UID:
edocfu_9958352484802883
Format:
1 online resource
ISBN:
9780801460661
Content:
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.
Note:
Frontmatter --
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Contents --
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Preface --
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Abbreviations --
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Introduction: Is Russia a Center or a Periphery? --
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1. Deconstructing Imperial Moscow --
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2. Postmodernist Empire Meets Holy Rus': How Aleksandr Dugin Tried to Change the Eurasian Periphery into the Sacred Center of the World --
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3. Illusory Empire: Viktor Pelevin’s Parody of Neo-Eurasianism --
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4. Russia’s Deconstructionist Westernizer: Mikhail Ryklin’s “Larger Space of Europe” Confronts Holy Rus' --
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5. The Periphery and Its Narratives: Liudmila Ulitskaia’s Imagined South --
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6. Demonizing the Post-Soviet Other: The Chechens and the Muslim South --
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Conclusion --
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Index
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In English.
Language:
English
DOI:
10.7591/9780801460661
URL:
https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801460661
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