TY - BOOK AU - Clowes,Edith W. TI - Russia on the edge: imagined geographies and post-Soviet identity T2 - Cornell paperbacks SN - 9780801460661 AV - PG3027 .R877 2011 PY - 2011/// CY - Ithaca, N.Y. PB - Cornell University Press KW - Russian literature KW - 21st century KW - History and criticism KW - 20th century KW - National characteristics, Russian, in literature KW - Nationalism and literature KW - Russia (Federation) KW - Cultural geography KW - Territory, National KW - Russians in literature KW - Electronic Books N1 - 2; Introduction : is Russia a center or a periphery? --; Deconstructing imperial Moscow --; Postmodernist empire meets Holy Rus : how Aleksandr Dugin tried to change the Eurasian periphery into the sacred center of the world --; Illusory empire : Viktor Pelevin's parody of neo-Eurasianism --; Russia's deconstructionist westernizer : Mikhail Ryklin's "larger space of Europe" confronts Holy Rus --; The periphery and its narratives : Liudmila Ulitskaia's imagined south --; Demonizing the post-Soviet other : the Chechens and the Muslim south; 2; b N2 - Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have confronted a major crisis of identity. Soviet ideology rested on a belief in historical progress, but the post-Soviet imagination has obsessed over territory. Indeed, geographical metaphors-whether axes of north vs. south or geopolitical images of center, periphery, and border-have become the signs of a different sense of self and the signposts of a new debate about Russian identity. In Russia on the Edge, Edith W. Clowes argues that refurbished geographical metaphors and imagined geographies provide a useful perspective for examining post-Soviet debates about what it means to be Russian today. Clowes lays out several sides of the debate. She takes as a backdrop the strong criticism of Soviet Moscow and its self-image as uncontested global hub by major contemporary writers, among them Tatyana Tolstaya and Viktor Pelevin. The most vocal, visible, and colorful rightist ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, the founder of neo-Eurasianism, has articulated positions contested by such writers and thinkers as Mikhail Ryklin, Liudmila Ulitskaia, and Anna Politkovskaia, whose works call for a new civility in a genuinely pluralistic Russia. Dugin's extreme views and their many responses-in fiction, film, philosophy, and documentary journalism-form the body of this book. In Russia on the Edge, literary and cultural critics will find the keys to a vital post-Soviet writing culture. For intellectual historians, cultural geographers, and political scientists the book is a guide to the variety of post-Soviet efforts to envision new forms of social life, even as a reconstructed authoritarianism has taken hold. The book introduces nonspecialist readers to some of the most creative and provocative of present-day Russia's writers and public intellectuals UR - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=673649&site=eds-live&custid=s3260518 ER -