Kulttuurisen muistin tilat Ljudmila Ulitskajan romaanissa Vihreän teltan alla ja Jelena Tšižovan romaanissa Naisten aika

Abstract

The Spaces of Cultural Memory in Liudmila Ulitskaia’s Zelionyi shatior and Elena Chizhova’s Vremia zhenshchin The article explores the relation between cultural memory and spatiality in two contemporary Russian novels, Vremia zhenshchin (2009, The Time of Women) by Elena Chizhova and Zelionyi shatior (2010, The Big Green Tent) by Liudmila Ulitskaia. Both deal with alternative narratives of Russian culture under the pressure of Soviet rule from the 1950s onwards. The alternative urban space is constructed in individual and communal activity. Chizhova’s text can be read in the St. Petersburg literary tradition and Ulitskaia’s novel builds on the literary culture of Moscow. In The Time of Women, the alternative culture based on Russian orthodox religion and folk tradition is preserved by three old women mediating it to a little mute girl who grows up to be an artist. In the minds of the old women, under the official surface of the Soviet Leningrad lies the hidden, pure and eternal world of the Russian bytie, opposed to the everyday byt. In The Big Green Tent, the alternative version of Russian cultural history of the 1960s Moscow intelligentsia is founded on the 19th century Russian literary tradition and the forbidden dissident literature. The members of the cultural intelligentsia redefine the city space of Moscow giving it their own meanings that are in opposition to the official Soviet Moscow.