Journal Article

Looking for the Balkan (Br)other: The National Gaze in Dzhanik Faiziev's The Turkish Gambit

HASHAMOVA, YANA

2015

Overview

Dzhanik Faiziev's 2005 The Turkish Gambit, based on Boris Akunin's novel of the same name, presents a spy story unfolding against the backdrop of the Russo‐Turkish War (1877–78) in the Balkans (today's Bulgaria). Bulgarians occupy a particular place in the Russian imagination. During the Russo‐Turkish War, Bulgarians entered the Russian cultural space as southern Orthodox Slavs in need of help. This image changed during the Soviet period, when Bulgaria was considered one of the most faithful Soviet satellites and also a favorite vacation spot which comforted with its familiar culture but offered enough differences with exotic southern touches. The post‐Communist era, the turn of the twentieth century when the novel and film were created, brought more unexpected alterations to the Russian perception of Bulgarians. Analyzing the representation of Bulgaria and Bulgarians in Faiziev's film, I contend that the seemingly reassuring sameness is marked by awkward otherness. I utilize scholarship on Russia's imperial experience in relation to the Caucasus and its patterns of artistic othering in my analysis in order to shed more light on these patterns and reveal their persistent nature. To complicate matters further, I argue that Alexander Etkind's concept of “internal colonization” sheds some light on these alterations but falls short of fully illuminating Russia's post‐Communist national anxieties.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subject: 20th century / Anxiety / ASIA AND THE EAST IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN CULTURE / Balkan States / Bulgaria / Caucasus / Colonialism / Colonization / Communism / Cultural differences / Cultural history / Cultural studies / Faiziev, Dzhanik / Gaze / Imagination / Mass Media Images / Motion picture criticism / Motion picture directors & producers / Motion pictures / National culture / Novels / Otherness / Post-communist societies / Postcommunist Societies / Russia / Russian Federation / Russian history / Satellites / Slavic cultural groups / Space Warfare / Turkey / Twentieth Century / Union of Soviet Socialist Republics / War