Is there an essential Russian identity? What happens when ""Russian"" literature is written in English, by such authors as Gary Shteyngart or Lara Vapnyar? What is the geographic ""home"" of Russian culture created and shared via the internet? Global Russian Cultures innovatively considers these and many related questions about the literary and cultural life of Russians who in successive waves of migration have dispersed to the United States, Europe, and Israel, or who remained after the collapse of the USSR in Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the Central Asian states. The volume's internationally renowned contributors treat the many different global Russian cultures not as ""displaced"" elements of Russian cultural life but rather as independent entities in their own right. They describe diverse forms of literature, music, film, and everyday life that transcend and defy political, geographic, and even linguistic borders. Arguing that Russian cultures today are many, this volume contends that no state or society can lay claim to be the single or authentic representative of Russianness. In so doing, it contests the conceptions of culture and identity at the root of nation-building projects in and around Russia.
Kevin M. F. Platt is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths and History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments A Note on Transliteration of Russian Introduction: Putting Russian Cultures in Place Kevin M. F. Platt Part One: The Situation of Russian Cultures A Century of Russian Culture(s) "Abroad": The Unfolding of Literary Geography Maria Rubins Russophone Writing in Ukraine: Historical Contexts and Post-Euromaidan Changes Vitaly Chernetsky "Russian Culture" in Central Asia as a Trans-Ethnic Phenomenon Natalya Kosmarskaya and Artyom Kosmarsky Distance and Proximity in the Baltic "Near Abroad" Kevin M. F. Platt History, Diaspora, and Geography: The Case of Russian-Israeli Cinema, 1991-2016 Alex Moshkin Tell Me Your Story: Russian-American Writing and the Commoditization of Immigration Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya Russia as Whole and as Fragments Ilya Kukulin Part Two: Russian Cultures At Large When Soft Power Hardens: The Formation and Fracturing of Putin's "Russian World" Michael S. Gorham Is There Any Such Thing as "Russophone Russophobia"? When Russian Speakers Speak Out against Russia(n) in the Ukrainian Internet Dirk Uffelmann The Most Global Russian of All: Michael Idov and His Cosmopolitan Oeuvre Adrian Wanner The "Globe-Trotting Russian" in Scotland: Discourses of Russian Cultural Tourism Lara Ryazanova-Clarke Rewriting Gender: Russian-American Women Writers and the Challenge to Russian Femininity Yelena Furman Song in a Strange Land: The Russian Musical Lyric Beyond the Nation Philip Bullock Global Transnational Russian Culture: Non-Russians Writing Russian Literature Miriam Finkelstein Works Cited Index Contributors
Offers a much-needed remapping of 'Russian culture' as a global phenomenon and radically opens up the question of who produces and owns it, how it is sold and consumed, and how it is 'weaponized' today."" - Andy Byford, author of Literary Scholarship in Late Imperial Russia
