General Information

Programme

Accommodation, Meals and Registration

Travel Information

Abstracts

AB, CDEF, GHIJ, KL, MNO, PQR, ST, UVWXYZ

Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK

27 – 29 March 2010

Abstracts

G-J

Gantner, Eszter
Between the Cultures – Multiple identities?
Jewry in the boarder territories of the ”Habsburg” Hungary 1867-1896
In the year of the political compromise between Austria and Hungary 1867, the law about the emancipation of Jews had been passed in the Hungarian parliament as well. This Act had secured the equal political and social rights for Jews. On the another hand, the Hungarian government expected the rapid ”magyarization” from the Jews, as a kind of ”consideration” for the emancipation. The Hungarian Jewry should have been reformed itself to be able to adapt the ruling Hungarian national ideas in the sense of the idea ”one nation - one culture - one language.” This wish showed clearly, that the Hungarian political elite didn’t realise (until 1918), that the country was not only a part of a multicultural empire, but Hungary was itself multicultural. What did that mean? - the Jewry in Hungary – as in the Habsburg-Empire elsewhere – acculturated themselves to the political and cultural elite. In the boarder territories of Hungary, like Bбnбt, Bбcska, or Transsylvania., where more elite with different ethnical background lived, the Jewry followed the most “modern” and most “Western-European” elite. With the emergence of the national culture of the Serbs, Slovaks, etc. this situation became at the beginning of the 20th century more difficult. The Jewry in this territories had the choose between emerging ”nationalisms”. In my lecture I would like to describe this phenomenon of intercultural exchange and the possible models of identities of Jews in the multiethnic boarder regions of Hungary.

Garcia de la Puente, Ines
International Trade Routes in Rus’: A Revision
In studies of long-distance trade and communication routes in Rus’, the Dnepr route has long been recognized and the importance of the Volga route has been accepted in recent decades as well. However, other routes such as those crossing Rus’ from East to West have only begun to receive attention very recently. This paper will focus on trade that took place along a horizontal axis across the Rus’ian map, that is linking the Muslim East with Western Europe, where trade on Rus’ian territory played an important role. We will make use of contemporary literary and legal sources, as well as archaeological and numismatic evidence. Our goal will be to provide a revised picture of the economic links that determined “international relations” and eventually the emergence and consolidation of Rus’.

Pallot, Judith, Moran, Dominique and Gavrilova, Sonya
Mapping the Gulag: Geographies of Imprisonment in Russia
This paper introduces a new website which represents the first attempt to map, systematically, the changing geography of Russia's penal institutions over an eighty-year period from the 1930s to the present day. By mapping the Gulag through time we can correct the impression that there was a complete and continuous coverage of the USSR with labour camps in the Stalin era. In reality, the geography of the Gulag was complex and penal institutions were not fixed in time and space; as new camps were formed, others were closed, and certain regions experienced intense development at certain times and others not, depending upon the economic and political priorities of the day. The maps included on this site try to capture this changing geography, showing the geographical spread of penal institutions in the USSR at critical periods in its history - the eve of the Great Terror, the War years, on the eve of Stalin's death and of the Secret Speech, what was left after the major wave of prisoners' releases, and the contemporary geography of imprisonment in Russia. The paper will introduce the website via a live weblink.

Gasparishvili, Alexander and Tumanov, Sergey
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)/Eastern Partnership (EaP) and Russia: Threat or Opportunity?
The EU-Russia relations have seen varied progress in their development. The consequences of the Russia-Georgia war and a continuing conflict in Russia-Ukraine relations have seemingly led to the formation/embededdness of a rather hostile image of ‘the other’ in both parts of the world. Research based on a nation-wide survey, focus-groups, elite interviews and school essays conducted in Russia during 2008-9, investigates the underpinnings of such a discourse especially in the light of the EU’s recent attempt to enhance cooperation with its Eastern neighbours, which traditionally have been an area of strategic importance for Russia itself. The paper will proceed in four sections. Section one provides a brief historical overview of the Russia-EU relations, accounting for various difficulties and milestones in the process of mutual partnership-building. Section two examines cultural perceptions – elite and public – to establish the nature of commonalities and differences in Russia’s view of ‘the other’ (competing) power. Research seems to indicate that the EU is not as a norm associated with the image of a foe, or the ‘enemy’. Instead, there is a tendency, in common perception, to view a prospect of a united Europe as an appealing zone of stability and prosperity. Section three will discuss practical problems and difficulties – from the geopolitical perspective – in the EU-Russia relations especially related to their contested abroad. In conclusion the prospects for strengthening cooperation and dialogue between the two powers, especially over ‘democracy promotion’ in the ‘near abroad’ are considered, premised on the project’s findings and cross-time examination of the EU-Russia relations.

