University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Russia Eternal: Recalling The Imperial Era In Late- And Post-Soviet Literature And Culture Pavel Khazanov University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Eastern European Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, European History Commons, and the European Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Khazanov, Pavel, "Russia Eternal: Recalling The Imperial Era In Late- And Post-Soviet Literature And Culture" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2894. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2894 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2894 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Russia Eternal: Recalling The Imperial Era In Late- And Post-Soviet Literature And Culture Abstract The return of Tsarist buildings, narratives and symbols has been a prominent facet of social life in post- Soviet Russia. My dissertation aims to explain this phenomenon and its meaning by tracking contemporary Russia’s cultural memory of the Imperial era. By close-reading both popular and influential cultural texts, as well as analyzing their conditions of production and reception, I show how three generations of Russian cultural elites from the 1950s until today have used Russia’s past to fight present- day political battles, and outline how the cultural memory of the Imperial epoch continues to inform post- Soviet Russian leaders and their mainstream detractors. Chapters One and Two situate the origin of Russian culture’s current engagement with the pre-Revolutionary era in the social dynamic following Stalin’s death in 1953. I first discuss how the pre-Soviet past was inherited by the post-Stalin liberal elites and amplified by the expansion of a mass ‘technical intelligentsia,’ the burgeoning of media, and the growth of political and affective links between the educated masses and the cultural elites who would represent them. I then examine how late Soviet conservatives used the pre-Soviet past to dispute the liberal hegemony and to forge anti-liberal alliances with state power. Chapter Three shows how the memory of the late Imperial era and its Revolutionary terminus has informed the capitalist, liberal- conservative ‘homo faber’ rhetoric of the anti-Soviet intelligentsia coalition that brought first eltsinY and then Putin to power, and legitimated an undemocratic and increasingly repressive post-Soviet state. Chapter Four examines several vectors of a more thoroughly liberal humanist counter-discourse on the pre-Soviet past. I claim that this counter-discourse was always productively skeptical of Soviet liberal and conservative models of historical inheritance, and that it arose simultaneously with the Perestroika and proceeded to reappear for two decades, though more in a potential, rather than a fully articulated way. I conclude by suggesting that in the wake of the 2011-2012 mass protests, the pre-Soviet past has lost its consensus appeal, indicating the end of a sixty-year-long Russian discursive trend and the beginning of a new, more future-oriented form of mainstream liberal politics. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Comparative Literature and Literary Theory First Advisor Kevin M. Platt Keywords Eidelman, Govorukhin, Okudzhava, Pelevin, Ulitskaya, Voroshilov Subject Categories Eastern European Studies | English Language and Literature | European History | European Languages and Societies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2894 RUSSIA ETERNAL: RECALLING THE IMPERIAL ERA IN LATE- AND POST- SOVIET LITERATURE AND CULTURE Pavel Khazanov A DISSERTATION In Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Supervisor of Dissertation ———————————————— Kevin M. F. Platt, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Russian and Eastern European Studies Graduate Group Chairperson ———————————————— Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies Dissertation Committee Ilya Vinitsky, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures (Princeton University) Mark Leiderman (Lipovetsky), Professor of Russian (University of Colorado, Boulder) RUSSIA ETERNAL: RECALLING THE IMPERIAL ERA IN LATE- AND POST- SOVIET LITERATURE AND CULTURE COPYRIGHT 2017 Pavel Khazanov This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ In memory of my grandfather Yakov Khazanov (1922-2017), who answered every question and always expected me to ask more. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The initial inspiration for this dissertation took place in Rossen Djagalov’s and Kevin Platt’s seminar on contemporary Russian culture. One of the readings from that course, Ludmila Ulitskaya’s “Queen of Spades” made it into the present manuscript. The other major brainstorm moment took place on the sidelines of “After Censorship, Before Freedom,” a workshop on post-Soviet literature at Princeton University in 2014—special thanks to Serguei Oushakine for inviting me to participate in this event and others, all of which were extremely productive for my work. Kevin could not have been a better supervisor and mentor all these years. I am also very grateful to Mark Lipovetsky and Ilya Vinitsky for serving on my committee on this project. Additionally, Gabriel Rockhill’s suggestions at the prospectus stage greatly helped crystalize my thinking. Thanks to the presenters, discussants and organizers at ASEEES and AATSEEL over the last few years, where I tried out arguments for this dissertation: Maria Sidorkina, Fabrizio Fenghi, Jane Sharp, Irina Anisimova, Beach Gray, Nancy Condee and Chloë Kitzinger. Thanks also to Sibelan Forrester for inviting me to speak about What? Where? When?— much of the material for that lecture ended up shaping Chapter Four of this dissertation. A special shout-out to Hammam Aldouri, who has served as a philosophical therapist for this project over the course of the last year, when the argument of the dissertation was finalized. The Mellon Council for European Studies graciously funded the dissertation during my last year of graduate school. Julia Verkholantsev, Peter Holquist, Ben Nathans, Maria Alley, Peter Steiner, Emily Wilson, Mitchell Ornstein and Alina Yakubova provided enormous support, advice and patience during my graduate career. To my fellow graduate students, past and present, at Penn and beyond: Maya Vinokour, Alex Moshkin, Matt Mangold, Jason Cieply, Helen Stuhr-Rommereim, Julia Dasbach, Jacob Feygin, Sam Casper, Courtney Doucette, Iuliia Skubytska, Alex Hazanov, Josh Neese-Todd, Igor Dombrovsky, Adam Leeds, Raquel Salas Rivera, Alison Howard, Maria Pape, George MacLeod, Sarah Nicolazzo, Avi Alpert, Nesrine Chanine, Devorah Fischler, Joe Liew, Jerry Chang, Daniela Tanner, Jenia Ulanova, Ari Resnikoff, Gabe Sessions, Sonia Gollance, Shari Gottlieb, Ari Gordon, Harry Schley, Jacob Feeley and many, many others—getting through these six years would have been quite unlikely without your friendship and camaraderie. Without JoAnne Dubil I and my fellow complitters would have been lost. Finally, I am grateful to my family—my mom, my dad, Eugene, Esther, Shlomo, Sarit and Jonathan. Your contributions to this project, to my time in grad school and my life as a whole have been innumerable. Gabriela Caroline Kattan Khazanov gets a special line. I think you know why. Noemi too. But the last line goes to my grandfather. May his memory be a blessing. iv ABSTRACT RUSSIA ETERNAL: RECALLING THE IMPERIAL ERA IN LATE- AND POST- SOVIET LITERATURE AND CULTURE Pavel Khazanov Kevin M. F. Platt The return of Tsarist buildings, narratives and symbols has been a prominent facet of social life in post-Soviet Russia. My dissertation aims to explain this phenomenon and its meaning by tracking contemporary Russia’s cultural memory of the Imperial era. By close-reading both popular and influential cultural texts, as well as analyzing their conditions of production and reception, I show how three generations of Russian cultural elites from the 1950s until today have used Russia’s past to fight present-day political battles, and outline how the cultural memory of the Imperial epoch continues to inform post-Soviet Russian leaders and their mainstream detractors. Chapters One and Two situate the origin of Russian culture’s current engagement with the pre-Revolutionary era in the social dynamic following Stalin’s death in 1953. I first discuss how the pre-Soviet past was inherited by the post-Stalin liberal elites and amplified by the expansion of a mass ‘technical intelligentsia,’ the burgeoning of media, and the growth of political and affective links between the educated masses and the cultural elites who would represent them. I then examine how late Soviet conservatives used the pre-Soviet past to dispute the liberal hegemony and to forge anti-liberal alliances with state power. v Chapter Three shows how the memory of the late Imperial era and its Revolutionary terminus has informed the capitalist, liberal-conservative ‘homo faber’ rhetoric of the anti-Soviet intelligentsia coalition that brought first Yeltsin and