Making Sense of the Empire’s Others: Mikhail Chulkov’s Dictionary of Russian Superstitions and the European Enlightenment

Holden, W. Forrest

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/122730 Copy

Description

Title

Making Sense of the Empire’s Others: Mikhail Chulkov’s Dictionary of Russian Superstitions and the European Enlightenment

Author(s)

Holden, W. Forrest

Issue Date

2024-01

Keyword(s)

• Mikhail Chulkov
• Enlightenment
• dictionaries
• superstition
• empire
• peasants
• women
• Old Believers
• rationality

Abstract

This article is an analysis of Mikhail Chulkov’s Dictionary of Russian Superstitions, published in 1782. It places the dictionary in the historical and cultural context of Enlightenment Europe, from which the genre was drawn, and suggests that Chulkov’s use of the genre was part of his own efforts to fashion himself as a civilized, Enlightened man. The article considers the various practices and beliefs described in the dictionary and lays out the various categories of people those which “superstitious” practices and beliefs were ascribed. By comparing the various categories of people described in the dictionary, the article argues that Chulkov’s vision of the Others of the Russian Empire was characterized by a sympathy towards Orthodox Christians and a skepticism about the ability of non-Orthodox subjects of the empire to become civilized. It also considers how Chulkov’s treatment of women and Old Believers reveals his own anxieties about the persistence of superstition into an ostensibly Enlightened era of history.

Series/Report Name or Number

ВИВЛIОθИКА: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, vol. 11

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.vivliofika.v11.1426

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2023 W. Forrest Holden
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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