The Aims and Achievements of the Russian Formalists in the Years 1913-1925

The formalist groups which were active in Russia between the years 1913 and 1925 initiated the formalist method. This method has been shown to have had very significant consequences for the development of the humanities and to a certain degree also for the social sciences in the twentieth century. Although formalism was originally intended only as a method of research, it gave rise - even if indirectly and over many decades - to new conceptions in art and science as a whole. We will now examine the chief basic principles of Russian formalism as revealed in the sources of the period and we will look at its achievements from the vantage-point of more than a hundred years after it began.