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."
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!