eBook

Russia on the Edge

Clowes, Edith W

2011

Overview

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. InRussia 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. InRussia 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.

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Subject: 1991 / 20th century / 21st century / Cultural geography / Cultural geography -- Russia (Federation) / GEOGRAPHY-PHYSICAL & CULTURAL / HISTORY / History and criticism / Intellectual life / Language & Literature / LITERARY CRITICISM / LITERARY CRITICISM / Russian & Former Soviet Union / Moscow / National characteristics, Russian, in literature / National crisis of identity / Nationalism and literature / Nationalism and literature -- Russia (Federation) / PHILOSOPHY / Political / post-Soviet writing culture / reconstruction / Russia (Federation) / Russia (Federation) -- Intellectual life -- 1991 / Russian & Former Soviet Union / Russian literature / Russian literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism / Russian literature -- 21st century -- History and criticism / SOVIET & EAST EUROPEAN HISTORY / Territory, National / Territory, National -- Russia (Federation) / what is Russia
• ISBN: 9780801448560, 0801448565, 9780801477256, 0801477255