The FSB literati: the first prize winners of the Russian federal security service literature award competition, 2006–2018

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) intervention in the process of popular culture production in Russia. After briefly discussing the KGB precedent, I focus on the FSB annual art awards established in 2006. Although these awards include six categories and three prizes per each category plus honorable mentions, due to the length limitations, I focus only on the first prize winners of the literature award (awarded for fiction, nonfiction, and journalism). The key questions I investigate are, first, what kinds of literary works the FSB deems worthy of the first prize and, secondly, what the FSB literary taste conveys about the self-image that it has sought to construct for domestic and international audiences as well as about its strategic orientation. I conclude that the FSB has a predilection for spy fiction based on real historical events and personalities. Some of the first prize winners are biographies and reference books, but the majority can be categorized as historical fiction. Not surprisingly, they depict self-confident and patriotic intelligence officers who ultimately, though not without a lot of effort, overcome the assorted villains: the tsarist officers, the criminal gangs, the corrupt officials and turncoats in contemporary Russia and, last but not least, the CIA operatives. Curiously, though they generally deal with the threat from the West, many FSB-awarded historical novels are set in the Russian Central Asian or Far Eastern regions. The emerging thematic patterns reveal the contours of the present and future FSB strategic orientation.