Soviet Empire Research Articles

Травматический опыт сталинизма в романах Гузели Яхиной

The traumatic experience of stalinism in the novels of Guzel Yakhina. The focus of the study is on how the bestselling novels of the young writer Guzel Yakhina reflect on Russian collective trauma and the traumatic experience of the 20th century. The novels Zuleikha and My Children are set in the post-revolutionary period, among ethnic groups who were victims of Stalinist terror. The analysis explores how Yakhina depicts the colonialism of the Soviet empire and the role of mythic and mythological models in the interpretation of historical events.

SHEVARDNADZE'S DIPLOMATIC CAROM OF 1983 YEAR

Even in the conditions of the Soviet Empire, the conquered Georgia did not forget its condition and consequently, unilaterally violated “Treaty of Georgievsk” by Russia. Georgia did not miss the opportunity, took advantage of the moment and used the Kremlin's instructions to protect the country's interests, showed the world political community that Georgia should not be considered a politically written-off country. Eduard Shevardnadze took political points from the conqueror Russia, as well created the illusion of effectively carrying out the Kremlin's task, and at the same time avoided the solemn celebration of the annexation. That is, he literally caught two rabbits - fulfilled the task of the Kremlin and paid tribute to the Georgian cause.

“Kiev Citizen” Movie by T. Levchuk: Ukrainian Revolution of 1917—1921 in the Ukrainian Soviet Cinematography

Cinematography is one of those unique cultural phenomena, whose history has always attracted historians’ interest. In the 20th century, this phenomenon did not only determine the direction of cultural transformations development but also impacted the formation of ideologies and political regimes. Today this topic is especially relevant considering the fact that the propaganda methods, intrinsic of dictatorship systems, namely the Soviet totalitarian regime, are actively used by the antidemocratic Russian power for achieving its political goals. The special interest in the context of the “hybrid warfare” which is currently going on between Russia and Ukraine, causes the construction in the Soviet period cinematography of the image of a “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist” as the instrumental technologies of ideological manipulations used in such movies proved their effectiveness for shaping the outlook of a “new Russian citizen”. Such phenomenon, especially in the 20th century, determined not only the direction of aesthetic transformations of cultural development but also had an impact on the formation of ideologies and strengthening of political regimes. This topic is relevant because the methods of propaganda that were actively used by totalitarian regimes (including the Soviet totalitarian one) are now actively applied by the undemocratic Russian regime to achieve political goals. The construction of the image of the "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist" in the Soviet cinema constitutes special interest in the context of today’s Russia’s "hybrid warfare" against Ukraine. The instrumental technologies of ideological manipulation used in the creation of films have shown their effectiveness in shaping the worldview of the “new Soviet man.” Forms of this type of consciousness still continue to influence the political choices of many citizens of our state. The film “Kiev Citizen”, studied in the article, was created in 1958 by Ukrainian Soviet film director T. Levchuk at Kyiv O. Dovzhenko Studio. This film is a classic example of ideologically biased film production. Using this movie, we can observe technological principles and constructive models of falsification of the 20th–century history of Ukraine by the Soviet regime, in particular the events of the Ukrainian revolution of 1917–1921. In the film “Kiev Citizen”, the events of the Ukrainian revolution of 1917–1921 were falsified in order to illustrate the audience the Soviet version of the history of Ukraine and the events connected with the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. Soviet propaganda tried to form in this way the audience loyal to the “Soviet empire” type of psychological perception of reality. In particular, the facts related to the Bolsheviks’ attempt to seize power in Kyiv in October 1917, the battles for the Arsenal plant in January 1918, and the conclusion of a peace treaty between the Ukrainian People’s Republic and Germany were falsified.

Трансформация этни­ческого состава населения украинского Подунавья: к вопросу о переселении молдаван/румын на Дальний Восток (1947-1949 гг.) / Transformation of the Ethnic Combination of the Ukrainian Podunavia Population: on the Issue of the Resettlement of Moldavians/Romanian to the Far East (1947 – 1949)

Based on previously unpublished archive documents (Ismail, Ukraine), the organization and resettlement of parts of the residents from the lower Danube region to South Sakhalin in 1947-1949 are considered. First of all, the resettlement touched the representatives of the Moldovan/Romanian ethnic group living in Reni district. This relocation should be seen as an attempt from the part of the Soviet totalitarian regime to transform the ethnic composition of the region, having evicted the part of the local population to remote corners of the Soviet empire, which, without much enthusiasm, met the socialist changes of the second half of the 1940s and related to the collectivization of agriculture. The age, gender, and quantitative indicators are analyzed. Lists of immigrants to the South Sakhalin in 1947 and 1948 are given.

