conscience — a thought guided by deep moral feeling.

The book is meant to help each reader attain an awareness of their connection to the great Russian culture — but not only that. It is a true manifesto of humanism — and an assertion that culture, according to the author, is stronger and more necessary than an "armada of tanks".