urn u Ottawa L'Universite canadienne Canada's university FACULTE DES ETUDES SUPERIEURES FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND ET POSTOCTORALES U Ottawa POSDOCTORAL STUDIES L'Universite canadienne Canada's university Sergey Tyulenev AUTEUR DE LA THESE / AUTHOR OF THESIS Ph.D. (Translation Studies) GRADE/DEGREE School of Transaltion and Interpretation FACULTE, ECOLE, DEPARTEMENT / FACULTY, SCHOOL, DEPARTMENT The Role of Translation in the Westernization of Russia in the Eighteenth Century TITRE DE LA THESE / TITLE OF THESIS A. Brisset _„„^_._^_„.„._ M.Heim EXAMINATEURS (EXAMINATRICES) DE LA THESE/THESIS EXAMINERS L. Beraha R. Grutman C. Foz N, . Teplova Gary W. Slater Le Doyen de la Faculte des etudes superieures et postdoctorales / Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies SERGEY TYULENEV THE ROLE OF TRANSLATION IN THE WESTERNIZATION OF RUSSIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PH.D. THESIS SUPERVISORS: Professor Annie Brisset (University of Ottawa) Professor Michael Heim (UCLA) School of Translation and Interpretation University of Ottawa 2009 Ottawa, Canada Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-59495-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-59495-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient tnclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada © Sergey Tyulenev, Ottawa, Canada, 2009 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 5 ABSTRACT 7 RESUME 8 A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION 10 INTRODUCTION 12 Historiography 14 Turning to Clio 15 History of Translation: Why and How? 18 Luhmann's Social Systems Theory and Translation 22 A Social Activity 22 Social Systems Theory 26 CHAPTER 1. THE BRONZE HORSEMAN: A SYMBOLIC MAP 49 1.1. A Milestone of Historical Time 49 1.2. Two Ideologies 53 1.3. A Metaphor of Translation 60 1.4. Acmetic Change of Illusio 63 1.5. Symbolic Representations of Translation 65 1.5.1. Agents of the Translation Field 65 1.5.2. Time Span of Westernization 71 1.5.3. Directions and Sources 71 1.6. Westernization as Translation-Transfer: A Systemic Approach 83 CHAPTER 2. MODERNIZATION AS WESTERNIZATION 89 2.1. The Russian Empire as a Communication System 89 2.2. An Early Latecomer 92 2.3. Westernization 97 2.4. Why Western Europe? 100 2.5. Translation Is the Way 101 CHAPTER 3. INSIDE THE SYSTEM 105 3.1. Aspects of Modernization 105 3.2. A New Discourse 105 2 3.3. A New Language Ill 3.4. Inner Systemic Mechanisms 117 3.5.'Who'and'What'of Translation 118 3.6. Double Contingency and Meaning 121 3.7. System and Translation 124 3.8. Translation in Intersystemic Communication 125 CHAPTER 4. CREATION OF MEANING 127 4.1. Experience and Action 127 4.2. A Meaning-Creating Factor 128 4.3. Broadening the Meaning Horizon 133 4.4. Social and Fact Dimensions 138 4.5. Temporal Dimension 139 CHAPTER 5. CONSTITUTION OF THE BOUNDARY 149 5.1. Fact Dimension 150 5.1.1. Sacralization of the State Power 151 5.1.2. Semiotic History of One Sacrilege 156 5.1.3. Translation as a Disguise 159 5.2. Temporal Dimension 174 5.2.1. Book Culture before Peter 175 5.2.2. Libraries in Petrine and Post-Petrine Russia 178 5.3. Social Dimension 186 CHAPTER 6. METAMORPHOSIS OF THE SYSTEM 191 6.1. The Eyes of the System 191 6.2. Collective Action 192 6.3. Uniocular System 194 6.4. Multocular System 197 6.5. Translation: System or Subsystem? 201 CHAPTER 7. BETWEEN SYSTEMS 220 7.1. Throughput 224 7.2. A Throughput Mechanism 225 7.3. Conditions, Results and Programming of Action 227 3 7.4. Intersystemic Autism 230 7.5. Scales Falling From Eyes 235 7.6. Antidotes and Manipulation 238 CHAPTER 8. IN A GLOBALIZED SYSTEM 246 8.1. A Global System 246 8.2. Striving to Become Part of Europe 249 8.3. Integration through Translation 252 CONCLUSION 269 REFERENCES 279 APPENDIX 1. Political and Social Chronology 309 APPENDIX 2. Genealogy of the Romanov Dynasty 316 APPENDLX 3. Complementarity of Sociological Theories of Luhmann, Bourdieu and Gumilev 317 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research would not have been possible without the inspiration and help of certain people and organizations. First