Rosyjski literaturocentryzm w kontekście postkolonialnym

The development of postcolonial studies as a research discipline to a large extent depends on their representatives’ ability to overcome their own post-colonial conditions. This particularly applies to researchers representing imperial cultures. Russian post-colonial studies develop their own cognitive categories in relation to the issue of Russian and Soviet imperialism, while avoiding many potential inspirations contained in the book by Ewa Thompson “Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism”, which became an important reference for postcolonial research in Poland and Ukraine. The author of the article outlines the shaping of Russian literaturocentrism, and then, tries to answer the question of whether and to what extent it can be a useful issue for research on the imperial determinants of Russian culture.

Drug Abuse and Drug Trafficking: Non-Traditional Security Threats in Post-Soviet Central Asia

The post-cold war world has become susceptible to multiple non-traditional security threats that are no less formidable than the traditional security threats. Drug trafficking poses one such serious non-traditional security threat and drug abuse provides its fuel. Not only do the drugs destroy the very fabric of human resource in a region where trafficking operates and thereby reduces communities to hollow card-boxes, but such trafficking also generates loads of dirty money which fosters the growth of non-State actors engaged in subversive activities. This article argues that following the fall of the erstwhile Soviet empire, the entire Central Asia region has become a hotbed of such non-traditional security threats which is being nourished by an enormous demand for drug abuse in Russia and the scenario spells trouble for India as well. The article also contemplates a constructive role for Russia in this regard.

ПРЕЛОМЛЕНИЯ ИМПЕРСКОГО КОМПЛЕКСА В ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ ИМПЕРСКОГО НАРОДА. (НАРОД — «ЦЕМЕНТ», ЗАСЕЛЯЮЩИЙ «ЗАБРАННЫЙ КРАЙ» ИЛИ «РУССКОЯЗЫЧНОЕ НАСЕЛЕНИЕ» С МЕЖНАЦИОНАЛЬНЫМИ БРАКАМИ)

The article examines the phenomenon of the imperial people, which has some special qualities that allow it to integrate peoples and territories. Many researchers of the empire recognize the importance of the imperial people factor, but it is quite difficult to indicate its specific characteristics. It is concluded that the Russians, having moved to the outskirts of the empire, to some extent changed their behavior patterns and became what is sometimes called “other Russians”. They differ from the Russians from the indigenous territories and have the qualities of a “cement people” that holds together parts of the empire. The Russians identity turned out to be duplex. They are predominantly occupied with themselves in their autochthonous territories as one of the peoples of the Earth and can perceive themselves as an ethnic whole. But they absorb the contradictions between peoples on the outskirts of the empire and create a kind of new — imperial — integrity. Then they have not have only a special Russian national identity, but rather a messianic one, coupled with an imperial function. Russians as an imperial people understand themselves (and others too) as bricks of a single empire. We aim to cover this topic in this article we rely on data from sources about the Russian peasant colonization of the late 19th — early 20th centuries. We also use the statistics of interethnic marriages in the USSR, which were an important factor in the homogenization of the peoples of the Soviet empire.

