A German From Petersburg. From the History of the Woodcarver Craft on the Example of Nikolai Leskov's The Islanders

Literary works can be considered to be the "pulse of an epoch", the measure by which we can judge about the "social opinion" or even the "intensity of emotion" surrounding certain issues, such as foreigners in Russia. Nikolai Leskov's work offers us a rich material for research into the subject of foreign entrepreneurs in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. Stories such as The Islanders and many others make clear the multi-sided and contradictory relationship which the author had with the themes of intercul-tural communication and adaptation to new cultural and social practices. The aim of this article is to show the development of turning as a craft in St Petersburg in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In order to achieve this aim, the author considers the position of this craft in Russia via the example of Andrei Nartov, a turner who worked during the reign of Peter the Great, and the social status of a German turner in Petersburg in the middle of the 19th century. The methodology of the article is based on the comparative analysis of various historical sources, such as contemporary testimony and literature. The analysis of the story The Islanders can help determine more precisely the national question in Leskov's oeuvre and thus reach a deeper understanding of the social position of German turners in St. Petersburg. The problems of this research field are the following. There is an extremely limited number of sources on the history of turning in St. Petersburg, as a result of which researchers are compelled to turn to indirect sources from related spheres of knowledge. As such, turning in the Russian capital is considered in its various aspects, both as a fashionable and useful "hobby" for aristocrats in Russia and Western Europe and as a professional craft skill used by craftsmen to support themselves. The source base of this research is constituted by documents kept in the Russian State Historical Archive (Fund 18, List 2, File 435, Page 5). These include a list created by the Moscow Trades Board which contains statistical data about Petersburg craftsmen, Nartov's notes, and the evidence of the contemporaries. In the course of this research, the author has reached the following conclusions. (1) With the modernising reforms of Peter I, turning reached a new level of quality. It not only maintained its utilitarian character, but also became a technical art. (2) This process occurred with the active cooperation of foreign craftsmen. This is clearly visible both in the selection of turners for Peter the Great's lathing workshop and also in the mixed composition of Russian workshops, in which a large number of foreigners worked: they were mostly Western European by descent. (3) A side conclusion of this article regards Leskov's intensive axiological search as seen in the descriptions in The Islanders. The axioms the author discovered relate not to the "Germanness" and "Russianness" of this story's characters, but rather to the definition and realisation of general human qualities, constructive intercultural exchange, and the peaceful co-existence of different cultures.

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