ABSTRACT
For a Russian musicologist living in Russia today, shedding the nationalist inheritance is even more difficult than was the shedding of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics a few years ago; or, rather, it would be more difficult, if anyone had the inclination. Today, with Russia's future a tangle of uncertainties, the principal refuges of a justifiably fearful people are nationalism, and the mystic notion of Russia's unique and tragic destiny articulated by those prophets of the last century, Gogol' and Dostoyevsky. The partisans of A Life for the Tsar, who used it as a weapon against Ruslan, were soon to be confronted with an argument that enjoyed the appearance of greater rigour: the theory of 'Russian harmony'. To describe Ruslan as an 'epic opera' is, of course, nothing new: it is one of the solid traditions of Russian musicology. The chapter illuminates the character of Ruslan and its place in Russian culture.
