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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page book review that summarizes the first five chapters of Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KL9_khfigesrut.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
the national consciousness" (Figes xxvi). The author argues that Russian history and culture urge the historians to look beyond the surface of "artistic appearance" and provide insight into the consciousness
of Russian national identity (Figes xvii). Introduction and Chapter 1: European Russia: Figes draws his title from a scene in Leo Tolstoys War and Peace in which Natasha Rostov
visits the home her uncle, a nobleman who has rejected the attitudes of the aristocracy and is living with his wife, a woman of the working class, in the country.
The uncle plays a Russian folksong on his guitar and offers Natasha the challenge of dancing to the tune. Although Natasha, an aristocrat raised in European traditions, has never danced
to Russian folk music, she finds that she can dance the native steps perfectly. The first chapter presents the fact that Peter the Great insisted that the Russian nobility
refashion itself as European, adopting European languages and customs. Therefore, by the time of Tolstoy, when the upper class tried to redefine their class as Russian, they did so by
creating "historical and artistic myths," such as Natasha finding her "Russianness through the rituals of the dance" (Figes xxx). Chapter 2: Children of 1812: Essentially, Figes indicates that Peter
the Great gave the Russian upper class a split personality, divorcing them from all things Russian, by introducing European customs and language. Chapter 1 describes how Peter the Great created
an artificial European-style city out of swampland, and chapter 2 continues with how this transformation extended to the Russian upper class. Due to the imposition of the European template, being
an upper class Russian meant having a "split identity," as on one level "he was conscious of acting out his life according to prescribed European conventions," but on an other
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