Russia is Burning!
“Fire and arson,” writes Cathy Frierson in All Russia is Burning!: A Cultural History of Fire and Arson in Late Imperial Russia, “carried intense symbolic and material meaning as part of Russia’s search for a modern identity. When Russia joined the European experience of “high modernism,” uncontained fire in the hands of recently emancipated peasants came into view for educated Russians and became an object of the campaign against Russia’s developmental delay behind the West.”
Whether the campaign against “uncontained fire” that Frierson speaks of continues to exist is unlikely, the idea that fire represents Russia’s “developmental delay behind the West” continues to occupy some minds. Take for example, C. J. Chivers’ article “Deadly Fires Expose Disorder in Putin’s Russia.” Ravaging fires, engulfing flames, and thick smoke more than just kill people and damage property. They, according to Chivers’, are symbols of Russia’s backwardness in general, and the chimera of its ..read more
