A Review of “When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature,

1861-1917” by Jeffrey Brooks

Phillip Mendenhall, IMARES, 20 October 2010

Originally compiled in the later years of the Soviet regime When Russia Learned to Read
offers a rare case study of pre-Soviet popular literature at a time when most of the material
mentioned was under lock-and-key. In 1985, Brooks was granted unprecedented (and often
illegal) access to these poorly managed piles of booklets and early novels in the archives and
libraries of Moscow and Leningrad. What expounded was a quantitative index of the remaining
popular booklets or lubok, followed by a qualitative analysis of the people that read, wrote and
distributed them from the time of the emancipation in 1861 to the beginning of 1917. And as to
be expected, a second edition published in 2003 concerning more recent events in relation to the
text is discussed in brief as well.

Of up most importance is the fact that this written from the people’s perspective on
literature and that the elite and ruling class of the time play on a secondary, responsive role to the
key actors of the text. What this book is not, is a chronological spread of literacy and schooling
but rather how they have; “entered the experience and imagination of ordinary people” (pg.3).
How literacy is perceived at the time by peasants and urban class workers, is used by the author
to better explain what is written and why, than by what is considered to be the belle lettres of
‘proper’ literacy of the upper class.

To lay the foundation for what was desired in literature and what was actually read
Brooks devotes the first section of his book to the progression and use of schooling among the
lower-class rural peasantry and the average city worker. The low amount of schooling is a given
with the necessary statistics to support it, but what is of greater interest is that this was often a
choice rather than a consequence of some external factor. Brooks explains the philosophy of
minimal schooling by the peasantry by the fact that it was deemed unnecessary to educate
oneself further than what was required to fulfill one’s station in life as a farmer or laborer. As a
result early success in publishing was found in the manufacture and distribution of religious-
based booklets often under the guidance or suggestion of the local clergy, which in many cases,
also oversaw the local school.

Literacy however increased within a generation and the religious texts, while still read,
were surpassed by short booklets (lubochnaia literatura) in genres such as folklore and
traditional chivalrous tales. The character of these novels and the repetition of their basic plots is
one way in which Brooks emphasizes the connection between author and reader. In doing so
Brooks takes up the classic argument on whether the subject was influenced by its readers or
vice versa. The author argues both, but in the end takes up the former. He makes note of the key
fact that the authors of these publications were often peasants themselves. Folklore and fairytales
was not only the preferred digest of the peasant reader, they were also possibly the only ones
known to them. Tolstoy and Gorky, in this period, were simply unknown to the average reader.

In addition, until advancements in publishing were to take root in Russia, publishing itself
was little more than a cottage industry. Illustrated texts were often single wood-cut prints and
hand-illustrated by peasant women in the nearby villages. Thereby, the number of editions and
their length were severely limited in the late 1880’s (pg. 59). This technological hindrance is
cited more than most as the restriction on literacy. As such, Brooks writes that by the next
decade and especially into the years before the 1905 war with Japan, literature was to see both an
increase in actual volume as well as in the genres presented.
 By the early 20th century the rural population was starving for increased print on such
genres as: short detective stories, “women’s novels,” and adventure tales. Brooks breaks down
these genres into four major themes under discussion in section two and includes: “freedom and
rebellion,” “national identity and the image of foreigners,” “science and superstition,” and
“success and social mobility.” Urban workers seemed to have a preference for stories concerning
foreign places (not translations of foreign tales), and the rural population preferred stories about
local legends, bandits and merchant adventures, or things they could more readily relate to.

The results of which, was nothing short of a change in the motives of the population. At
this time only 2% of boys and 1% of girls wanted to follow in the foot steps of their parents and
stay in the village, something of which is similar in trends today. The so called “careerist-
parents” (pg. 55, 170) were raising children that despised manual labor. This new generation
sought increasing sources of information in an increasingly faster fashion. The pot-boilers and
periodicals gained a wide readership in the last days of the old regime and beginning in 1905,
they sought more and more news about the outside world at large. Accompanying the broad-
leafed (and legal) journals of daily news were the one-page flyers and multi-page magazines of
more dissident groups vying for the attention of the proletariat. Brooks does not let this go
unnoticed and remarks at how, at the time, legal and illegal versions of current events were sold
side by side and often by the same boy on the corner. And yet to the majority of their intended
audience, there was no difference in what was professed as being ‘legitimate’ news for the
masses and what was seeking a deeper connection with the suffering masses.

Readers were developing more modern and cosmopolitan interests. The kopek-
newspapers (sometimes literally named such as the Gazeta Kopeika, 1907-1918) provided
readers with a mix of serial fiction and devoted lavish attention to crime, scandal and ‘human-
interest’ (pg. 130) stories as many writers and publishes adopted a more liberal political position.
Familiarized, serialized story lines became famous in their own right and often the writers (again
of humble origins) moved passed the written word on to the silent screen to continue the lives of
their characters in motion pictures.

Finally Brooks devotes four chapters to the four main themes mentioned above, not
simply in description, but rather to beg the question of whether what was changing in the
ordinary lives of Russians could be seen in its literature. The results of which were manifest in; a
better understanding of the West, the role of the individual (pg. 166), ideas of the new
Russianness (pg. 214), as well as a change in the relationships with the church and state (pg.
244). Eventually the early organized public readings by the literate reader in the village, were
replaced by “cheap brochures and magazines” (pg. 351) leaving the peasant and working class to
decide for themselves what they wanted to read.

Brooks tells us that the “cultural activists” by the end of the first decade of the 20th
Century were generally pleased with the amount of reading that was being done, “but there was
little that they could do about what was being read” (pg. 352). Like many in the period of time
that he has described, Brooks leaves us with a feeling that; “what one reads affects one
personality” (pg. 296) and that the general public frame of mind, was unable to cope with the
growing commercial diversity of literature and its political uses, leaving a census ripe for
change.