Leiden University Student Repository

Kiel, Werner (2016)

The Decembrist Utopia as a Patriotic Statement: the Prose of Vil’gel’m Kjuxel’beker

Master thesis | Russian and Eurasian Studies (MA)

The Decembrist movement produced a large quantity of civic poetry with utopian elements, but hardly any full-blown and self-contained literary utopias. This is surprising given the utopian ideals of its adherents and sympathizers. One of them, Vil’gelm Kjuxel’beker, produced two short utopian stories, i.e. European Letters and The Land of the Headless. Obscure and seemingly unfinished as these works are, they have hardly received any serious scholarly attention. In my thesis, I argue that these works are certainly socially relevant, and should be interpreted as patriotic documents that reflect the Decembrist discourse. European Letters, written in 1819, paints a rosy picture of Russia’s future, which has become the world’s superior civilization after Europe and America and is inhabited by morally perfected human beings that remind one of the “new man.” On the eve of the Decembrist revolt, when the initial naïve optimism had disappeared, Kjuxel’beker wrote a second, negative utopia...Show moreThe Decembrist movement produced a large quantity of civic poetry with utopian elements, but hardly any full-blown and self-contained literary utopias. This is surprising given the utopian ideals of its adherents and sympathizers. One of them, Vil’gelm Kjuxel’beker, produced two short utopian stories, i.e. European Letters and The Land of the Headless. Obscure and seemingly unfinished as these works are, they have hardly received any serious scholarly attention. In my thesis, I argue that these works are certainly socially relevant, and should be interpreted as patriotic documents that reflect the Decembrist discourse. European Letters, written in 1819, paints a rosy picture of Russia’s future, which has become the world’s superior civilization after Europe and America and is inhabited by morally perfected human beings that remind one of the “new man.” On the eve of the Decembrist revolt, when the initial naïve optimism had disappeared, Kjuxel’beker wrote a second, negative utopia under the title The Land of the Headless. This work criticizes trends in contemporary Russian society, satirically exaggerating their possible harmful consequences and pleaing for national self-liberation and preservation of the (patriarchal) national traditions.Show less

Decembrism

Romanticism

Literary utopianism

Kjuxel'beker

Author

Kiel, Werner

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

MA Russian and Eurasian Studies

Supervisors

Boele, Otto

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en