The Оrigin of the Modern State: Imagination, Violence, Institutions

The main idea of the article is to define the role of imagination, violence and institutions in the formation of the modern state as well as to show that the important dimension of the state building is the image of the self, creative capacity of the individual to symbolic self-made activity and self-made reproduction. The symbolic world of the imaginary state is the product of the communities united symbolically, contingency and simultaneously the part of the social orders. The Nort conception of the social orders as the structures that limit and control the violence takes the privilege place in the article. The first model of the social organization is defined as the “order of limited access”, and the second one as the “order of free access”. Thus the different state establishments are formed: “the natural state” that is formed in the natural way according to the violence restrain logic by means of limited access, and “the artificial state” by means of free access to the political and economic resources. In particular the impossibility of the automatic transition from the self-sufficient type of the natural state to the modern democratic state is emphasized. Nort conception is extrapolated on the experience of the Ukrainian independent state state-building after the abortive coup d’etat in 1991. The authors develop the tenet about the conservation of the institutional matrix of the soviet empire in the post-communist Ukraine. It deals with the institutional features: such as the authoritarian management, the secondary role of the law regulations, the supervisory instance uncontrolled by society. The transformation crises, accordingly to the authors approach, determined the conditions and the price of transitional countries entering not only the civilizational space of the contemporary Europe but also the system of global economic, political and social interrelations. This crises conditioned also the changes in the network of the international institutions. It determined the distinctive features of the national identity formation, legitimation strategies in the contemporary Nation-State, and primarily in the newest Ukrainian state-building.

Russian-Israeli Relations during the Reign of Prime Minister Netanyahu: Abrasive Friendship or Realpolitik?

The subject of my interest is to present the most important determinants of relations between the Russian Federation and Israel. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the current state of affairs in mutual contacts and their importance for international security. In addition, it will be important to try to answer the question of whether Russia will continue to play an important role as an economic and political partner of Israel in the near future, in the face of the gradual containment of the Syrian conflict.
 At the beginning, I intend to refer to the history of relations of both countries, dating back to the time of the existence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the breaking of diplomatic relations after the Six-Day War in June 1967. In the following part of the discussion, I present the relations of both entities immediately after the collapse of the Soviet empire and coming to power of Vladimir Putin, who from the beginning of his term in office has sought to significantly improve contacts with Israel. Then, I raise the problem of Moscow-Tel Aviv contacts after Benjamin Netanyahu took over as prime minister again and after the Arab Spring, which implied the conflict in Syria, during which Russia and Israel established cooperation. It will also be important to trace the attitude of the authorities in Tel Aviv to the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine. I would also like to refer to the relationship of both entities on the historical and cultural level, as well as on the economic and military level.
 In the summary, I highlight future perspectives and try to determine whether the current relations of both countries will intensify in the face of the end of war in Syria, and whether we can observe a close alliance of both countries now and in the future, or a limited partnership, determined by the need to implement real policy in the world.

What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet?: Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire

What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet?: Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire

Ripensare il 1989: il crollo dell’impero sovietico, la nascita della nuova Europa e i suoi limiti

Ripensare il 1989: il crollo dell’impero sovietico, la nascita della nuova Europa e i suoi limiti

What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire, written by Madina Tlostanova

What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire, written by Madina Tlostanova

Media component of geopolitical clashes: Black Sea Basin area

The collapse of the Soviet Empire and the dizzying development of new communication technologies, led to the geopolitical reconfiguration of the world, but also opened the way for the former Soviet republics to democracy and collaboration with European countries. As NATO and the EU advance towards Russia’s borders, it makes both military and ideological propaganda efforts to keep the territories of the past under its influence. Not without the competition of Russia in the countries of the “close neighborhood”- Ukraine, the Republic Of Moldova and Georgia were inspired conflicts, called to preserve military, political, ideological and economic control over these regions. A fierce battle is also waging by Russia for the strengthening of its positions in the Black Sea region, where geoprafically Ukraine, the Republic Of Moldova and Georgia are located. The article highlights the strategies, tactics and techniques applied by the Russian media in order to achieve geopolitical goals.

Researching Estonian Transformation: Morphogenetic Reflections by Kalmus Veronika (review)

SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 390 down by the sort of obfuscating jargon so beloved of social scientists. This, it should be stressed, has nothing to do with the quality of the contributors’ English, which is uniformly excellent; it has more to do with the baffling terminology and impenetrable style that too many of them choose to employ. There are exceptions: the articles by Müller, Holmes and Enyedi stand out for their clarity. Given the importance of the subject-matter, and the urgency of making it a matter of general concern, the collection as a whole has to be reckoned a missed opportunity. University of Exeter Ian D. Armour Kalmus, Veronika; Lauristin, Marju; Opermann, Signe and Vihalemm, Triin (eds). Researching Estonian Transformation: Morphogenetic Reflections. University of Tartu Press, Tartu, 2020. xxi + 358 pp. Figures. Tables. Notes. References. Appendices. Index. €20.00. Can a whole country comprise a single case study of ‘planned’ social change over three decades? This is the challenge set by the present volume, which aims to trace the pathway followed by Estonia from the fall of the Soviet empire to the present day. The enterprise stands on two pillars. First, the authors deploy a massive corpus of survey data, coming from various waves of research conducted since 2002, whose focus is on both structural change and its perception by the Estonian population. This involved reconstructing the demographic landscape and the emergent forms of social stratification in the country, as well as drawing a profile of changing life-worlds and lifestyles, political participation, culture and media consumption, and more. The second key point is the attempt to provide a unifying interpretation of this huge data set — and of the related ‘large processes’ — through an overarching conceptual framework, namely Margaret Archer’s ‘morphogenetic approach’, thereby revealing the transformative patterns of Estonian society. The project seems particularly timely, and the chosen theoretical approach especially suitable. Transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy as a theme for social science has come in various historical waves, and the guiding idea of most studies has been to model ideal pathways from closure to openness, often from chaos to stability. As regards Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet empire, the story has been told in two opposing ways. Heroic narratives describe the epochal success of countries making their way from beingSovietsatellitestobecomingmembersoftheEuropeanUnionandAtlantic Alliance. Therefore, their developmental path is characterized as a process of liberation, emancipation, modernization, Europeanization, Westernization. Counter-narratives see the same process as a sequence of failures, emphasizing REVIEWS 391 the excessive social hardships, growing inequalities and undaunted corruption that here are seen as the true hallmarks of that historical play. According to this gloomy view, the social and cultural trauma of transition was never overcome, which also explains the current ‘populist’ surge in some countries. Failure is alternatively attributed to the legacy of the Soviet past, in the form of a persistent ‘civilizational incompetence’ (recalling Piotr Sztompka’s wellknown verdict), or to the backlash of brute Westernization. In either case, most studies fail to account for the specificity of the inner socio-cultural dynamics in each country, beyond the alternative between Westernization and nostalgia. Moreover, social science still has to account for the processes leading various East European countries from shared beginnings to divergent ‘post-colonial’ paths, avoiding the deceitful linearity of ‘master trends’. The present book addresses these research gaps, offering an original way to examinetheEstonian‘successstory’.Thechoiceofthemorphogeneticapproach as the methodological key to interpretation is profoundly consequential. The challenge lies in the fact that the authors throw this conceptual framework like a net over their data sets, in order to capture the underlying patterns, while the data collection was originally inspired by other theories. However, such a decision is not merely ad hoc, but results from the authors’ journey through social theory, which led to an appreciation of a conceptual framework that is particularly sensitive to transformations and diachronic transitions. In this sense, such a démarche amounts to what Niklas Luhmann called the method of ‘theoretical variation’ as hermeneutics of social facts. From this vantage point, four main internal mechanisms of change are identified: neoliberal reforms, digitalization, ethnic divide and generational dynamics. These are coupled...

The National Conferences and Their Outcome and the Future of Democracy in Africa: Evidence from a Comparative Study

In the 1990, taking advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, many African States, mainly French speaking countries, the opposition elite in alliance with the civil society took to the streets for a national encounter in order to set new grounds for the political competition in almost 30 years. This paper tries and analyzes the impact of the so-called National Conferences on the current shape on the democratic transition and the democratic process in some of the States that hosted these public discussions. In contrast, it argues that countries failed to take advantage of these National Fora are less prone to embrace democracy, with for all of them a failure to bring substantial social changes in terms of well-being.
 

Ostatni

Andrzej Walicki, the last Polish world-renowned humanist of the 20th century, passed away in August this year. The article offers a concise description of his personality and work, which partly undermines some aspects of his autobiography published in 2010. Walicki, who, like Leszek Kołakowski, was a member of the 56’ generation, also known as the “thaw” generation, became famous, first and foremost, as an expert in Russian thought. His publications, devoted to, among other things, retrospective utopianism and liberalism in the 19th and 20th century Russian philosophy and social thought, were novel on a world scale. Equally novel were his works on the history of Marxism, where he challenged Kołakowski’s standpoint. Moreover, Walicki signifi cantly contributed to research on the history of Polish romantic philosophy, which had previously been overshadowed by great poetry. Walicki is considered to be one of the personalities who, in the 1960s and 70s, the time when Poland was part of the Soviet empire, made Polish humanities flourish. However, no matter how highly one estimates Walicki’s achievements, the impression that humanities were thriving in the communist Poland aft er de-Stalinization is an illusion. The illusion is an eff ect of the crisis in which humanities in Poland found themselves aft er the change of the regime, under neoliberal and populist governments.

