post-Soviet Identity Research Articles

Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities

Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities

Bassin, Mark and Kelly, Catriona Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities (review)

Bassin, Mark and Kelly, Catriona Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities (review)

Soviet and post-Soviet identities

Soviet and post-Soviet identities

Soviet and post-Soviet identities

Soviet and post-Soviet identities

Russia on the Edge. Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity by Edith W. Clowes (review)

Reviewed by: Russia on the Edge. Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity by Edith W. Clowes Natalia Pervukhina-Kamyshnikova Edith W. Clowes , Russia on the Edge. Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. xviii + 179 pp. The central theme of Russia on the Edge is the Russian search for self-identity in the former Soviet Union. Its theoretical foundation is the idea of the changing roles of the center and periphery in Post-colonial studies, as discussed by Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha. Edith W. Clowes focuses on the shift from the temporal historic orientation to the spatial imagining of geographies suggestive of a dispersed variety of locutions. She argues that in contemporary Russia the traditional opposition of the western centers of the capitals and the Asian subconscious of the periphery has transformed into a metaphorical post-colonial north-south axis (153). In brief, Clowes describes the ambiguity of social and cultural positions of both the colonizers and the colonized in Russia. She astutely adds that the Russian state colonized its own subject (11). [End Page 348] This vertical metaphor of the Russian colonizing tradition indeed deserves better development than it has so far received. Recent studies (Alexander Etkind, for example) move in that direction by showing how vertical, internal colonization by the government of its numerous subjects continues both in the periphery and in its changing centers. The six chapters of Russia on the Edge offer analyses of a variety of self-representational projects. In "Deconstructing Imperial Moscow," Clowes deals with the literary and architectural images of a city first perceived as the center of Eastern Christianity, the "Third Rome," and in Stalin's time, as the center of Russia's colonial power over the Soviet Empire. Contemporary post-modernist texts serve as deconstructive tools questioning the reality of Moscow's very existence. To that thesis the author subordinates a considerable number of texts, from Evgeny Zamiatin's We to Tatiana Tolstaya's Slynx and Mikhail Ryklin's reading of the Moscow metro. Deconstruction of architectural and literary texts may have warranted separate chapters; this would have helped to avoid the unfortunate omission of fundamental works on Stalinist architecture such as those by Vladimir Paperny and Boris Groys. The most revealing and influential ideological model of Russian identity discussed in the book is that promoted by Alexander Dugin. In "Postmodernist Empire meets Holy Rus'," Clowes provides a helpful description of Dugin's philosophy as combining Slavophil values, Eurasian thought from the 1920s, neo-fascism, and orientation towards what Dugin calls postmodernism, a fusion of the old left and the old right (44, 61). Dugin is steeped in a messianic tradition envisioning Russia as the nucleus of multi-polar resistance (51) to the liberal values of Western Europe and North America. Russian identity is defined first by the Russian Orthodox faith and, second, by putting the interests of the State and the Empire above those of the individual. Clowes discusses developments only through 2006. However, the last five years have, indeed, demonstrated the decisive influence of Dugin's ideas on Russia's internal politics and military doctrine under the recent tandem rule of Putin/Medvedev. The study also closely examines Viktor Pelevin's Chapaev and Pustota, which, as Clowes convincingly argues, is a parody of Neo-Eurasianism. Like Venedikt Erofeev and Vladimir Voinovich, Pelevin dismisses attempts to define oneself not only in terms of the Empire but also in terms of any unchanging space. Although Dugin's striking project of national self-identification may seem shocking and even insane, it has produced a significant impact on the ideas of ultra-conservative and neo-Nazi thinkers and politicians. Dugin was a co-organizer, with Eduard Limonov (their ways eventually parted), of the oppositional National-Bolshevik Party. Mikhail Ryklin, an expatriate living in Germany, is a prolific translator and philosopher of culture. He introduced major European philosophical texts of the [End Page 349] twentieth century to Russian audiences and thus influenced humanistic scholarship in Russia. Ryklin is a strong critic of the neo-Stalinism revived by Putin. However, despite frequent reference to Ryklin's works, the reader does not learn much beyond the self-evident, such as...

Continuity or Discontinuity: On the Dynamics of Remembering “Mature Socialism” in Estonian Post-Soviet Remembrance Culture

Remembering the early Soviet period is still one of the main anchor points for identity building in Estonian society. The experience of the Soviet occupation is used as a filter through which meani...

Edith W.Clowes, Russia on the Edge. Imagined Geographies and Post‐Soviet Identity. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011, ix‐173pp. £ 15.50 (pbk).

