Journal: The Slavonic and East European Review
Year: 2016

SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 326 In his concluding chapter, ‘Russian Culture as a Mirage’, Levitt demonstrates the exceptionally traumatic paradigm shift that overwhelmed Russia as it began to ponder its own uniqueness over its former adherence to universal and ‘self-evident’ truths. Nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals began to devalue nearly everything that the Russian Empire highlighted among its supreme achievements. They viewed the former visual accomplishments of the Empire as ‘servile imit