Славянские фэнтези вчера и сегодня

The article is devoted to the study of the evolution and transformation of the Slavic fantasy genre on Russian soil: from its inception in the 1990s to the present day. Fantasy on the material of the events of the time of the pro-Slavic unity in Russia gained popularity and special significance. They solved the compensatory tasks of re-identification for the mass consciousness: with the collapse of the Soviet empire, the post-Soviet man needed a positive identity, which manifested itself in turning to the “great past” in predominantly heroic images. The subsequent historization and contextualization of the genre, its transformation from a fairy tale to a quasi-historical narrative was largely due to the influence of the ideologies spread by folk history. In the 2000s, Slavonic fantasy employs the mechanisms of routine, serialization, reduction, and convergence. In the 2010s, Slavic fantasy continues to be part of the national myth, gaining new genre forms — a film, a computer game, etc. However, new examples of the genre (in particular, Andrei Rubanov’s novel “Finist the Clear Falcon” of 2019) broadcast nostalgic moods in the aesthetic spirit retroutopia. If at the turn of the 1990–2000s Slavic fantasies became close to a historical adventure novel, now their rapprochement with a fairy tale is indicative.

Could it happen there? Ingmar Bergman, postwar Czechoslovakia, and delayed distribution

ABSTRACT This article analyses the distribution and reception of Ingmar Bergman’s films using the example of Czechoslovakia, within the Soviet sphere of influence, during the twenty-five years following World War II. First, it aims to examine the forms of distribution of Bergman’s films in Czechoslovakia. The article then shifts to the critical as well as cultural-political reception of two particular films: High Tension (1950) and The Silence (1963). Bergman had an ambivalent reputation in socialist Czechoslovakia, and this article seeks to examine the specific nature of this local discourse. Bergman’s cinema entered Czechoslovakia slowly. Screenings of his films were regularly delayed, emerging, when they did, both long after the Swedish premieres and those of other foreign states. This established a tendency I call “delayed distribution”. This practice, comprising different variations, reflected a complex cultural-political context and negotiations encompassing strict distribution approval processes, contractual obligations, and one-time festival screenings. The interplay of these aspects lead to a level of unpredictability and, at times, surprising distribution solutions.

Sublime Theology of the Decline of the Soviet Empire. Akat K. Belykh

Introduction. Socio-political disciplines are an important component of the Humanities of the Soviet period of Russian history. Scientific communism, introduced as a compulsory subject in all Higher education institutions of the USSR in the last 30 years of the state's existence, was considered as the final expression of all the theoretical propositions of Marxism-Leninism. The article attempts to consider Scientific communism as a speculative speculative construction that, on the one hand, reproduces the terminological, logical, semantic and operational regulations of classical philosophical systems, and on the other hand, is a privileged mechanism of discursive production. As a typical example of how and through what tools the doctrine is legitimized, the texts of the work of A. K. Belykh, who for almost 30 years headed the Department of the theory of scientific communism at the faculty of philosophy of LSU (now SPBU).Methodology and sources. Methodologically, the work is based on a philosophical analysis of texts representative of the epoch (D. de Tracy, grammar of Port Royal, Soviet Russian philosophers who worked in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, monographs by A. K. Belykh), included in the approved canonical corpus of Marxism-Leninism.Results and discussion. Scientific communism, now virtually removed from historical memory, was an interesting example of how social thought evolved during the Soviet period of Russian history. The corpus of socio-political disciplines, which included Marxist-Leninist philosophy (dialectical materialism and historical materialism), political economy, history of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, and scientific communism, was a single complex of speculative doctrine. All these disciplines, positioned as scientific knowledge, can be fully evaluated only in the context of the main trends in the development of social and philosophical knowledge of the New time, set by the Enlightenment era. Symbolic points of reference here can be considered projects of ”universal grammar” (Port Royal) and ”ideology” (Destute de Tracy).Conclusion. Scientific communism is not an accidental, but characteristic of Russian thought, intellectual construct. Collective, i. e. a large number of people are involved in its implementation, which means it can be considered as a well-formed direction of social thought. Among the historical analogs that use the same strategic and tactical Arsenal of means of expression and discursive fixation, it can be compared and likened to the wellknown speculative constructs of a theological nature: high scholasticism.