Gayoso, Carmen
Substantive Belief Formation Through Russian Hegemonic Actions in the Post-Soviet Region
During Soviet times, large sums of money were spent on propaganda campaigns to promote the communist system; communist leaders in eastern and south-eastern Europe were effectively socialised. The initial leaders of the succeeding countries post-1991 like Kuchma and Lukashenka were all part of the Soviet nomenklatura, coming from the same political brand, packaged by the same Communist party. However, especially after the advent of coloured revolutions, Russia must now manage the mounting organisation of western soft power that competes for the political orientation of post-Soviet countries. Russia’s hegemonic influence and potential legitimacy is suffering as a result of an ideological emptiness in the post-Soviet space. The proposed study examines Russian hegemonic actions that facilitate socialisation processes in the post-Soviet region. Specifically, it examines: the prospect of puppet diplomacy in multilateral institutions that are used for political purposes to advance Russian values; Russia attempts at the political socialisation of post-Soviet leaders towards Moscow as opposed to the west; Soviet institutes providing education that have been retained and elite interaction therein (e.g. military and diplomatic academies); the promotion of Russian culture and values in the post-Soviet region through media links.The examination shows that Russia continues to seek hegemonic influence through socialisation in the post-Soviet region. At the same time, many conjunctural factors have combined post-1991 that make it difficult for Moscow to claim an exclusive regional position. Therefore, we cannot talk of the post-Soviet region as a monolithic actor; nor can we base any predictions of the future on deterministic outlooks.

Germane, Marina
Political or Ethnic Nation? Two Competing Concepts in the Interwar Latvia (1918-1940)
The paper examines the parallel development of the two different concepts of the Latvian nation – the one which included equal participation of all ethnic groups residing in Latvia (ethnic minorities at the time constituted about twenty five per cent of the population), and the one that put them at the margins of the new state. After Latvia gained independence in 1918, generous state provisions granted citizenship to all residents irrespective of their ethnicity, and guaranteed cultural autonomy to ethnic minorities. National unity was perceived as an important condition for the preservation of national sovereignty and for the very existence of the Latvian state. Creation of the political nation, however, similarly to elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, faced a number of serious challenges, determined by both domestic and international factors. Ethnic tensions continued to manifest themselves throughout the First Republic, and the question of national unity remained central to political debates until the worldwide depression and the Parliamentary crisis of the thirties finally tipped the scale in favour of the ethnic version of the nation. Nevertheless, even seventy years later the brave multicultural experiment in the small Baltic country resonates with the modern debates on nation-building and minority rights, and offers important lessons to learn.

Gilley, Christopher
The ‘Change of Signposts’ in the Russian and Ukrainian Emigrations
In September 1921, six Russian йmigrйs brought out a collection of articles under the title Smena vekh – the ‘Change of Signposts’. They argued that the White movement had lost the war against the Bolsheviks, that the Soviet state was restoring Russia’s great power status and that the regime was abandoning its radical socialism. As a result, it called on the йmigrйs to return to their homeland. At the same time, a number of Ukrainian exiles made similar appeals for members of the Ukrainian emigration to reconcile themselves to Bolsheviks rule and support the reconstruction of their country. However, in contrast to the Russians, they argued that Soviet Russia was the leader of the international revolution and that the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was promoting Ukrainian national interests. The Bolsheviks sought to use both movements to undermine the emigration and win support among the intelligentsia. This paper contrasts the ideological positions of the two movements, paying particular attention to the relationship between nationalism and socialism in their thought. It seeks to explain why the Soviet state acquired more prominent supporters among the Ukrainian emigration than among that of the Russians. It also examines the relations between the Bolsheviks and the йmigrйs. In doing so, it makes a contribution not only to the histories of the Russian and Ukrainian emigrations, but also to Ukrainian intellectual history and the broader topic of the interaction between nationalism and

Gorlizki, Yoram
New Evidence on Late Stalinism
For many years the late Stalin period remained the least understood in Soviet history. The opening of the Russian and post-Soviet archives in the early 1990s has gone some of the way to help us shine a lamp on this period. Over the last decade we have gained considerable knowledge of high-level political conflicts and repressions, of working and living conditions for ordinary people, and of the mechanics of takeover and repression in the Western borderlands. In this presentation I will seek to integrate some of these recent findings. In particular, I will focus on two aspects of the current historiography: first, I will analyse how reforms and debates at the middle and lower tiers of the political system were connected to the post-war social transformations that were taking place in this period; and secondly, I will assess how we can integrate recent findings about the particular conditions of Soviet rule in the Western borderlands with our knowledge of the situation in the Russian heartlands.