Edith W.Clowes, Russia on the Edge. Imagined Geographies and Post‐Soviet Identity. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011, ix‐173pp. £ 15.50 (pbk).

A contested landscape: Monuments, public memory, and post-Soviet identity in Stavropol', Russia

Much recent literature in cultural, political and social geography has considered the relationship between identity, memory, and the urban landscape. This paper interrogates such literature through exploring the complex materialisation of memorialisation in post-Soviet Russia. Using the example of the statue of General Alexei Ermolov in Stavropol', an analysis of the cityscape reveals interethnic tensions over differing interpretations of the life and history of the person upon whom the statue is based. The existence of a rich literature on Ermolov and the Russian colonial experience in the North Caucasus helps to explain this. The symbolic cityscape of Stavropol' plays an important role in interethnic relations in the multi-ethnic city; it is both an arena through which Russian identity is communicated with people and produced and reproduced, and an arena through which Russian citizens compete with each other for authority on historical narratives that operate at and between a number of scales. People's readings of the cityscape can reveal much about power and space in contemporary Russia.

From Soviet Locality to Multivoiced Borderland: Literature and Identity in the Finnish-Russian National Borderlands*

This article examines the construction of Soviet and post-Soviet identities in Finnish-language literature in the Finnish-Russian national borderlands of Karelia. The article argues that the Finnish-Russian national border has been the most significant force in the construction of Karelian regional identities in the national borderland. During the Soviet era, the national border was primarily used to create separation between Finland and the Soviet Union after the Second World War, and this came to symbolize the fissure between the political East and West. In the post-Soviet era, identities have been constructed not only in relation to physical borders but also in relation to various symbolic borders. These symbolic borders were mainly constructed after the collapse of the Soviet Union when the physical border between Finland and Russia was opened after being closed for nearly 70 years.

Conceptualizing sovereignty in Russian foreign policy: Realist and constructivist perspectives

Russia's approach to sovereignty reflects a close linkage between the recentralizing project domestically, and reassertion of Russia's position as a great power on the international scene. This article assesses the relative utility of constructivist and realist approaches in Russian readings of sovereignty. A constructivist approach is found to be more useful in treating sovereignty – it directs our attention toward the problem of developing a new post-Soviet identity, the role of culture and historical interpretation in foreign policy, Russian concepts of the hostile Other and domestic ideas linked to Russian concepts of federalism – all critical factors in understanding Russian foreign policy behavior. The major ideological construct of the post-communist period – sovereign democracy – insists that both sovereignty and democracy are socially and culturally determined, and therefore clash with Western interpretations of these concepts. The emergence of a new, post-modern and Western-dominated set of global norms limiting sovereignty is closely linked to continued tensions between Russia and the West.

Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity. By Edith W. Clowes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. xviii, 179 pp. Notes. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $65.00, hard bound. $24.95, paper.

Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity. By Edith W. Clowes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. xviii, 179 pp. Notes. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. 24.95, paper. - Volume 71 Issue 2

Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity

Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity

Russia on the Edge - Edith Clowes

Edith Clowes’ Russia on the Edge is an engaging and accessible examination of three central questions of post-Soviet Russia: What is Russia? Who are the Russians? Where is Russia? The last question might be odd, given that the physical borders of the Russian Federation are not in doubt, since they are the same as those of the Russian republic borders from the Soviet period. However, when it comes to the creation of a post-Soviet Russian identity, the physical borders are secondary to how they are imagined. As stated in the preface: if Soviet identity was defined largely in terms of “time”—“linked to a vision of the Soviet state at the vanguard of history”— the post-Soviet debate over Russian identity “has been couched in spatial metaphors of territory and geography” (xi). Thus, “[the] geographical metaphors dominant in current discourse about identity convey the sense that who a Russian is depends on how one defines where Russia is” (xii). As such, the three questions of What? Who? and Where? are all interrelated: the construction of Russian identity after the collapse of the USSR is inherently tied to an emerging sense of, and more importantly the imagination of, geographic space.

Russia on the edge: imagined geographies and post-Soviet identity

Russia on the edge: imagined geographies and post-Soviet identity

Utopias of return: notes on (post-)Soviet culture and its frustrated (post-)modernisation