Dissent on the Belarusian Literary Front

Dissent on the Belarusian Literary Front Barbara Martin Tatsiana Astrouskaya, Cultural Dissent in Soviet Belarus (1968–1988): Intelligentsia, Samizdat, and Nonconformist Discourses. 232 pp., illus. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2019. ISBN-13 978-3447111881. €48.00. In recent years, the historiography of Soviet dissent has undergone a clear renewal and deideologization. Emancipation from Manichean Cold War era tropes of moral opposition to communism has allowed historians to enlarge their focus to manifestations of cultural dissent, study dissident cultures, but also explore the gray areas between the official and unofficial fields. Geographically, however, the focus is only beginning to shift from Moscow and Leningrad to the Russian peripheries and other Soviet republics. Belarus, with its image of political loyalty to Moscow, seems an unlikely place to look for manifestations of dissent or nonconformism. Yet, as Tatsiana Astrouskaya demonstrates in her study, the Belarusian intelligentsia found ways to voice its concerns over the status of its national language and history in both censored and uncensored publications. Far from delivering heroic narratives about Soviet dissidents, Astrouskaya brings to the reader's attention a case study characterized both by its liminality and peripherality. As the author underlines, "it is probably more challenging for the case of Belarus than in any other to merely divide intellectuals into two rival camps of nonconformists and collaborators, fighters and trimmers, Communist Party functionaries and opponents of the Party's monopoly, advocates of Russification and those who were 'nationally conscious'" (2). Using Homi Bhabha's concept of "third space," she writes that Belarusian intelligentsia "meandered between dissent and conformity, between self-printing and the state publishing houses" (11). While Belarusian writers were well-integrated into the Soviet system, mastered its codes, and knew how to navigate its hierarchies, they could also use this knowledge to circumvent accepted norms and introduce nonconformist ideas into censored print. Moreover, [End Page 650] authors who benefited from the privileges attached to the status of Soviet writer could also circulate their uncensored writings in samizdat. While such scholars as Ann Komaromi or Sergei Oushakine have explored the blurred boundary between official and unofficial fields, Astrouskaya shows that nationalist cultural discourse could also occupy this "third space."1 The notion of peripherality is no less important for Astrouskaya. It conditions the type of cultural dissent that is central to her study: discourses produced by the nationally conscious intelligentsia, set in opposition to the more universal democratic and moral opposition of Soviet human-rights activists in Moscow. Although she does not elaborate on this thesis, the author suggests that Russification was a product of "cultural colonization by Russian and Soviet imperialism" (116). Hence at the periphery, the task of national liberation superseded the more universal struggle for freedom that characterized dissent in the Russian capitals. Moreover, she emphasizes, the Belarusian intelligentsia was also marginal in so far as its national language and culture were always located at the crossroads of the Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Jewish, and Ukrainian worlds. Historically, Belarusian nationalists often took part in other national projects, only to realize that they did not fit, and incorporated these different perspectives into their own national project. Peripherality also imposed additional hurdles on Belarusian dissenters, such as the lack of access to channels of dissemination of their uncensored writings across the Iron Curtain and more limited access to samizdat from the capital. In addition, the lack of a significant Belarusian diaspora in the West, coupled with a lesser interest from Western radio stations, explain the relative paucity of Belarusian tamizdat. Being a borderland area, Belarus was also under stricter political control than more central areas of the Soviet Union. Astrouskaya states from the outset that she concentrates on "the intelligentsia that understood itself as national, wrote and published predominantly in the Belarusian language and perceived itself as deeply rooted in Belarusian tradition" (4), with a closer focus on "the writers' community and nonconformism" (8). The authors she considers, however, were variously integrated into the system, ranging from the acclaimed writer Vasyl´ Bykaŭ, who received the status of People's Writer of Belarus in 1980, to the poet Larysa Heniush, incarcerated in the Stalin era and with very few works that made their way into censored print. Astrouskaya convincingly shows...