What Exactly Did Russian Artists Experience and Feel?
Over the past century and more, Russia has indeed produced a remarkable number of outstanding novelists, writers, composers, and artists of historical significance. Could their reflections and experiences provide valuable insights and points of reference for how Chinese culture might confront and adapt to the challenges and impacts brought about by modernization?
Author: GUDORDI | 2024-09-03
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
──Martha Graham
The author remember that during my university years, I encountered a significant question: the impact of modernity on human society. According to estimates by the World Bank, more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities. Cities with populations in the millions are commonplace, larger ones often approach ten million residents, and the biggest can even reach tens of millions.
In these cities, many people come from diverse regions and possess different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Much of their daily activity revolves around secular pursuits such as trade, commerce, entertainment, and tourism. This represents a major departure from the way human societies functioned for thousands of years. Many traditional human values and cultural systems emerged in contexts that could never have anticipated the experiences of modern urban life.
This raises an important question: can humanity’s traditional cultures adequately cope with the challenges and disruptions brought about by modernization?
The Future Direction of Chinese Culture Remains an Unresolved Question
This is a profoundly complex issue. One could even argue that the history of the past few centuries is essentially a story of how different cultures have responded to the advent of modernity. Broadly speaking, the world’s cultures can be divided into five major spheres: Western, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Russian, and others. Among these, the one most closely connected to Hong Kong is, of course, Chinese culture.
In fact, Hong Kong came into existence as a result of a war rooted in the clash between Eastern and Western civilizations, and the history of China over the past two hundred years has been closely intertwined with this reality. From the early idea of “Chinese learning as the foundation, Western learning for practical use,” to the Boxer Rebellion, the Self-Strengthening Movement, the May Fourth Movement with its calls to “overthrow the Confucian tradition” and embrace comprehensive Westernization, and later the Cultural Revolution, Reform and the Open Door Policy, socialism with Chinese characteristics, all can be viewed as responses by Chinese culture to this challenge at different points in time.
In addressing this issue, Chinese culture has already traveled a long and often difficult road. Even so, at least on the cultural level, I do not believe that the question has yet been fully resolved.
The Russian Case Is Worth Reflecting Upon
In fact, the situation in other cultures has not been much better. Even in the West, many issues remain unresolved. Within this broader context, Russia’s experience has received relatively little attention. However, this does not diminish its importance, especially given that the path Russia has taken has had profound influences on both the contemporary West and China.
I cannot recall which historian said it, but someone once remarked that Russia is an enigma. Although Russia’s history is not as ancient as China’s, the Slavic people possess a culture that stretches back more than a thousand years. The establishment of a Slavic state in Kyiv in 862 AD is generally regarded as the origin of Russia. However, the event that arguably had the greatest impact on the Slavic people was the Baptism of Rus in 988 AD, which marked their acceptance of Eastern Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. From that point onward, Eastern Orthodoxy began to permeate the very soul of Slavic civilization.
At the same time, the Baptism of Rus meant that Slavic culture inherited elements of the Judeo-Christian tradition that had already developed in the West over many centuries. The subsequent Mongol domination added another layer to Slavic culture: the Eastern tradition of autocratic monarchy. Under Mongol rule, secular authority held absolute supremacy over religious authority.
Later, the decline of the Roman Empire led to the division between Eastern and Western Rome. Eastern Orthodoxy and Constantinople emerged as an alternative religious and political center outside Rome. When the Ottoman Empire eventually conquered Constantinople, the Tsars proclaimed Moscow to be the Third Rome, replacing Constantinople as the center of Eastern Orthodoxy throughout the world.
Do the Reflections of Russian Artists Offer Valuable Lessons?
How deeply has Eastern Orthodoxy influenced Russia? This is a profound yet immensely important question. Some historians argue that Eastern Orthodoxy has always been the soul of the Slavic people and that this has never fundamentally changed over the past thousand years. Whether or not one accepts this view, few would dispute that Eastern Orthodoxy has had a profound impact on Russia and the Slavic peoples.
Among its most significant influences are at least three deep-rooted concepts: first, the idea of the Messiah or a savior; second, the belief that the Slavic people are God’s chosen people; and third, the notion that any means may be justified in the pursuit of a sacred goal. It is worth noting that some historians suggest that this last idea may have subtle, important, and far-reaching connections with the uniquely Russian concept of “Holy Foolishness” (Foolishness for Christ) and with Vladimir Lenin’s ideology of Bolshevism.
In any case, over the past century and more, Russian society has undergone tremendous upheavals in its political, economic, social, and cultural life. As the quotation cited at the beginning of this article suggests, artists have often possessed an exceptional sensitivity to social change and to the deepest aspirations of the human heart. During this period, Russia produced a remarkable number of outstanding novelists, writers, composers, and artists of historical significance.
Could their reflections and experiences provide useful insights and points of reference for how Chinese culture might confront and adapt to the challenges brought about by modernization? Could the novels and ideas of Ayn Rand be regarded as one strand of this broader intellectual tradition? These are questions that are certainly worthy of deep reflection.