of all, I would like to thank Professors Annie Brisset (University of Ottawa) and Michael Heim (UCLA). I am indebted to Professor Brisset for the very idea of studying eighteenth-century Russian translation from the point of view of its social functions and especially for the fruitful idea of applying Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory to it. Her unfailing encouragement kept me motivated to dig ever more deeply into studied phenomena; her expert feedback all along the way was a sure guarantee that I would not go astray. Professor Heim's expertise in Russian literature and translation history provided me with valuables guidelines in establishing the corpus for analysis. His comments and suggestions helped me strike a better balance between Russian studies and translation theory. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to professors of the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa, especially Professors Luise von Flotow, Clara Foz and Salah Basalamah, for their advice and support at various stages of the project. I am grateful to my colleagues of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of McGill, Montreal, for their comments on parts of my research. My thanks go to Professors Laura Beraha and Paul Austin. I thank Professor Irina Krasnova for her help and support. I have also benefited from the excellent Russian collection of McGill's McLennan Library and I would like to thank Tatiana Bedjanian who is responsible for the Russian section. 5 I am sincerely thankful to my colleagues and friends Professors James St. Andre, Benoit Leger, Sherry Simon, and Natalia Teplova for lending an ear or a hand when needed. The research would not have been feasible without funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Friends and colleagues were kind enough to listen to my ceaseless ranting about Luhmann, applied half-jokingly, half-seriously to anything and everything. This proved a valuable experience for me in making his theory part of me and they aided me enormously in this process with their questions, ideas, or sometimes by simply lending me their ears. Especially, I would like to thank Federico Bianco-Pastorino, Kathryn Radford and Philippe Beaudoin for their assistance and support. 6 ABSTRACT In the eighteenth century, Russia passed through a period of sweeping social reforms. Russia was modernized, and modernization was viewed as westernization. Russia had to accomplish the modernization as quickly as possible and catch up with the rest of Europe, a formidable task requiring transfers of Western European knowledge and values on a massive scale. Translation became the sole means of carrying out these transfers in the least time-consuming fashion. My research focuses on the social role of translation. I applied Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory as well as some concepts from works by Pierre Bourdieu and Lev Gumilev. Luhmann's theory provided a stimulating theoretical basis for analyzing major translation flows, the place of translation in the overall social system of the Russian Empire as well as the contribution translation made to the process of Russia's unfolding westernization. Bourdieu's concepts helped consider the role of agency in the translation 'field' and explain the distribution of symbolic capital in society that led to foregrounding translation as a major means of westernization. Gumilev's ideas about ethnogenetic evolution made it clear that the eighteenth century was the acmetic stage of the evolving superethnos and that is why became such a pivotal period in Russian history. Translation was regarded as a boundary phenomenon of the system (in this case, the Russian Empire). Serving as the system's boundary, translation opened the system to influences from the environment. In eighteenth-century Russia, intrasystemically, translation became a crucial means of introducing new ideas, helping to change the official discourse by introducing a heterodoxa (an alternative social discourse). Translation came to the fore of the social stage and became a principal means of re­ negotiating the systemic communication.