Grant, Susan
Physical Culture and Peasant Acculturation in 1920s and 1930s Soviet Russia
This paper explores how physical culture and sport were deployed to help modernise and acculturate the peasant masses. Through an examination of physical culture agitprop, it addresses several key areas in this endeavour: the village reading-rooms, Komsomol, schools, and the patronage system. In analysing these, it assesses how effective such organisations and institutions were as agitprop disseminators and educators, peasant reactions to physical culture agitprop used by these, and also the level of success, if any, experienced by physical culture in the provinces. With fears surrounding the low levels of culture and hygiene in the villages, physical culture was considered an ideal means of civilising and modernising peasants. This paper sheds light on the reception of physical culture in the villages and the extent to which peasants could be considered to have been “enlightened” by physical culture. Within the context of collectivisation, it seeks to identify local and central attitudes to physical culture policies in the countryside and how these changed when collectivisation policies were enforced at the beginning of the 1930s.

Gruzina, Ieva
Memory Politics: Impact on National and EU Policy
In my research I look at how official policy reflects politics of memory and the ability of a nation to deal with their authoritarian legacies. I’m particularly interested in comparing the cases of Latvia and Russia, and also want to apply my research in a broader context to look at Eastern Europe’s new EU member states impact on EU policy. I would like to pay special attention to how politics of memory and historical interpretation affects identity formation and issues of integration. I will be looking at the important role collective memory has played in the consolidation of the Latvian nation and self identity - eventually contributing to the collapse of the USSR, and how this has translated into Latvian national policy. I’m interested in looking at the differing accounts of historical events in the official policy of Latvia and Russia today and how this affects integration policy and the Russian language speaking diaspora in Latvia. I plan on doing this by taking a look at language policy, education policy (history curriculum), monuments and symbols, events/holidays celebrated etc. My theory is that ethnic association has become so strongly associated with Latvian citizenship as a result of the collective historical memory that contributed to the re-birth of Latvia, however Russia’s defiant refusal to acknowledge the historical wrongdoing in Eastern Europe is also building resentment that is channeled toward the Russian speaking diaspora remaining in Latvia.

Guillaumier, Christina
“Femme Fatale or Femme Fragile?” Representations of the Feminine in Prokofiev’s Early Operas
Prokofiev’s early operas, notably Maddalena, The Gambler and Fiery Angel suggest a world that often borders on the nightmarish, the grotesque and even, at times, the carnivalesque. The composer was fascinated by the extremities of human nature, and by characters that live in a world bordering on the unreal: in each of these operas, the main protagonist is an intense and ambiguous female figure whose presence is both destabilizing and dangerous. Continually shifting between the categories of femme fatale and femme fragile these figures seek the downfall of their male counterparts and share a need to dabble with human emotions, especially love, with detrimental consequences for themselves and those around them. This paper explores Prokofiev’s fascination with half-witch half-madonna figures, analyzing how the librettos and the music define the feminine, paying particular attention to the way the music intensifies their representation as other-worldly, exotic beings.

Gusejnov, Gasan
A Critical Survey of the Online Popular Lexicography of the Professional Slangs
Popular lexicography seems to expand as a literary genre and as a useful tool on the fringe between blogosphere and the established online media. The aim of my paper is to analyze the variety of the online dictionaries of the Russian professional slangs (jargons) including that of the gamers, online-politicians and other runet4iks.

