Imagined Riverography of Late Twentieth-Century Russian Prose
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435/2021 433/2021 MIKAPERKIÖMÄKI MIKAKAJ PERKIÖMÄKI SYRJÄNEN Imagined RiverographyQuantitative of Imagined Riverography of Late Twentieth-Century Russian Prose Russian Twentieth-Century Late of Riverography Imagined LateLanguage Twentieth-Century Evolution Case studies in FinnishRussian dialects and Uralic Prose languages Tampere University Dissertations 435433 Tampere University Dissertations 435 MIKA PERKIÖMÄKI Imagined Riverography of Late Twentieth-Century Russian Prose ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences of Tampere University, for public discussion in the Pinni B building auditorium 1096, Kanslerinrinne 1, Tampere, on 27 August 2021, at 15 o’clock. ACADEMIC DISSERTATION Tampere University, Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences Finland Responsible Professor Emerita supervisor Arja Rosenholm and Custos Tampere University Finland Supervisor Professor Maria Litovskaya Ural Federal University Russian Federation Pre-examiners Associate Professor Chief Research Fellow Alexander Hugh Brookes Dmitry Zamyatin Memorial University of National Research University Newfoundland Higher School of Economics Canada Russian Federation Opponent Associate Professor Alexander Hugh Brookes Memorial University of Newfoundland Canada The originality of this thesis has been checked using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. Copyright ©2021 Mika Perkiömäki Cover design: Roihu Inc. ISBN 978-952-03-2011-9 (print) ISBN 978-952-03-2012-6 (pdf) ISSN 2489-9860 (print) ISSN 2490-0028 (pdf) http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-2012-6 PunaMusta Oy – Yliopistopaino Joensuu 2021 Vanhemmilleni. iii iv PREFACE The source of the river is in Lithuania. Twenty years ago, when visiting a small record shop in Vilnius, I bought the live album Chërnyi pës Peterburg by the Russian rock band DDT. Little did I know what a mighty river was opening in front of me. The captivating music and the incomprehensible lyrics sparked an interest in the riddle of Russian culture. First, I needed to decode the mysterious Cyrillic script. The river widened, and soon I wanted to understand the language. Farther downstream, I immersed myself in the rich history and variety of the Russian culture. The flow increased when I learned about Soviet environmental literature, whose mere existence blew my mind. I was fascinated by the prominence of the Russian river and its multifaceted meanings in literature. Before long, I found myself involved in an academic project on the social and cultural aspects of water. This dissertation is my latest attempt in cracking the enigma of Russian culture. By now, the river is so wide that I cannot see the opposite shore. Whether I have arrived in a confluence of two rivers, a reservoir, or an ocean, remains to be seen. Along this journey that turned out to be far more epic than I could ever have anticipated, I have travelled in Russia and other former Soviet republics not only mentally but also physically. The very first trip took me to the Trans-Siberian Railway – alone and illiterate. Later, I have seen the church where Lenin was married in Shushenskoye, couchsurfed in Pskov, taken my mother to her birthplace in the Karelian Isthmus, and cycled around White Sea Karelia. I have studied in Tver, given lectures in Yekaterinburg, lived in a communal flat and witnessed massive demonstrations in St. Petersburg. I have eaten borshch in Rzhev, manty in Sochi and ponchiki on the boat to Solovki, and drunk balzam with an eminent scholar of Russian philology in a student dormitory. I have smelled the coal of Vorkuta, marvelled the onion domes of the Kizhi Pogost, and suffered extreme heat in Turkestan and blizzards in Murmansk. I have attended several Easter Vigil Processions, visited Buddhist temples in Kalmykia and Buryatia as well as mosques in Tatarstan, and tasted mineral waters of Kislovodsk. I have been to graves of renowned writers, admired the Chekhov house museum behind a closed fence in Taganrog, and met by accident the famous singing babushki in Buranovo. I have felt myself small in the v face of huge war monuments in Volgograd, Murmansk, Brest and Kiev, and visited the Kalashnikov museum in Izhevsk. I have swam in the Aral Sea and Lake Baikal, hidden a geocache on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, and hiked in the mountains of Karachay-Cherkessia. I have participated in the annual Road of Life winter marathon event in severe frost and a Siberian mountain running event in stifling heat, attended a trail running event in the Northern Urals, and skied in the foot of the Khibiny Massif. I have been to the source of the Volga in the Valdai Hills, travelled by a riverboat along the Yenisei from Krasnoyarsk to Igarka, seen where the Angara drains out of Lake Baikal as well as where it meets the Yenisei near Strelka. I have