The Making of a National Poet: Publishing Pushkin, 1855-1887

A paradox of reading is that as an inner, subjective experience it may be perceived in an intensely personal and unique way, while when seen from an external perspective it may appear overly determined (or even predetermined) by a myriad of social, political, cultural and other factors. As part of a reading public readers make up a special type of “imagined community,” Benedict Anderson’s well-known concept of the nation. According to Anderson, imagined communities owe their existence to “pri...