The Age of Enlightenment in Russia

In the world culture the eighteenth century was marked by the Age of Enlightenment, which left its deep imprint in history. It was at this time that such a direction as baroque ends, giving way to rococo. In Europe, a kind of conflict begins between a poorly educated, but thanks to the books the active population and educated power.

Born in England thanks to the development of the intellectual movement, the basic ideas of the philosophy of enlightenment gradually began to spread to Germany, France, Russia and other European countries.

Particularly influential were the Enlighteners from France - Diderot, Rousseau, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Voltaire, who called themselves "rulers of doom". They believed that an atheistic, rational way of thinking and knowledge is able to shake the obsolete order, change its moral and ethical foundations, and this will accelerate the course of the historical process and the coming social transformations.

The art of the Age of Enlightenment, which propagated the greatness of Mind, Freedom and Happiness, tried to really reflect these ideas. That's why literature brings to the first place such characters, which are the embodiment of inquisitive mind, sense of justice, are able to resist ignorance.

Literary Rococo offers the reader colorfully described landscapes, wordplay, ironic speech, flavored with hints, frivolities and omissions. Especially noticeable is the style of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Lesange.

The era of enlightenment in Russia began with Peter the Great. By the end of his reign, thanks to reforms, the Russians confidently went to "Europeanization", involved in the culture of the West. The formation of science, education was very fast.

The epoch of enlightenment in Russia brought with it magazines, newspapers, portrait painting.

By the 18th century, Russian society, considered to be more or less educated, consisted only of representatives of the Moscow and St. Petersburg nobles, as well as of very few intellectual raznochintsy.

For Europe, the benchmark was the French Enlightenment. Therefore, the era of enlightenment in Russia made it possible to expand cultural ties with France, especially after the second half of the eighteenth century. Nobles were given the opportunity to learn about art and literature during their travels abroad, and a decent knowledge of the language of Diderot and Voltaire made it easy for them to study the works of these enlighteners. The educated Russian society was read by such works as "Orleans virgin", "Nuns", "Lame demon", "Immodest treasures", "Persian letters" and many other masterpieces of the enlightenment direction, which described "the fleeting feast ruled by Venus and Bacchus" .

However, the Age of Enlightenment in Russia differed much from the European variant, and its seeds, "sprouted" on domestic soil, produced a slightly different result than in the West.

Russia Peter's time, and later under the reign of Catherine II, was very different from Voltaire France. A brilliant empire, behind the facade of which was an endless country with a population that did not raise its head from the heavy peasant labor, did not have a third estate, which, as in the West, presented its demands to the tsar.

The Age of Enlightenment in Russia was supported by nobles and autocracy, who used new Western cultural trends to preserve the existing serfdom.

And although after Peter's death his reform was continued by Catherine ll, who dreams of becoming an "enlightened queen", the genuine Russian enlighteners were Dashkova, Golitsyn, Sumarokov, Novikov, Fonvizin and others who tried to modernize Russian reality.