Hakobyan, Arsen
The Turkish-speaking Armenians in the North Caucasus: The Boundaries of Identity
The population of Caucasian region had the impact of different intercultural, ethno-cultural influences conditioned by political, cultural, geographical factors caused by historical circumstances. Historically, the Caucasus has been one of the borderland and contact territories where such influences and developments have taken place among the Armenian, Caucasian, Iranian, Turkic and Russian ethno-cultural, social-political strata. As a result of these processes, different sub-ethnic groups developed their complex identities. One of such groups is the population of the village Edessia in the North Caucasus (Stavropol region, Russian Federation), which has an interesting ethno- and linguo-cultural characteristics. Actually, in everyday life the inhabitants of this village continue to use the “Turkish“ language, which they call “bizimcha” (our language). “Turkish” is the exo-name of this language. The village Edessia was established at the end of the 18-th century by Armenians, who migrated from Eastern Transcaucasus (region of Derbent, Mushkur, Kuba) with the Russian army. In this period they were bilingual (Tat and Turkish languages). The changes in geographical, political, cultural, and social conditions (North Caucasus, Russian Empire, USSR and Russian Federation) as well as the current processes have had different impacts on transformations and construction of the identity of this group. Contemporary identity (including ethnicity) expressions of this group include the following markers: different layers of identities (local, ethnic), linguistic transformations (bilingualism, multilingualism) and perceptions (identity and language issues), religious perceptions and collective memory.

Harris, James R.
The Great Terror: The Impact of the Archives
The maelstrom of political violence known as “the Great Terror” has generated many controversies. At the height of the Cold War, the dominant view in the West was that political terror was employed to crush resistance to revolutionary change. Robert Conquest’s 1967 monograph, portrayed the events of 1936-1938 as the culmination of Stalin’s ambition to establish an unrivalled personal dictatorship. In 1985, Getty argued that the state was frustrated by an unresponsive apparatus escaping his control, and that the mass repression was an act of desperation. The opening of the archives in 1991 did little to calm the debate, but there was a steady flow of new revelations that were not easily accommodated by any camp. By the mid-1990s, we had a much stronger picture of the so-called “mass operations” of 1937-38. It became clear that the overwhelming majority of victims were ordinary Soviet citizens and not the old elite. The “Old Bolsheviks”, who had played a central role in Conquest’s story of Stalin’s drive for personal dictatorship, turned out to have rather more peripheral parts. Stalin was more concerned with criminals, non-Russians and “class aliens”. At the same time, Getty accommodated the growing evidence of Stalin’s central role in the Terror. Mass repression now does not appear to have escaped the control of the centre. Stalin appears to have sanctioned, encouraged and ultimately called a halt to the Terror. This paper will discuss the contribution of recent scholarly works and document collections.

Hellebust, Rolf
Words, New and Magic, in Dostoevsky and Bely
I shall begin by revisiting the celebrated yet nebulous concept of the novoe slovo (‘new word’), as used both by Dostoevsky and by his critics (from contemporary reviewers to Bakhtin). The thaumaturgic potential of the slovo (in the fullness of its Russian meanings) is only hinted at by the author of Crime and Punishment, but is elucidated at length in the early 20th century, in such theoretical works as Andrei Bely’s “Magiia slov” (1910) and Pavel Florensky’s “Magichnost’ slova” (1920). Bely, whose deep “inward connection” with Dostoevsky has been noted by critics such as Berdyaev, plays extensively with the idea of the thaumaturgic word in his novel Peterburg (1913). Despite echoing in his article “Magiia slov” Dostoevsky’s ecstatic optimism about the novoe slovo, Belyi in his novel betrays a much more pessimistic attitude toward the artistic word, and, implicitly, toward the whole sacred mission of the artist in the Symbolist era. My analysis will draw on my previous work on Russian 19th-century literature as an anti-literature, on apophaticism in Dostoevsky and his 20th-century heirs, and on the strategies of negative parallelism and what I have called the “virtual sequel” (“Bakhtin and the ‘Virtual Sequel’ in Russian Literature,” SEEJ 44.4 (2000)).

Hicks, Jeremy
Boris Barnet’s Priceless Head in the Context of Wartime Representations of the Holocaust
Boris Barnet’s 1942 short film Bestsennaia golova (Priceless Head) from Boevoi kinosbornik (Fighting Film Album) ? 10, depicts Jews as aiding the Polish resistance to Nazi rule, and has been described by Russian critic Miron Chernenko as the first attempt to depict the Holocaust in Soviet, and world cinema, abd a percursor to the Holocaust film genre. Despite this striking recent characterisation, the film has received very little if any attention, from Russian film scholars, or any others. This paper is an attempt to examine the validity of Chernenko’s claim by examining Barnet’s depiction of Jews in the wider context of representations of Nazism and the Holocaust in the Soviet media. However, if this film is to be seen as anticipating the Holocaust film, its treatment of the relation between resistance and Jewish ethnicity needs to be viewed alongside the longer history of filmic portrayals of the Holocaust. Moreover, we need to consider the film’s reception in the Soviet Union at the time, and subsequent discussions of it or silences about it. Such a reevaluation can enable Bestsennaia golova to take its rightful place in a rewritten history of filmic representations of the Holocaust, and of Soviet wartime cinema

