Russia on the Edge

W. Clowes Edith

Description

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have confronted a major crisis of identity. Soviet ideology rested on a belief in historical progress, but the post-Soviet imagination has obsessed over territory. Indeed, geographical metaphors-whether axes of north vs. south or geopolitical images of center, periphery, and border-have become the signs of a different sense of self and the signposts of a new debate about Russian identity. In Russia on the Edge, Edith W. Clowes argues that refurbished geographical metaphors and imagined geographies provide a useful perspective for examining post-Soviet debates about what it means to be Russian today.Clowes lays out several sides of the debate. She takes as a backdrop the strong criticism of Soviet Moscow and its self-image as uncontested global hub by major contemporary writers, among them Tatyana Tolstaya and Viktor Pelevin. The most vocal, visible, and colorful rightist ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, the founder of neo-Eurasianism, has articulated positions contested by such writers and thinkers as Mikhail Ryklin, Liudmila Ulitskaia, and Anna Politkovskaia, whose works call for a new civility in a genuinely pluralistic Russia. Dugin's extreme views and their many responses-in fiction, film, philosophy, and documentary journalism-form the body of this book.In Russia on the Edge, literary and cultural critics will find the keys to a vital post-Soviet writing culture. For intellectual historians, cultural geographers, and political scientists the book is a guide to the variety of post-Soviet efforts to envision new forms of social life, even as a reconstructed authoritarianism has taken hold. The book introduces nonspecialist readers to some of the most creative and provocative of present-day Russia's writers and public intellectuals.

Sujets

• Former Soviet Union
• USSR
• Post-Soviet states
• Eastern Europe
• Soviet Union
• Russian
• History of Europe
• Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801460661
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

RUSSIA ON THE EDGE

RUSSIA ONTHEEDGE

Imagined Geographies and PostSoviet Identity

E D I T H W. C L O W E S

Cornell University Press i t h a c a a n d l o n d o n

Copyright © 2011 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2011 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2011

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clowes, Edith W.  Russia on the edge: imagined geographies and postSoviet identity / Edith W. Clowes.  p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801448560 (cloth : alk. paper)  ISBN 9780801477256 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1. Russian literature—21st century—History and criticism. 2. Russian literature— 20th century—History and criticism. 3. National characteristics, Russian, in literature. 4. Nationalism and literature—Russia (Federation) 5. Cultural geography—Russia (Federation) 6. Territory, National—Russia (Federation) 7. Russia (Federation)— Intellectual life—1991– I. Title.  PG3027.C57 2011  891.709'35847—dc22 2010042040

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CONTENTS

 Preface ix  Abbreviations xvii

 Introduction:  Is Russia a Center or a Periphery? 1 1 Imperial Moscow Deconstructing 19 2 Postmodernist Empire Meets Holy Rus': How Aleksandr Dugin Tried to Change the Eurasian Periphery into the Sacred Center of the World 43 3 Empire: Illusory  Viktor Pelevin’s Parody of NeoEurasianism 68 4  Russia’s Deconstructionist Westernizer: Mikhail Ryklin’s “Larger Space of Europe” Confronts Holy Rus' 96 5 The Periphery and Its Narratives: Liudmila Ulitskaia’s Imagined South 120 6  Demonizing the PostSoviet Other: The Chechens and the Muslim South 140  Conclusion 165

 Index 173

Map of Northern Eurasia, 2010

PREFACE

I n1986, the new Borovitskaia Metro Station opened by the January Kremlin wall in central Moscow. Built to remind the visitor of the lowarching hallways of the medieval Kremlin, the station’s visual centerpiece is a vast, gold and burnt orange mural depicting the map of the Soviet Union and its peoples growing as a tree among the towers of the Kremlin. Fifteen impassive human figures stand for the fifteen Soviet republics. This image conveys an unconven tional view of national identity, not as a grassroots formation out of which emerged a state. Rather, for the Soviets nationality was a plant cultivated, developed, and controlled by the state, symbolized here by the Kremlin. The year 1986 is best known for the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. In the aftermath the Soviet state in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev gave the si lent Soviet nationalities a voice, the right to probe and debate painful truths, past and present. With his policy of glasnost, or openness and transparency, Gorbachev hoped to reform and revive the multinational empire he ruled. Instead, he opened the way to a remarkable debate about identity and to the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union. These two images—the mute nationalities on the treelike Soviet map and people suddenly voicing their views, discussing and debating all over the Union—speak to the overwhelming power of the Russiancentered Soviet state to define, to shape, and to bestow identity. Many would say that the center was hypertrophied, that it had too much power, and various nation alities began to resist its influence. Russians, in turn, would push back, ques tioning their own identity. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 peripheries and borders, both real and symbolic, would become the keys to Russians’ thinking about who they are. This book investigates how and why these images became so central to Russian identity.