The Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia

Language, Fiction and Fantasy in Modern Russia

Mikhail Suslov, Per-Arne Bodin, Mikhail Suslov, Per-Arne Bodin

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780755636471
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788317054
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

More than 700 'utopian' novels are published in Russia every year. These utopias – meaning here fantasy fiction, science fiction, space operas or alternative history – do not set out merely to titillate; instead they express very real Russian anxieties: be they territorial right-sizing, loss of imperial status or turning into a 'colony' of the West.

Contributors to this innovative collection use these narratives to re-examine post-Soviet Russian political culture and identity. Interrogating the intersections of politics, ideologies and fantasies, chapters draw together the highbrow literary mainstream (authors such as Vladimir Sorokin), mass literature for entertainment and individuals who bridge the gap between fiction writers and intellectuals or ideologists (Aleksandr Prokhanov, for example, the editor-in-chief of Russia's far-right newspaper Zavtra). In the process The Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia sheds crucial light onto a variety of debates – including the rise of nationalism, right-wing populism, imperial revanchism, the complicated presence of religion in the public sphere, the function of language – and is important reading for anyone interested in the heightened importance of ideas, myths, alternative histories and conspiracy theories in Russia today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One History
• 1 Alternative Russian Revolution: Viacheslav Rybakov and Kir Bulychev
• 2 Ressentiment and Post-traumatic Syndrome in Russian Post-Soviet Speculative Fiction: Two Trends
• 3 Telluro-Cosmic Imperial Utopia and Contemporary Russian Art
• 4 Lazarus on the Ark: Heterotopias in the Novels of Vladimir Sharov and Evgenii Vodolazkin
• Part Two Ideology
• 5 Conservative Science Fiction in Contemporary Russian Literature and Politics
• 6 Othering Russia: Eduard Limonov’s Retrofuturistic (Anti-) Utopia
• 7 Religio-political Utopia by Iana Zavatskaia Anastasia Mitrofanova
• 8 ‘Respectable Xenophobia’: Science Fiction, Utopia and Conspiracy Victor Shnirelman
• Part Three Language
• 9 Church Slavonic in Russian Dystopias and Utopias Per-Arne Bodin
• 10 Contested Utopias: Language Ideologies in Valerii Votrin’s Logoped Ingunn Lunde
• 11 ‘Londongrad’ as a Linguistic Imaginary: Russophone Migrants in the UK in the Work of Michael Idov and Andrei Ostalsky Lara Ryazanova-Clarke
• Part Four Territory
• 12 Provinces, Piety and Promotional Putinism: Mapping Aleksandr Prokhanov’s Counter-Utopian Russia Edith W. Clowes
• 13 Parameters of Space-Time and Degrees of (Un)Freedom: Dmitry Bykov’s ZhD Sofya Khagi
• 14 The New ‘Norma’: Vladimir Sorokin’s Telluria and Post-Utopian Science Fiction Mark Lipovetsky
• Afterword: Back to the Future, Forward to the Past? Explorations in Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy Kåre Johan Mjør and Sanna Turoma
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright