Incluimos la reseña que a esta obra, publicada por la Universidad de Pittsburgh en el año 2010, le dedicara el Journal of Social History (45-3, primavera de 2012). Desde nuestro punto de vista, las aportaciones más interesantes son las de Olga Glagoleva (bestialismo en la Rusia dieciochesca), Iam Helfant (la imagen del lobo en la Rusia decimonónica), y Jane Costlow (encuentros literarios entre osos y humanos en la Rusia tardozarista).The association of humans and animals is a hot topic. The treatment of animals has become a pressing concern. Jane Costlow and Amy Nelson situate their volume in “the rapidly growing field of animal studies” and related disciplines of “ethology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior” (2). They explore how conceptions of the “animal other” might have informed Russian views of nature historically (3). They suggest in their introduction that “Russians have often understood themselves to be more ‘Natural’ than their Western European neighbors” (3). They take their cue from John Berger, Claude Levi-Strauss and the American environmental historian William Cronon in considering attitudes toward the natural environment. Nigel Rothfels, author of a study of the origins of the modern zoo, sets the tone in his preface by noting Berger's claim that “we can learn something significant about a culture by the way it looks at animals” (ix).
The authors have much to say about Russians and animals. The book is divided into four sections, two on Imperial Russia, one on the Soviet era, and a fourth on the late Soviet and post-Soviet years. The five essays in the first two sections range widely. Olga Glagoleva shows how a pig thrown through the window of a noble's domicile in the eighteenth century was taken as an insult to honor and women folk in a litigious society. Mikhail Alekseevsky explores folk beliefs about animal diseases that led to suspicions of veterinarians and doctors as well. Ian M. Helfant describes the hunting of wolves and the toll wolves took on livestock. Costlow discusses ancient cults of the bear, folktales about bears, “Bear Comedies,” and legislation about the training of bears but also how Nikolai Kliuev, Vasiliii Rozanov, Vsevolod Garshin, Lydua Zinovieva-Annibal, and others wrote about animals. In an equally engaging piece on a related theme, Nelson focuses on legislation to protect animals in the late imperial period including prohibitions on the beating of horses. It is revealing that the issue of preventing cruelty to animals came up at the time of the Great Reforms within the context of the new judicial statues. Taken together, these five essays suggest the great diversity in Russians' engagement with both wild and domesticated animals.
The third section is something of a disappointment since it lacks a discussion of Soviet legal approaches to animal welfare. Nevertheless, the four essays are interesting in and of themselves. Andy Bruno touches on nature preserves and the Soviet effort to contextualize exotic animal husbandry with reference to reindeer herding on the Kola Peninsula. Katherine Lahti describes Vladimir Mayakovsky's identification with animals with an eye to the writer's tragic sense of his own vulnerability. Anne Kleimola explores cruelty and compassion for animals in a fine essay on V. L. Durov's methods of animal training. Finally, Arja Rosenholm explains the association of horses with masculinity in the late imperial and early Soviet period, a topic that will resonate with readers of Isaac Babel as well as with students of Russian monuments. The essays in the first three sections are informative but whether they demonstrate a particular Russian attitude toward nature or animals remains unclear.
The contributors to the final section also depart from direction set in the introduction. Instead of the treatment of animals and their association with the natural environment, they focus on the animal element within humans. This of course has been an issue in western civilization at least since Aristotle's observation that “man is a political animal.” If the editors had taken this tack, however, they would have produced a rather different book, one in which Russian humor and popular culture might have figured more prominently. In that case, they could have taken their lead from Jacques Derrida's stimulating posthumous study that appeared in English in 2009 with the title The Beast and the Sovereign but in French almost a decade earlier. Derrida suggests a set of issues that includes the quality of being human, self-control, state authority, and civilization's superiority over barbarism.
The authors of the last three essays move tentatively in this direction. Jose Alaniz describes Peter Aleshkovsky's Life of Ferret (Zhizneopisanie khorka) and other manifestations of what he calls the “the manimal” in the last couple of decades, including Oleg Kulik's impersonation of a dog as a form of performance art. Gesine Drews-Sylla in her essay on grotesque post-Soviet portrayals of animals further explores Kulik's and other evocations of the animal, including Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog (Sobvach'e serdtse). Finally, Daria Kabanova analyzes Tatyana Tolstaya's novel The Slynx also with some attention to the confusion between what is human and what is not.
The collection as a whole is broadly suggestive of opportunities for further research. One cannot help but miss an essay or two on the role of pets in Russian life. Another issue that might have been explored is that of the circus, only touched on by Anne Kleimona in her fine essay on Durov. An essay on zoos in Russia would likewise have fit well into the volume. The electronic media is also ignored, though topics there would include everything from documentaries about animals to cartoons with animals as characters. Children's literature is of course yet another form of expression in which animals with human qualities have been regularly portrayed. Despite these missing pieces to the larger puzzle this is a stimulating volume that can be read with pleasure.