Haunted Dreams: Fantasies of Adolescence in Post-Soviet Culture by Jenny Kaminer

Abstract

Reviewed by: Haunted Dreams: Fantasies of Adolescence in Post-Soviet Culture by Jenny Kaminer Tamar Koplatadze Haunted Dreams: Fantasies of Adolescence in Post-Soviet Culture. By Jenny Kaminer. (NIU Series in Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies) Ithaca, NY, and London: Northern Illinois University Press. 2022. xiii+188 pp. £39. ISBN 978-1-501-76219-2. Jenny Kaminer's monograph breaks new ground in Anglophone criticism through its large-scale examination of cultural representations of adolescence in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Kaminer poses a pertinent key question: 'Do Soviet cultural models continue to dominate, or have they been transcended?' (p. 3). In reply, she adopts a historical approach based on close readings of selected works of post-Soviet Russian prose fiction, drama, TV, and, to a lesser extent, film. All of these foreground teenage characters and thus 'facilitate the historicization of contemporary Russian fantasies of adolescence' (p. 3). The author focuses on three specific elements which, as she argues, reveal how these fantasies have mutated or, conversely, remained constant since Soviet times, namely: violence, temporality, and the representation of gender and the body. By choosing Russia for her case study, Kaminer makes an important contribution to global studies of the 'adolescent turn', which until recently have overlooked the former Soviet Union. Kaminer's masterful Introduction connects her findings to current events, presenting sophisticated key ideas in accessible language. This section makes enjoyable reading for both specialists and non-specialists. Her elegant, engaging prose style is maintained throughout, with clear conceptual linkage between chapters. Chapter 1, a powerful essay that could be extended into an independent monograph, examines how adolescent female protagonists usurp saintly martyrdom from [End Page 280] Soviet heroes, while exposing the flaws of post-Soviet Russian society. Chapter 2 depicts monstrous and murderous teens, in creative works that malign the sacrificial Soviet heroes. Chapter 3 examines New Russian drama, to suggest that 'heroic impulses remain, but the historical and social context now renders them superfluous' (p. 94). Chapter 4 is the most theoretically intricate, building on various iterations of the chronotope to examine Russian youth's disillusioned navigation of the uncanny overlaps of past, present, and future on screen. In Kaminer's reading, all of these works share a pessimistic vision of the possibility of Russian social renewal, while rejecting the idealization of Soviet-era adolescent heroes. Her Conclusion returns to today's world with a thought-provoking overview of the Greta Thunberg phenomenon. Kaminer's analysis is rigorous and convincing throughout, with excellent historical contextualization, especially where she engages with Soviet cultural history and the mythology surrounding adolescent heroes such as Zoia Kosmodemianskaia and Pavlik Morozov. Close readings are consistently nuanced, reinforced with sound methodology, and established theories of adolescence—such as Nancy Lesko's concept of the adolescent chronotope—are usefully adapted to the post-Soviet context. This monograph's subtitle, though, is misleading, if not problematic, because it employs the chronological denotation 'post-Soviet' in a manner inconsistent with Kaminer's actual geographical focus (exclusively on Russia). Sometimes the terms 'Russian' and 'post-Soviet' are employed interchangeably, the latter being used to refer to Russian history and society (see pp. 28 and 36), a particularly insensitive faux pas in the light of contemporary Russia's recent geopolitical imperialism. One might wonder why this political dimension of Russian post-Soviet teenagerhood did not receive more attention in the monograph. Skinhead culture, hegemonic military masculinities, absent father figures, and a lack of positive role models (the latter category arguably replaced by Putin's performative public persona) are all topics that deserved prominence in this study. They are apposite to Kaminer's investigation of how Russian society's anxiety over identity formation, and the militarization of Russian youth, play out in dynamics of violence, temporality, and gender. Some indication as to why the author chose to prioritize specific texts and themes would have been helpful, as would greater contextualization of the selected texts within depictions of adolescence in the broader post-Soviet world. Finally, some examination of the responses to the texts from adolescent readers and viewers themselves, as well as insights from creative artists through interviews, would have made this monograph...