THE PHENOMENON OF "CELEBRITY" IN RUSSIAN PUBLIC SPACE OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

Abstract

In modern historiography, the phenomenon of "celebrity" attracts close attention of specialists and experts. The study of this phenomenon is closely related to the history of the emergence and development of the public sphere, publicity, public and public opinion. The article examines the historical context of the formation of the public sphere in Russia in the second half of the 18th – the first half of the 19th centuries; the conceptual points of Jürgen Habermas’s model and Antoine Lilti’s theory, which are the main methodological guidelines for investigating the construction of "celebrity" in public space; and the opinions of modern researchers on the issue. The author draws attention to the temporal features of the genesis of the public sphere in the conditions of the existence of an autocratic regime in Russia. The article presents a version of the multifactorial and multi-temporal history of the Europeanization of Russia in the 18th century, which in short period helped integrate Russia into the context of modern European processes. In accordance with it, the society first experienced “Peter's Europeanization”, a purely foreign policy wave, thanks to which an imperial state emerged with the right to participate in European international affairs. The natural consequence of the previous period was “Catherine’s Europeanization”, an internal political wave that imported Western axiology, norms and practices of European governance, changes in the everyday life of the nobility, etc. into the country. The article contains an analysis of the concrete historical situation in Russia in the first half of the 19th century, which determined the time route of movement towards the establishment of a full-fledged public space in the society. In conclusion, the main factors contributed to the formation of the phenomenon of "celebrity" in the domestic public sphere are determined.