Anastasia Grigorovskaya's Rport at the EUSP

Research Fellow at the IL for the Study of Russian and European Intellectual Dialogue Anastasia V. Grigorovskaya gave a presentation at the scientific seminar organized by the European University at Saint Petersburg

In December 2023, research fellow of the Laboratory Anastasia V. Grigorovskaya gave a presentation "Russian-European Utopian Dialogue: Practices of Modernization (from Folk Utopia to Utopias of the First Half of the 19th Century)" at the European University in St. Petersburg.

The report traces the path of formation of Russian utopian tradition from folk utopia to utopias of the first half of the XIX century through the prism of understanding utopia as a form of reflection of the nation about its own future and a repository of social and psychological contradictions displaced from the sphere of manifested contradictions, acting as a predictor of modernization processes in society and reflecting its dynamics and simultaneously influencing it.
The methodology of the report is based on A. Giddens' idea of the triad "unconscious - discursive - practical", which he applies to the interpretation of social processes. The report demonstrated the movement from discursive consciousness in Russian folk utopia to the emergence of practical consciousness in the utopias of the 18th — first half of the 19th century (M. Scherbatov, A. Ulybyshev, F. Bulgarin, V. Odoevsky), which took place under the influence of the Western European utopian tradition (T. More, F. Bacon, L.-C. Mercier).

You can watch a video of the presentation on the European University's YouTube channel.