Global Russian Cultures

Global Russian Cultures
Author: Kevin M. F. Platt
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0299319709

Is there an essential Russian identity? What happens when "Russian" literature is written in English, by such authors as Gary Shteyngart or Lara Vapnyar? What is the geographic "home" of Russian culture created and shared via the internet? Global Russian Cultures innovatively considers these and many related questions about the literary and cultural life of Russians who in successive waves of migration have dispersed to the United States, Europe, and Israel, or who remained after the collapse of the USSR in Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the Central Asian states. The volume's internationally renowned contributors treat the many different global Russian cultures not as "displaced" elements of Russian cultural life but rather as independent entities in their own right. They describe diverse forms of literature, music, film, and everyday life that transcend and defy political, geographic, and even linguistic borders. Arguing that Russian cultures today are many, this volume contends that no state or society can lay claim to be the single or authentic representative of Russianness. In so doing, it contests the conceptions of culture and identity at the root of nation-building projects in and around Russia.

Russian Culture in the Age of Globalization

Russian Culture in the Age of Globalization
Author: Vlad Strukov
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2018-12-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317235584

This book brings together scholars from across a variety of disciplines who use different methodologies to interrogate the changing nature of Russian culture in the twenty-first century. The book considers a wide range of cultural forms that have been instrumental in globalizing Russia. These include literature, art, music, film, media, the internet, sport, urban spaces, and the Russian language. The book pays special attention to the processes by which cultural producers negotiate between Russian government and global cultural capital. It focuses on the issues of canon, identity, soft power and cultural exchange. The book provides a conceptual framework for analyzing Russia as a transnational entity and its contemporary culture in the globalized world.

Russia’s Cultural Statecraft

Russia’s Cultural Statecraft
Author: Tuomas Forsberg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2021-11-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000469247

This book focusses on Russia’s cultural statecraft in dealing with a number of institutional cultural domains such as education, museums and monuments, high arts and sport. It analyses to what extent Russia’s cultural activities abroad have been used for foreign policy purposes, and perceived as having a political dimension. Building on the concept of cultural statecraft, the authors present a broad and nuanced view of how Russia sees the role of culture in its external relations, how this shapes the image of Russia, and the ways in which this cultural statecraft is received by foreign audiences. The expert team of contributors consider: what choices are made in fostering this agenda; how Russian state authorities see the purpose and limits of various cultural instruments; to what extent can the authorities shape these instruments; what domains have received more attention and become more politicised and what fields have remained more autonomous. The methodological research design of the book as a whole is a comparative case study comparing the nature of Russian cultural statecraft across time, target countries and diverse cultural domains. It will be of interest to scholars and students of Russian foreign policy and external relations and those working on the role of culture in world politics.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture
Author: Nicholas Rzhevsky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 1998
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780521477994

An introduction to modern Russian culture, from language and religion to literature and the arts.

Global Russian Cultures

Global Russian Cultures
Author: Kevin M. F. Platt
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018
Genre: HISTORY
ISBN: 9780299319731

Vladimir Putin has tried to rationalize the 2014 annexation of Crimea as a defense of the "millions of Russian and russophone people" who live there--an irredentist logic that rests on an understanding of a unified, fixed, primordial "Russian-ness." Challenging this notion of an essential Russian identity that must be kept pure and whole, Global Russian Cultures explores the protean complexity of Russian culture as it has spread across the world through successive waves of migration. "Both within and without the Russian Federation," explains editor Kevin Platt, "Russian culture is fragmented and multiple." In revealing Russian cultures as plural, unbounded, and polycentric, this volume calls into question the exculpatory reasoning that fuels the Russian projection of power and, implicitly, similar imperial projects.

Ukrainian, Russophone, (Other) Russian

Ukrainian, Russophone, (Other) Russian
Author: Marco Puleri
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2020-05-07
Genre:
ISBN: 9783631816622

The author investigates the interplay between literature, politics, market and identity in contemporary Ukraine (1991-2018). The sections of this book explore the contested role of Russophone culture in Ukraine, highlighting the impact of Russian-Ukrainian political relations on social developments in post-independence and post-Maidan times.

Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020

Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020
Author: Maria Rubins
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2021-03-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1787359417

Over the century that has passed since the start of the massive post-revolutionary exodus, Russian literature has thrived in multiple locations around the globe. What happens to cultural vocabularies, politics of identity, literary canon and language when writers transcend the metropolitan and national boundaries and begin to negotiate new experience gained in the process of migration? Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 sets a new agenda for the study of Russian diaspora writing, countering its conventional reception as a subsidiary branch of national literature and reorienting the field from an excessive emphasis on the homeland and origins to an analysis of transnational circulations that shape extraterritorial cultural practices. Integrating a variety of conceptual perspectives, ranging from diaspora and postcolonial studies to the theories of translation and self-translation, World Literature and evolutionary literary criticism, the contributors argue for a distinct nature of diasporic literary expression predicated on hybridity, ambivalence and a sense of multiple belonging. As the complementary case studies demonstrate, diaspora narratives consistently recode historical memory, contest the mainstream discourses of Russianness, rewrite received cultural tropes and explore topics that have remained marginal or taboo in the homeland. These diverse discussions are framed by a focused examination of diaspora as a methodological perspective and its relevance for the modern human condition.

Russian Postmodernism

Russian Postmodernism
Author: Mikhail Epstein
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 552
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781571810281

The last ten years were decisive for Russia, not only in the political sphere, but also culturally as this period saw the rise and crystallization of Russian postmodernism. The essays, manifestos, and articles gathered here investigate various manifestations of this crucial cultural trend. Exploring Russian fiction, poetry, art, and spirituality, they provide a point of departure and a valuable guide to an area of contemporary literary-cultural studies which is currently insufficiently represented in English-language scholarship. A brief but useful "Who's Who in Russian Postmodernism" as an appendix introduces many authors who have never before appeared in a reference work of this kind and renders this book essential reading for those interested in the latest trends in Russian intellectual life.

Russian Talk

Russian Talk
Author: Nancy Ries
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1997
Genre: Language and culture
ISBN: 9780801484162

As one of the first Western ethnographers working in Moscow, Nancy Ries became convinced that talk is one crucial way in which Russian identity is constructed and reproduced. Listening to the grim stories people used to characterize their lives during perestroika, and encountering the florid pessimism with which Muscovites described the unraveling of Soviet governance, Ries realized that these dire tales played a crucial role in fabricating a sense of shared experience and destiny. While many of the narratives aptly depicted the chaotic social and political events, they also promoted key images of "Russianness" and presented Russian society as an inescapable realm of injustice, absurdity, and suffering. At the height of perestroika in the early 1990s, Moscow residents commonly used the phrase "complete ruin" to refer to the disintegration of Russian society, encompassing in that phrase the escalation of crime, the disappearance of goods from stores, the fall of production, ecological catastrophes, ethnic violence in the Caucasus, the degradation of the arts, and the flood of pornography. Ries argues that such stories became a genre of folklore consistent in their lamenting, portentous tone and their dramatic, culturally poignant details.