travelled by train over the huge Bratsk dam, visited the Krasnoyarsk dam, crossed the Ob on a ferry from Labytnangi to Salekhard, spent a leasurely day on the banks of the Pripyat in Pinsk, and seen the lotuses of the Volga Delta. The number of people and organizations who have contributed to this dissertation is astonishing. Naming them all here is impossible, but I will try to acknowledge at least a significant share of them. First, I want to thank Associate Professor Alexander Brookes for agreeing to act as my opponent in the publice defence of my dissertation and for his thorough pre-examination comments. I sincerely look forward to our discussion. I am also truly grateful to the other pre- examiner, Chief Research Fellow Dmitry Zamyatin, whose feedback was also highly valuable. Through the years, I have received financial support that has been invaluable. The work on this dissertation started as a part of the research project AQUA – Water as Social and Cultural Space, funded by the Academy of Finland (programme #263417). My work was also supported by the Emil Aaltonen Foundation and the City of Tampere Research Fund, and I received a travel grant from Tampere University Foundation. I am extremely grateful for all the external funders for their support. I also thank Professor Emeritus Yrjö Haila for kindly accepting to act as a reference for me in my numerous grant applications. Thank you to Finland for financing all my previous education. I will never be able to express the extent of my gratitude to my responsible supervisor, Professor Emerita Arja Rosenholm. Nothing could have replaced the support, the discussions and the endless iterations of sharp and accurate feedback that I have received from her ever since the days when I started my Master’s studies. I also want to thank my supervisor Professor Maria Litovskaya for numerous helpful comments on my manuscripts and for kindly receiving me on a research and teaching visit in Ural Federal University. vi I would also like to thank all my colleagues at the AQUA project. The project meetings and the events we organised within the limits of the project gave a wonderful start for my work on this dissertation. I especially want to thank the forerunners of Finnish ecocriticism, Professor Markku Lehtimäki for insightful support on many phases of my project, and Dr. Toni Lahtinen for the constant encouragement that has helped me to believe in my ability to finish this work. I also want to express my thanks to Dr. Nina Tynkkynen, Dr. Withold Bonner, Dr. Maija Ojala, Dr. Petri Juuti, Dr. Tapio Katko, and Dr. Riikka Rajala. It is only now that I am beginning to understand how important it was for me to be able to work with you. I am also grateful to the colleagues in my current project. Thank you to Eeva Kuikka, Dr. Karina Lukin, and particularly, Dr. Tintti Klapuri for your patience, feedback and support. There is a host of other academics whose help and inspiration has been most valuable for me. Thank you to Professor Jane Costlow, whose wide knowledge of Russian environmental literature has been most helpful. I have also been lucky to be able to work with Professor Scott Slovic, a true pioneer of ecocritical research. Thank you for the useful comments and discussions; I also have dear memories of our inspirational jogging and cross-country skiing activities in the Kauppi forest. I thank Professor Natalia Kovtun for providing me with opportunities to disseminate my work in Russia, and for extremely helpful advice and support. Thanks also belong to Dr. Natalia Tsvetaeva for helpful discussions about the Russian river and for bringing me to valuable sources of information. I would also like to express my thanks to Professor Nicholas Breyfogle and Professor Emeritus Philip Brown for inviting me to a workshop that proved productive for one of my articles. Thank you to Dr. Inna Sukhenko for keeping me up to date on appropriate academic events, and to all my anonymous referees for useful comments on my article manuscripts. The support of colleagues and fellow PhD Candidates at Tampere University has also been indispensable. Thank you to Dr. Irina Savkina for introducing me to the world of Russian natural-philosophical prose. Thank you to Professor Sari Kivistö, Dr. Laura Karttunen and especially Professor Sanna Turoma for careful and valuable feedback for the summary part of my dissertation. Thank you to all the staff at the degree programme of Russian for first being excellent teachers and then excellent colleagues. I thank Professor Camilla Lindholm and Associate Professor Maija Hirvonen for facilitating productive communal writing sessions at the final stages of my work. Thank you to Dr. Saara Ratilainen for accepting to act as the moderator of my online defence. It has been a great pleasure to share office space with Jukka Tuominen and Flóra Várkonyi. Thanks to Jukka also for patiently attending to my vii requests for support in the English and Greek languages.