{"id":363,"date":"2018-10-09T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/?p=363"},"modified":"2018-10-09T13:55:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T17:55:00","slug":"one-mans-trash-is-another-mans-treasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/the-domestic-exotic\/one-mans-trash-is-another-mans-treasure\/","title":{"rendered":"One Man&#8217;s Trash is Another Man&#8217;s Treasure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A major theme that emerges from the readings this week is the idea of the Russian peripheries as distant lands filled with misunderstood and unappreciated natural purity. Tolstoy\u2019s <em>The Cossacks <\/em>most strikingly reveals this through Olenin\u2019s journey to the Caucasus mountains and his gradual attitude shift towards life in the empire\u2019s periphery. Olenin\u2019s friends initially question his decision to go to the Caucasus, saying that they themselves \u201cwouldn\u2019t do it for anything,\u201d which reveals the important perspective the city dwellers have on these distant lands (7). While Moscow society is preoccupied with establishing one\u2019s social status and speaking French, the periphery is viewed as undesirable (8). Olenin to some extent still embodies these characteristics at the start of his journey, as upon viewing the mountains for the first time he comments that \u201che could not find anything attractive in the spectacle of the mountains of which he had read and heard so much\u201d (15). This is in line with Moscow society\u2019s blas\u00e9 attitude towards the periphery; however, Olenin\u2019s attitude quickly changes the next day when he clearly sees the \u201cenormous, pure white masses with their delicate contours, [as if it were an] apparition\u201d (15-16). This marks a turning point for Olenin, where he starts to reject his city ways and embrace what the periphery has to offer.<\/p>\n<p>Olenin\u2019s embrace of natural purity makes him \u201cquite a different man,\u201d as he turns over a new leaf and adopts the Circassian way of life (48). Through his immersion in the majestic nature of the Caucasus mountains, he is reborn with more vigor than he ever had while living in Moscow (52). Olenin\u2019s transformation critiques Moscow society while at the same time extols the splendor of the empire\u2019s periphery that goes unappreciated by many. The Caucasus mountains serve as a physical, cultural, and societal escape from the Russian interior that Tolstoy brings to light through Olenin\u2019s embrace of the land and its people.<\/p>\n<p>Pushkin\u2019s poem, <em>Farewell to Russia, <\/em>also touches on the interior peoples\u2019 perspectives of distant Russian lands. What is most surprising by this poem is narrator\u2019s mention of his \u201cexile\u2026 beneath the Caucasian skies,\u201d as it highlights how the Russian authority punishing him obviously viewed the Caucasus region as a vile punishment (5-6). The narrator, on the other hand, is greatly pleased to escape the undesirable conditions of the interior, which further emphasizes the varying interior perspectives of the periphery. To conclude, one question I have is whether those in the interior considered the empire\u2019s periphery part of Russia, or more as foreign non-Russian regions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A major theme that emerges from the readings this week is the idea of the Russian peripheries as distant lands filled with misunderstood and unappreciated natural purity. Tolstoy\u2019s The Cossacks most strikingly reveals this through Olenin\u2019s journey to the Caucasus mountains and his gradual attitude shift towards life in the empire\u2019s periphery. Olenin\u2019s friends initially [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":686,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[46,42,43,10,44,45],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-domestic-exotic","tag-farewell-to-russia","tag-interior","tag-periphery","tag-pushkin","tag-the-cossacks","tag-tolstoy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}