This article discusses the role of representative strategies in twentieth-century Russian culture. Just as Russia interacted with Europe in the Marquis de Custine’s time via discourse and representation, in the twentieth century Russia re-entered European consciousness by simulating ‘socialism’. In the post-Soviet era, the nation aspired to be admitted to the ‘European house’ by simulating a ‘market economy’, ‘democracy’, and ‘postmodernism’. But in reality Russia remains the same country as before, torn between the reality of its own helplessness and poverty, and the messianic myth of its own greatness. Post-Soviet culture is a product of Stalinist culture. ‘Russian postmodernism’ was created less by artists, writers, poets, and film makers, than by theorists and critics. At the beginning of the 1990s, a need to describe contemporary Russian culture emerged. In this way, ‘Russian postmodernism’ arose from the desire to ‘sell’ projects in the West—from the simple obligation to describe socialist experience in concrete, transferable terms that Westerners could grasp. The nostalgia experienced by the post-Soviet era creates its own simulated postmodernism, in which the matrices of the construction and functioning of culture cease to be connected with specifically Russian (Soviet) history, and instead reproduce Western models almost exactly. We are facing yet another attempt at radical cultural modernization. If the first attempt (revolutionary culture) was the most original and fruitful, and the second (Stalinist culture, Socialist Realism) was less productive but still original, then the third, post-Soviet, attempt (rich in individuality, but lacking in original ideas or style) is for the moment the least productive and original. If we exclude sots-art (conceptualism) from ‘Russian postmodernism’, there would be nothing left. Clearly, an original cultural model in post-Soviet Russia will not take shape until original strategies for processing the country’s cultural past are developed. In their turn, these strategies can only result from a radical transformation of post-Soviet identity into a new, genuinely Russian one.

Remembering Brezhnev in the New Millennium: Post-Soviet Nostalgia and Local Identity in the City of Novorossiisk

AbstractThis article examines the way in which "ordinary" Russians remember the era of Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982). Using various concepts of post-communist nostalgia, it demonstrates that the period is exceptionally popular, but that this should not be construed as an unambiguous desire to revive the "Golden" 1970s. Positive evaluations of the Brezhnev era are often predicated on personal memories of one's youth, which shows that post-Soviet nostalgia is not a "common," but a generation-bound phenomenon. After attempting to explain Brezhnev's popularity in the 1990s and the Putin era, the article proceeds with a discussion of Novorossiisk, a city that claims to have a special bond with Brezhnev and decided to erect a statue of him in 2004. Detailing the controversy over the statue over a period of six years, the author demonstrates the existence of a locally defined Brezhnev "text" that allows the city's inhabitants to remember him as a great leader and a staunch defender of the fatherland, but also to appropriate him for their own political needs.

Door to the unknown: On large-scale public mental health interventions in postconflict zones—Experiences from Georgia.

This article presents a model for large-scale public mental health interventions appropriate in the context of the Georgian culture and society. Peculiarities of traumatized communities in the country and their link to sociohistorical events and overall cultural identity are explored; Post-Soviet identity—in particular—as an important factor influencing traumatic impact is discussed. It is suggested that an appropriate large-scale public mental health intervention can not be properly designed without considering the sociopolitical and cultural context of a recipient community. The article also analyses the importance of combining complementary approaches—individually focused trauma treatment and community-based psychosocial assistance. Together, they form a bridge that integrates the individual and the extended Self/village experiences, and facilitates individual and communal coping. Finally, some basic ingredients of culturally-sensitive interventions are presented.

Other Russias: homosexuality and the crisis of post-Soviet identity

Introduction: An Embarrassment of Meanings Russian Gays/Western Gaze: Mapping the (Homo)Sexual Landscape of Post-Soviet Russia Making a Spectacle of Homosexuality: The Problem of Gay (In)Visibility The Other Within Us: Homosexual Panic and the Post-Soviet Detektiv Resurrecting the Spiritual Homosexual: Homosexuality and Russian Cultural Citizenship Perversion, Inversion, and Literary Forebears: Homosexuality and the Search for a Post-Soviet Aesthetics

Battlefields of Ethnic Symbols. Public Space and Post-Soviet Identity Formation from a Minority Perspective

This article provides an analysis of interdependencies between post-Soviet Erinnerungspolitik in public space and the individual perception of urban reconfigurations by ethnic Germans in Kazakhstan. Applying a qualitative social-geographic approach the author examines determinants of the process of ethnic symbolisation of real and imagined places. Individual biography and the extent of Soviet socialisation are factors shaping the personal perception of symbolic landscapes. From the perspective of the individual, space reflects the power distribution within society and hence, impacts on individual identity formation. Depending on the dominance of internal as opposed to external identification, the (perceived) changing ethnicised landscape of cities potentially fuels ethnic tension.

Uzbekistan: Psychiatry in transition

The center of a national medical identity in Uzbekistan is Abu Ali Ibn Sina born in 980 AD representing Islamic medicine and scientific universalism. Psychiatric institutions were founded under Russian influence starting in the late 19th century. Today, the great challenge in psychiatry is the development of a post-Soviet identity integrating Russian and Islamic traditions.