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Charms of the Cynical Reason: Tricksters in Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture
The impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and little-explored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-Soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and fascinating literary and cinematic images of soviet and post-Soviet tricksters, including such “cultural idioms” as Ostap Bender, Buratino, Vasilii Tyorkin, Stierlitz, and others. Soviet tricksters present survival in a cynical, contradictory, and inadequate world, not as a necessity, but as a field for creativity, play, and freedom. Through an analysis of the representation of tricksters in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Lipovetsky attempts to draw a virtual map of the soviet and post-Soviet cynical reason: to identify its symbols, discourses, and contradictions, and by these means its historical development from the 1920s to the 2000s.
eBook
Charms of the cynical reason : the trickster's transformations in Soviet and post-Soviet culture
The impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and little-explored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-Soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and fascinating literary and cinematic images of Soviet and post-Soviet tricksters, including such \"cultural idioms\" as Ostap Bender, Buratino, Stierlitz, and others. The steadily increasing charisma of Soviet tricksters from the 1920s to the 2000s is indicative of at least two fundamental features of both the Soviet and post-Soviet societies. First, tricksters reflect the constant presence of irresolvable contradictions and yawning gaps within the Soviet (as well as post-Soviet) social universe. Secondly, these characters epitomize the realm of cynical culture thus far unrecognized in Russian studies. Soviet tricksters present survival in a cynical, contradictory and inadequate world, not as a necessity, but as a field for creativity, play, and freedom. Through an analysis of the representation of tricksters in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Lipovetsky attempts to draw a virtual map of the Soviet and post-Soviet cynical reason: to identify its symbols, discourses, contradictions, and by these means its historical development from the 1920s to the 2000s. --Book Jacket.
Book
Charms of the cynical reason : the trickster's transformations in Soviet and post-Soviet culture
The impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and littleexplored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and fascinating literary and cinematic images of soviet and post-soviet tricksters, including such \"cultural idioms\" as Ostap Bender, Buratino, Vasilii Tyorkin, Stierlitz, and others. Soviet tricksters present survival in a cynical, contradictory, and inadequate world, not as a necessity, but as a field for creativity, play, and freedom. Through an analysis of the representation of tricksters in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Lipovetsky attempts to draw a virtual map of the soviet and post-Soviet cynical reason: to identify its symbols, discourses, and contradictions, and by these means its historical development from the 1920s to the 2000s.
eBook
The Power of Language and Rhetoric in Russian Political History
This book examines the rhetorical force of certain key words in the discourses of Russian state, political thought, and literature. It shows how terms for cultured conduct (kul’turnost’), political affection (love, liubov’, joy-radost’ etc.), personhood (lichnost’), truth (pravda) and geographical integrity (tsel’nost’) assumed almost sacral meaning. It considers how these terms took on a life of their own, imposing the designs of the Russian state and defining the hopes of educated society in the process. By exploring the usage of these words in a wide range of texts, Richard Wortman provides glimpses into the ideas and feelings of leading figures and thinkers in Russian history, from Peter the Great to Alexander Herzen and Nicholas Berdiaev, as well as writers like Mikhail Lermontov, Ivan Turgenev, and Fedor Dostoevsky, giving a sense of the intellectual and emotional universe they inhabited. The Power of Language and Rhetoric in Russian Political History provides both students and scholars with a specific focus through which to approach Russian culture and history. This book is essential reading for students of Russian government, thought, literature and political action.
eBook
“To Take the Katechon Out of the Milieu”: The Murder of Czar Nicholas II and its Interpretation by Russian Orthodox Fundamentalists
This article focuses on the myth of the “ritual murder” of the last Russian
Emperor and his family, which was first constructed in 1918, gained popularity
during the Civil War, and was later disseminated by the Russian émigré media.
The content of the myth is analyzed with respect to Christian eschatology and
the belief that the Russian Czar was the “restrainer of evil” who attempts to
rescue humanity from the arrival of the Antichrist. The antisemitic nature of
the myth is discussed as well as the reasons for accusations against Jews for
the “ritual murder” of the Czar's family. The popularity of this myth in
post-Soviet Russia is discussed with respect to Russian Orthodox monarchist
activity, the growing popularity of prophecies about the “end of time,” new
studies of the remains of the royal victims by the Commission of the Russian
Federation, as well as the canonization of the last Russian Emperor by the
Russian Orthodox Church.
Journal Article
Constitution and narrative: peculiarities of rhetoric and genre in the foundational laws of the USSR and the Russian federation
Constitutions are not just legal texts but form a narrative with an engaging plot, a hierarchy of actors and a distinct ideology. They can be read and interpreted as literary texts. The four constitutions in 20th century Russia (1924, 1936, 1977, 1993) can be attributed to specific genres (drama, fairy tale, gospel, performance). Moreover, they interact closely with the official culture of their time (painting, collage, film, literature). The constitutions serve an important task in the cultural self-definition of Russian society which as a rule occurred in moments of ideological crisis. The case of Russia is especially intriguing since the Utopian project of a just society needed in every stage of its evolution (revolution, consolidation, \"developed socialism\", postcommunism) a new convincing design which was able to guarantee the citizens' loyalty to the state.
Journal Article
Utopias of return: notes on (post-)Soviet culture and its frustrated (post-)modernisation
This article discusses the role of representative strategies in twentiethcentury Russian culture. Just as Russia interacted with Europe in the Marquis de Custine's time via discourse and representation, in the twentieth century Russia re-entered European consciousness by simulating 'socialism'. In the post-Soviet era, the nation aspired to be admitted to the 'European house' by simulating a 'market economy', 'democracy', and 'postmodernism'. But in reality Russia remains the same country as before, torn between the reality of its own helplessness and poverty, and the messianic myth of its own greatness. Post-Soviet culture is a product of Stalinist culture. 'Russian postmodernism' was created less by artists, writers, poets, and film makers, than by theorists and critics. At the beginning of the 1990s, a need to describe contemporary Russian culture emerged. In this way, 'Russian postmodernism' arose from the desire to 'sell' projects in the West—from the simple obligation to describe socialist experience in concrete, transferable terms that Westerners could grasp. The nostalgia experienced by the post-Soviet era creates its own simulated postmodernism, in which the matrices of the construction and functioning of culture cease to be connected with specifically Russian (Soviet) history, and instead reproduce Western models almost exactly. We are facing yet another attempt at radical cultural modernization. If the first attempt (revolutionary culture) was the most original and fruitful, and the second (Stalinist culture, Socialist Realism) was less productive but still original, then the third, post-Soviet, attempt (rich in individuality, but lacking in original ideas or style) is for the moment the least productive and original. If we exclude sots-art (conceptualism) from 'Russian postmodernism', there would be nothing left. Clearly, an original cultural model in post-Soviet Russia will not take shape until original strategies for processing the country's cultural past are developed. In their turn, these strategies can only result from a radical transformation of post-Soviet identity into a new, genuinely Russian one.
Journal Article