ABSTRACT
In the Russian literary tradition, the importance of regions and regionalism is not a given: hence an important goal of many chapters here is to illuminate regional cultures. But the present chapter aims instead to provide a sense of the dominant discourse, which concerns not regional particularities but rather “the provinces” and “provincialism.” This discourse, which originated in the nineteenth century, often imagined the provinces as a homogeneous, inert space awaiting enlightenment from the center. Canonical writers reproduced this way of imagining Russia, thereby fostering a symbolic geography that tended to ignore regional identities.
