Russian Readers and Writers in the Twenty-first Century: the Internet as a Meeting Point A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2012 Elisa Coati School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures Table of Contents List of Pictures ............................................................................................................. 4 Note on translation and transliteration ......................................................................... 4 Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 5 Declaration ................................................................................................................... 6 Copyright Statement ..................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 7 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 8 1 - Peculiarities of Russian literary culture .............................................................. 9 1.1 The role of literature and of the literary author ............................................... 9 1.2 The role of literature in the Soviet period ..................................................... 10 1.3 The role of readers ........................................................................................ 12 1.4 Unofficial subcultures: samizdat ................................................................... 13 1.5 The Post-Soviet era ....................................................................................... 14 2- Background ....................................................................................................... 16 2.1 The death of the book ................................................................................... 16 2.2 Online communication and literary culture .................................................. 17 2.3 The RuNet ..................................................................................................... 18 3 - Aims and objectives .......................................................................................... 21 4 - Theory and Methodology .................................................................................. 23 5 - Chapters outline ................................................................................................ 25 Chapter 1 - Background and Methodology ................................................................ 27 1 - Technology and cultural evolution .................................................................... 27 1.1 Writing as a technology ................................................................................ 28 1.2 Technology kills the book? ........................................................................... 29 2 - Technology and revolution............................................................................... 34 3 - Characteristics of digital literary culture ........................................................... 37 4 - Internet culture, culture on the Internet ............................................................. 40 4.1 Internet and communication: the virtual coffeehouse ................................... 40 4.2 The era of Web 2.0........................................................................................ 43 4.3 A global Net? ................................................................................................ 46 5 - Methodology .................................................................................................... 51 6 - Ethical issues ..................................................................................................... 55 Chapter 2 - The Russian Context: Literature after 1991 and the Rise of the RuNet .. 59 1 - Post-Soviet literary culture ................................................................................ 60 1.1 - The transition: reading materials ................................................................ 61 1.2 - The literary market: publishing and distribution ........................................ 66 1.3 - Contemporary Russian literature ................................................................ 68 1.4 - The end of (high) literature ......................................................................... 70 2 - Mass media and the Internet in Russia .............................................................. 74 2.1 - The rise of the RuNet: elites and peripheries ............................................. 75 2.2 - Post-Soviet Russian media: television, the internet and power .................. 79 2.3 - Internet and cultural adaptation .................................................................. 84 3 - Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 89 2 Chapter 3 - The Russian Literary Internet .................................................................. 91 1 - The Internet as an archive of traditional materials: libraries and journals ........ 93 2 - The development of the Russian literary Internet ........................................... 100 2.1 - Literary portals ......................................................................................... 103 2.2 - Literary prizes go online ........................................................................... 110 3 - Online self-publication: s amizdat of the twenty-first century ......................... 112 3.1 - Everyday writing: graphomania and blogs ............................................... 119 4 - The Internet and publishing in Russia ............................................................. 122 5 - Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 129 Chapter 4 - Boris Akunin: Historical Research and Online Communication .......... 132 1 - Boris Akunin ................................................................................................... 133 2 - Akunin’s presence online and the websites chosen for this project ................ 139 2.1 Akunin.ru : the official website .................................................................... 140 2.2 Fandorin! : the readers’ initiative ................................................................ 144 2.3 The Fandorin! Forum ................................................................................. 149 3 - Readers and the author: the forum as a meeting point ................................... 150 4 - In Fandorin’s museum and ‘Around Fandorin’s places’: a case study of space and time ................................................................................................................ 154 5 – Kvest , the ‘universal book’ ............................................................................. 164 6 - Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 172 Chapter 5 - Viktor Pelevin and his readers .............................................................. 175 1 - Pelevin and his work ....................................................................................... 176 1.1 - Pelevin the author ..................................................................................... 176 1.2 - Pelevin as a public figure .......................................................................... 181 2 - Pelevin and the virtual world .......................................................................... 182 2.1 - Pelevin and online communication........................................................... 183 2.2 - Pelevin’s official website ......................................................................... 187 3 - The fan’s initiative: collective creation of contents ........................................ 190 3.1 Pelevin.nov.ru ............................................................................................. 191 3.2 - Viktor Olegovich™ ................................................................................... 195 3.3 - The forum ................................................................................................. 198 4 - Online distribution and reading habits: ‘Buy and read books!’ ...................... 204 5 – Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 211 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 215 1 - Readers on the RuNet: new habits and traditions ........................................... 216 2 - Readers and writers: virtual meetings and new roles ...................................... 218 3 - The status of literature ..................................................................................... 220 4 - The materiality of the book and distribution issues ........................................ 221 5 - Tradition and innovation on the literary RuNet .............................................. 222 6 - Russian traits of a global phenomenon ........................................................... 224 7 - Contribution to knowledge .............................................................................. 226 References ...............................................................................................................