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Bringing together a team of scholars from the diverse fields of
geography, literary studies, and history, this is the first volume
to study water as a cultural phenomenon within the Russian/Soviet
context. Water in this context is both a cognitive and cultural
construct and a geographical and physical phenomenon, representing
particular rivers (the Volga, the Chusovaia in the Urals, the Neva)
and bodies of water (from Baikal to sacred springs and the flowing
water of nineteenth-century estates), but also powerful systems of
meaning from traditional cultures and those forged in the radical
restructuring undertaken in the 1930s. Individual chapters explore
the polyvalence and contestation of meanings, dimensions, and
values given to water in various times and spaces in Russian
history. The reservoir of symbolic association is tapped by poets
and film-makers but also by policy-makers, the popular press, and
advertisers seeking to incite reaction or drive sales. The volume's
emphasis on the cultural dimensions of water will link material
that is often widely disparate in time and space; it will also
serve as the methodological framework for the analysis undertaken
both within chapters and in the editors' introduction.
Bringing together a team of scholars from the diverse fields of
geography, literary studies, and history, this is the first volume
to study water as a cultural phenomenon within the Russian/Soviet
context. Water in this context is both a cognitive and cultural
construct and a geographical and physical phenomenon, representing
particular rivers (the Volga, the Chusovaia in the Urals, the Neva)
and bodies of water (from Baikal to sacred springs and the flowing
water of nineteenth-century estates), but also powerful systems of
meaning from traditional cultures and those forged in the radical
restructuring undertaken in the 1930s. Individual chapters explore
the polyvalence and contestation of meanings, dimensions, and
values given to water in various times and spaces in Russian
history. The reservoir of symbolic association is tapped by poets
and film-makers but also by policy-makers, the popular press, and
advertisers seeking to incite reaction or drive sales. The volume's
emphasis on the cultural dimensions of water will link material
that is often widely disparate in time and space; it will also
serve as the methodological framework for the analysis undertaken
both within chapters and in the editors' introduction.
The lives of animals in Russia are intrinsically linked to
cultural, political and psychological transformations of the
Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras. Other Animals examines the
interaction of animals and humans in Russian literature, art, and
life from the eighteenth century until the present. The chapters
probe a range of human-animal relationships through tales of
cruelty, interspecies communion and compassion, and efforts to
either overcome or establish the human-animal divide. These essays
also explore the unique nature of the Russian experience in this
regard. Four themes run through the volume: the prevalence of
animals in utopian visions; the ways in which Russians have both
incorporated and sometimes challenged Western sensibilities and
practices, such as the humane treatment of animals and the
inclusion of animals in urban domestic life; the quest to identify
and at times exploit the physiological basis of human and animal
behavior and the ideological implications of these practices; and
the breakdown of traditional human-animal hierarchies and
categories during times of revolutionary upheaval, social
transformation, or disintegration. From failed Soviet attempts to
transplant the semi-nomadic Sami and their reindeer herds onto
collective farms, to performance artist Oleg Kulik\u2019s
scandalous portrayal of Pavlov\u2019s dogs as a parody of the
Soviet \u201cnew man,\u201d to novelist Tatyana Tolstaya\u2019s
post-cataclysmic future world of hybrid animal species and their
disaffection from the past, Other Animals presents a completely new
perspective on Russian and Soviet history. It also offers a
fascinating look into the Russian psyche as seen through human
interactions with animals.
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