Русский Глабдаббдриб Т е Н ь Д И м И Т р И Я И И С Т О р И Ч е С К О е В О О б р А ж е Н И е э П О х И р е А Л И з м

This paper considers the seemingly paradoxical juxtaposition of historian and spiritualist in the context of Russian culture of the Realist age. I address the attempts of historians, writers and above all dramatists of the 1860s to “materialize” the shades of the past, who were called upon to provide answers to the most troubling questions of the time. My focus is the shade of the False Dimitry, which deeply affected the Russian historical imagination in the 1860s and 1870s. I argue that, following the example of positivist historians (Nikolai Kostomarov), realist playwrights of the 1860s (Aleksandr Ostrovsky, Nikolai Chaev, Aleksei Suvorin) sought to “clarify” the shade of Dimitry, to materialize it as an unambiguous image (historical truth). However, the result of this struggle with the shade proved quite different: the defeat of the realist, the destruction of his fundamental beliefs, the spectralization of reality and the gradual transition to symbolist drama, with its new apprehension of reality.