The Hero in the Madhouse: The Post-Soviet Novel Confronts the Soviet Past

Abstract

Using Viktor Pelevin's Chapaev and Pustota and Vladimir Makanin's Underground or a Hero of Our Time, Angela Brintlinger explores the way contemporary fiction portrays the post-Soviet intelligentsia and its search for identity in postmodern Russia. These authors juxtapose contemporary heroes with literary and historical heroes of the Russian and Soviet past in a struggle to come to terms with Soviet experience and the intelligentsia's relationship to Russian literature. Both Pelevin and Makanin use the chronotope of the madhouse to examine the idea of the hero in Russian literature and history. In making such deliberate use of the Russian past, from its literary heroes to the insidious institution of the mental asylum, both authors force their post-Soviet readers to confront die fact that the flow of history is as much about continuities as it is about change.