Howarth, Nicholas
Energy Security in Europe and (In)security in the Caucusus
Faced with declining supplies of North Sea gas and the environmental pressures associated with continued energy production from coal and nuclear power, Europe is approaching a serious energy supply shortage. One probable solution to bridge this gap in supply is likely to be increased imports of natural gas from two key sources – Norway and Russia. As Europe’s larger supplier, Russian gas carries with it also high levels of political and economic risk as evidenced through the down-pipe disruption of supply following disputes with Ukraine over gas pricing in 2006 and 2009. Adopting a vertically integrated state monopoly approach to enery provision Russia has granted Gazprom legal monopoly over all pipelines in Russia and forced the Ukraine and Belarus to cede control of pipelines on their territory in exchange for a more gradual transition to market prices for gas. Gas reserves from around the Caspian Sea via the proposed Nabucco Pipeline remain one of the key alternative routes for gas which may diversify supply and hence increase European energy security. However, following the muted European response to the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, and in Italy’s case very understanding stance of the Russian position, enthusiasm for Nabucco has diminished among Caspian states with more oil and gas being routed through Russia. This paper investigates how these broader European energy security concerns relate to political (in)security in the Caucusus by encouraging Russia to concent

Hristova, Daniela S.
Variant Manuscript Reading and a Speaker-oriented Theory of Change
The goal of this presentation is to examine variant renderings of participial forms in the extant copies of the Kievan Chronicle as well as Fourth and Fifth Novgorod Chronicles. Recent research on grammaticalization emphasizes the need for linguistic change to be accounted in terms of transmission of language patterns among individuals. The problem that faces scholars dealing with languages no longer spoken is the lack of native speakers whose linguistic behavior could be observed and analyzed. Relying exclusively on the medium of written texts, investigators must look for evidence of language change in scribal errors and other detectable variations. The presentation demonstrates that alternative forms as witnessed by different copies of the same manuscript can be instructive with regard to the time and scope of an on-going change. The preliminary observations reveal, for instance, that the frequency of the non-agreeing present active participles significantly rises in the last section of the Hypatian codex of the Kievan Chronicle. This fact could be taken to indicate that at the end of the 12th century when this section was originally written, the present participles were beginning to lose their agreement. However, we observe the same tendency with the past active participles, about which most linguists agree that the latter retained their agreement features much longer. Using paleographic evidence, I show that we are dealing with a phenomenon that was not characteristic of the original protograph, but has been layered in by subsequent scribes and copyists and therefore the non-agreeing forms reflect an early 15th century phenomenon. The results of this study will establish the utility of textological and paleographical evidence in understanding matters of language change. .

Hudson, Victoria
Russian Soft Power and the 2010 Presidential Elections in Ukraine
Russian engagement with former Soviet republics is often framed in diplomatic and media commentaries in terms of imperialism and the use of ‘hard’ coercive instruments of security. Yet as Russia has gained political and economic stability, members of the Moscow policy community have become increasingly aware of the failings of such approaches and have striven, albeit inconsistently, to accompany Russia’s self-positioning as an assertive global player with soft power to better achieve foreign policy goals. Soft power, as formulated by Joseph Nye, includes the ability to shape the preferences of others through attraction and cooptation, rather than coercion. Opportunities for cooperation are strengthened by shared culture and values as well as economic incentives. The CIS, but Ukraine in particular is a priority of Russian foreign policy due to historical ties and its strategic location. Yet presently Russo-Ukrainian relations have reached a low point, with President Medvedev sharply criticising the ‘anti-Russian’ policies of President Yushchenko since 2004 and withholding the Russian ambassador pending ‘positive dynamics in bilateral relations’. Concurrently, in the spirit of public diplomacy, he sends out a warm message directly to the kindred people of Ukraine, and announces the opening of more Russian cultural centres to strengthen ‘humanitarian cooperation’. Although this time round the Kremlin’s declared approach is to welcome policy positions friendly to Russia rather than support individual candidates, Russian soft power potentially casts a long shadow over the 2010 elections. Drawing upon field research scheduled for January 2010, this paper will investigate the role of Russian soft power in shaping the outcomes of these elections, both in terms of how the candidates define relations with Russia and how popular attitudes towards Russia influence voting preferences.

