Russian culture in the eighteenth century

Several edicts issued within a few weeks of each other offer a foretaste of the trajectory of Russian culture in the eighteenth century. With this in mind and with a focus on high culture, this chapter examines developments in architecture, the figurative arts, theatre, music and literature from the late seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth. Elite Russian culture at the beginning of the eighteenth century developed in a peculiar hot-house environment, show-cased in St Petersburg. The new capital's creator, Peter I, summoned foreign architects to construct palaces, and foreign artists to fill them with pictures. Historians once neglected the period between Peter I's death and the accession to the throne of his self-styled 'spiritual daughter' Catherine II. The Academy of Arts would remain the virtually unchallenged centre and arbiter of the figurative arts in Russia until the middle of the nineteenth century. Theatre made a substantial contribution to the 'civilising' mission of the Russian Enlightenment.