Vladimir Makanin and the Disorder of Post-Soviet Trauma

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aims to demonstrate that post-Soviet Russian prose from 1991–2000 contains a critique of totalitarianism manifested as much on the level of literary problematics as on the art of the narrative itself. The first part of the study synthesizes the most important themes in post-Soviet Russian literature, among which resentment of the trauma caused by communism stands out. Among the various literary movements, postmodernism played a decisive role by adopting an aggressive stylistic stance in the radical spirit of the avantgarde whose aesthetic it continued. The second part of the study analyzes one of the most renowned novels of the period in order to depict a significant anti-totalitarian vision, Underground, or a Hero of Our Time (1998) by Vladimir Makanin. In addition to the critique of totalitarianism, Makanin’s novel offers a critical reflection on post-Soviet reality seen as an effect of the trauma of communism. The sombre social mural created by Makanin – emphasizing at least three topoi: the underground, the obshhaga ‘communal apartment block’, and the psychiatric hospital – casts a bleak shadow over the recent past, from the paternalistic communist state to the chaotic transitional period of Perestroika, all depicted against a controversial ideological, economic and political landscape.