Hutcheson, Derek
Does Russia have Cartel Parties?
Following the very loose regulation of parties in the 1990s, and the profusion of ‘sofa parties’ that existed then, state regulation of the party system in Russia has increased to the point where the number of officially registered parties eligible to stand for election is now in single digits. There are high barriers for entry into the system and an increasing blurring of the divide between state and party. Can we therefore conclude that Russia’s party system conforms to the criteria advanced in comparative politics research that describe a party ‘cartel’, with interpenetration of the state and parties? The paper will focus on various aspects of the state-party nexus (resources, finance, regulation, patronage, etc.) to examine this question.

Hutchings, Stephen
Re-Presenting Europe’s Outer Limit: A Transcultural Study of Post-Soviet Russia’s Television Image and its Implications for European Identity
This paper focuses on television news representations of the new Russia as a constitutive, yet ambiguous, European Other, proposing a systematic analysis of news broadcasts from Britain, France and Estonia. It attempts to stake out an approach to the issue of how images of, and narratives about, post-Soviet Russia circulate across national borders within the European mediasphere and what they tell us about evolving European self-identity. It suggests that we address the issue by posing a series of questions distributed across 3 stages:

National/Comparative
(i) What are the different ways in which national media players construct post-Sovietness?;
(ii) How do West European TV portrayals of the Russian state relate to representations of Russian migrant communities?

Discourse/Media Comparative
(iii) What is the relationship between official news treatments of Russia-related themes and their rendition in non-news form;

Transnational/European
(iv) How are national differences moderated by transcultural influences?
(v) How does the incorporation of ex-Soviet republics within European public space affect the continent’s imaginary boundary?;
(vi) What role is played by cultural memory of the USSR in European media accounts of the ex-Soviet bloc?
(vii) How do European constructions of Russia refract attitudes to the American Other?

In outlining a methodology for tackling these questions, the paper draws on the ‘media flow’ theories of Appadurai (1997), and Lotman’s (1990) account of intercultural dialogue, positing Russia as a co-constructed set of meanings inflected with multiple accents which together articulate the shifting fulcrum of European subjectivity.

Jaroslavna, Pakstaitis
Russian-speaking Political Parties in Estonia and Latvia Since the Restoration of Independence
After Estonia and Latvia regained their independence in 1991, the political arena quickly became dominated by political parties made up of representatives of the titular nations while the Russian-speaking political forces were effectively marginalised. Throughout the 1990s the leaders of the minority communities in both countries faced a number of challenges when trying to organise an efficient defence of the Russian-speakers’ interests: Latvian and Estonian nationalising elites through the legal restorationist policy had excluded the majority of the non-titular population from exercising any political influence; the old pro-communist forces and activists were discredited; and the minorities themselves were heterogeneous, fragmented and apathetic. Still, even though the Russian-speaking parties have not played an active role in government, the trajectories of their development tell us a great deal about the interethnic relations and integration politics in Latvia and Estonia during the last eighteen years.
Based on elite interviews with politicians, academics, and experts from the titular and Russophone communities in Estonia and Latvia, this paper analyses the dynamics of minority politics throughout the transition period, paying particular attention to the reasons behind the differentiated development of the Latvian and Estonian Russian-speaking political parties and their representation in national parliaments. By placing the findings from fieldwork within the wider analytical framework of integration and party theory in multiethnic societies, this paper contributes to a better understanding of the multifaceted nature of the Russian-speaking minority issues in the post-communist successor states.

Jinks, Sean
Zoshchenko’s Overcoat: Gogolian Melancholy in Zoshchenko’s Comic Fiction
Comparisons between Gogol and Zoshchenko have been a recurrent feature of critical responses to the work of the Soviet satirist from the very outset of his literary career in the early 1920s. These comparisons have been complex and wide-ranging, embracing both textual and extra-textual dimensions of Zoshchenko’s life and work. However, one particular aspect of this spectrum of comparison that has received a great deal of recent critical attention has been the echoes of Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ in Zoshchenko’s humorous works of the twenties. This paper will explore this theme further by linking the large number allusions to Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ across Zoshchenko’s substantial body of comic work with particular reference to the way in which Zoshchenko’s Gogolian intertext underpins a melancholic aesthetic that is an inseparable part of much of Zoshchenko’s humour. In addition to highlighting its Gogolian provenance, this paper will also seek to reveal the way in which this melancholic aesthetic can be seen to foreshadow, and thus contextualize, the more explicit melancholic concerns of later works such as Youth Restored and Before Sunrise, revealing a consistency of interest in melancholic themes that stretches across the whole of Zoshchenko’s oeuvre.

Back to Top of Page