The Anthology «Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia»
At this meeting, we will discuss a newly published anthology at the intersections of politics and culture in today's Russia. We will divide the reading among the group; do let us know if you would like to present one of the chapters.
Main content
Abstract
Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia
In Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia scholars scrutinise developments in official symbolical, cultural and social policies as well as the contradictory trajectories of important cultural, social and intellectual trends in Russian society after the year 2000. Engaging experts on Russia from several academic fields, the book offers case studies on the vicissitudes of cultural policies, political ideologies and imperial visions, on memory politics on the grassroot as well as official levels, and on the links between political and national imaginaries and popular culture in fields as diverse as fashion design and pro-natalist advertising.
Contents
Introduction: Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia – Niklas Bernsand and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa
Part 1
Cultural Policy and Ideological Movements
1 Russia: Culture, Cultural Policy, and the Swinging Pendulum of Politics – Lena Jonson
2 ‘Middle Continent’ or ‘Island Russia’: Eurasianist Legacy and Vadim Tsymburskii’s Revisionist Geopolitics – Igor Torbakov
3 Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party and the Nazi Legacy: Titular Nations vs Ethnic Minorities – Andrei Rogatchevski
Part 2
Memory Politics
4 Constructing the “Usable Past”: the Evolution of the Official Historical Narrative in Post-Soviet Russia – Olga Malinova
5 Dying in the Soviet Gulag for the Future Glory of Mother Russia? Making “Patriotic” Sense of the Gulag in Present-Day Russia – Tomas Sniegon
6 Memory Watchdogs. Online and Offline Mobilizations around Controversial Historical Issues in Russia – Elena Perrier (Morenkova)
Part 3
Popular Culture and Its Embeddedness in Politics
7 “Your Stork Might Disappear Forever!”: Russian Public Awareness Advertising and Incentivizing Motherhood – Elena Rakhimova-Sommers
8 Fashionable Irony and Stiob: the Use of Soviet Heritage in Russian Fashion Design and Soviet Subcultures – Ekaterina Kalinina
9 Humour as a Mode of Hegemonic Control: Comic Representations of Belarusian and Ukrainian Leaders in Official Russian Media – Alena Minchenia, Barbara Törnquist-Plewa and Yuliya Yurchuk
10 The Cosmic Subject in Post-Soviet Russia: Noocosmology, Space- Oriented Spiritualism, and the Problem of the Securitization of the Soul – Natalija Majsova