MIKHAIL FREIDENBERG AND HIS FAMILY: THE ODESSA TRACE IN RUSSIAN CULTURE

Research traditions that have developed in relation to certain cultural phenomena are often limited by the framework of national cultures, the specifics of the studied personality and its creative activity. At the same time, the cultural and social demands underlying these studies do not actually imply the conversion of the identified cultural values from one national (cultural) tradition to another. Thus, it is unlikely that representatives of border territories, as well as territories that had actual ex-territoriality and freedom to choose cultural identification, can give in to an unambiguous definition of cultural identity. Odessa was good example of it. Here the marginality of the frontier cultural zone created its own unique cultural topos, with its “mixed” identity, for which the territorial, ethnic, cultural and linguistic boundaries were not absolute, were mobile, created conditions for the formation of seemingly contradictory ideas about the “eastern West”, about “imperial Jewishness”, “Jewish Russianity”, etc. For the Jewish citizen of Odessa, the national (Jewish) or imperial (Russian) component played a great role. The internal contradictions that exist in these identification models were either resolved in favor of one of the models, or removed due to the local identification model provided by the immediate environment, which we called the environment. In this article, we would like to show this environmental influence through the personality of Mikhail Filippovich Freidenberg, who is known to historians of science and technology as an inventor, but little known to literary historician (mainly as the father of Olga Mikhailovna Freidenberg and the uncle of Boris Leonidovich Pasternak). In our opinion, the description of the artistic and journalistic, as well as satirical works of Mikhail Freidenberg deserves attention. With his name, the intellectual environment of Odessa at the end of the XIX century takes on a holistic appearance, at the same time exposing the problem of “intellectual crowding” of the imperial province. The phenomenon of the environment is conceptualized by the example of the family of Mikhail Freidenberg and relations with relatives, as well as by describing the influence of this environment on Russian culture in the late XIX – first half of the XX century through the formation of the personalities of Olga Freidenberg and Boris Pasternak. It is important to overcome disciplinary boundaries and show how the environment promotes the realization of creative opportunities and how it sets these opportunities. We do it based on the available biographical data, memoirs, diaries and other documents.