What is the "real Russia"? What is the relationship between
national dreams and kitsch, between political and artistic utopia
and everyday existence? Commonplaces of daily living would be
perfect clues for those seeking to understand a culture. But all
who write big books on Russian life confess their failure to get
properly inside Russia, to understand its "doublespeak."
Boym is a unique guide. A member of the last Soviet Generation,
the Russian equivalent of our Generation X, she grew up in
Leningrad and has lived in the West for the past thirteen years.
Her book provides a view of Russia that is historically informed,
replete with unexpected detail, and everywhere stamped with
authority. Alternating analysis with personal accounts of Russian
life, Boym conveys the foreignness of Russia and examines its
peculiar conceptions of private life and common good, of Culture
and Trash, of sincerity and banality. Armed with a Dictionary of
Untranslatable Terms, we step around Uncle Fedia asleep in the
hall, surrounded by a puddle of urine, and enter the Communal
Apartment, the central exhibit of the book. It is the ruin of the
communal utopia and a unique institution of Soviet daily life; a
model Soviet home and a breeding ground for grassroots informants.
Here, privacy is forbidden; here the inhabitants defiantly treasure
their bits of "domestic trash," targets of ideological campaigns
for the transformation ("perestroika") of everyday life.
Against the Russian and Soviet myths of national destiny, the
trivial, the ordinary, even the trashy, take on a utopian
dimension. Boym studies Russian culture in a broad sense of the
word; she ranges from nineteenth- and twentieth-centuryintellectual
thought to art and popular culture. With her we go walking in
Moscow and Leningrad, eavesdrop on domestic life, and discover
jokes, films, and TV programs. Boym then reflects on the 1991 coup
that marked the end of the Soviet Union and evoked "fin de siecle"
apocalyptic visions. The book ends with a poignant reflection on
the nature of communal utopia and nostalgia, on homesickness and
the sickness of being home.
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