Zhivov's "Language and Culture..." in English

[Igor Nemirovsky]

Dear colleagues, 

This month Academic Studies press is publishing a book which, I believe, is an 
essential reading for every student of Russian culture. It is an English 
translation of Victor Zhivov’s "Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century 
Russia." The book is translated and introduced by Marcus Levitt. 
Please contact me for review and exam copies. 

Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia
By Victor Zhivov, translated by Marcus Levitt 
ISBN 978-1-934843-12-3 
524 pp.
Price: $ 78.00 USD, cloth
Publication date: May 2009

Victor Zhivov’s magisterial "Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century 
Russia" tells the story of the creation of a new vernacular literary language in 
modern Russia, an achievement arguably on a par with the nation’s 
extraordinary military successes, territorial expansion, development of the arts 
and formation of a modern empire. Zhivov demonstrates that debates over the 
language, which served as the primary vehicle for Russian’s modernization and 
for its entry into the Western European cultural sphere, had profound 
implications for understanding the basic social, political, and cultural dynamics 
of the era.  Language and Culture analyzes the European theories concerning 
modern literary languages that were transplanted into Russia and 
demonstrates the ways in which they were creatively transformed when 
adapted to the complex legacy of medieval and seventeenth-century literary 
culture.  Zhivov traces this creative adaptation from the “hybrid Slavonic” of 
the late seventeenth century; through Peter the Great’s demand for a new 
Russian vernacular literary language; to the “Slaveno-Russian” linguistic and 
cultural synthesis of mid-century and the beginnings of a Russian literary 
tradition; to the early nineteenth-century debates between “archaists and 
innovators”; and finally to the subsequent decoupling of secular and religious 
language and culture that in his view represented the last echo of eighteenth-
century debates.  Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia 
fundamentally revises much of the received wisdom concerning the 
development of the literary language and offers fundamentally new 
perspectives on the genesis and development of modern Russian language, 
literature and culture.  

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