Tatiana Pashkovskaïa
The Dissolution of the Soviet Union in Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian Historiographies (1991- 2021)
In the historiographies of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, there are many common historical milestones, the latest of which is the collapse of the Soviet Union. This “site of memory” is a recent, controversial and relevant subject. This article aims to provide a historiographical assessment of the dissolution of the USSR. The chronological framework of this study covers the period from 1991 to 2021, before the start of the war in Ukraine. The questions that arise are as follows. How does each of these Slavic states appear in the historiography of the fall of the Soviet Empire ? What are the sources of the “awakening” of the Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian nations ? How do historians assess the role of their republic in the dissolution of the Soviet Union ? The body of research includes studies of the collapse of the USSR published from 1991 to 2021, i.e. over 30 years of independence. We also consulted the writings of several historians of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian diaspora.
Hanna Perekhoda
Revolution, Empire, and Making of the Russo-Ukrainian Border : Challenges and Deadlocks in the Dominant Historiography
In times of war, it becomes clear that the national narratives that dominate Russian and Ukrainian historiography obscure the complexity of the actual historical process of differentiation between these two states. Our analysis focuses on the period 1917-1922 and the internal debates within the Bolshevik Party over the territorial demarcation between Russia and Ukraine. We argue that the study of aborted projects for "non-national" Soviet republics, long neglected by dominant historiographies, offers a crucial prism for grasping the specificity of this historical moment, which deserves to be studied as one of a global redefinition of all borders, both physical and symbolic. Finally, we question the predominance of nation- and class-based analytical prisms in studies of this period and argue for an approach that integrates the imperial dimension, which is essential to better grasp both the transformations and continuities of political imaginaries and institutional practices.
Jean-Baptiste Godon
The Path to Democracy or to the Empire ?*Rethinking the Reforms of the Russian Transition*in Light of the History of their Authors
The reforms of the Russian transition to market economy, announced by Boris Yeltsin during the Fifth Congress of People’s Deputies on 28 October 1991, sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. These measures were to determine the orientations of the new Russia for the decades to come and, according to the President’s words, to “pave the way to democracy and not to the empire”. The evolution of Russian politics between the early 2000s and the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 calls for a fresh look at the reforms, which gave birth to the current regime. Focused on the study of the systemic causes and consequences of the reforms, the literature on the Russian transition accords little attention to the history of the actors who carried them out. This article proposes to reconsider the Russian transition in light of the collective history of the young economists who designed and implemented the “shock therapy”. It shows that these individuals are a product of the Soviet system in which they were raised and that their conception of the reforms, tending towards the destruction of the existing order rather than the construction of a new world, may have contributed to the emergence of a post-imperial dynamic.
Lilia Roustel
Women, Economics and Subversion : Dostoevsky and the Anti-Worship of the Stronger Sex
« Aren’t employment contracts and prostitution contracts both haunted by the spectre of slavery ? », Vincent Grégoire asks, putting prostitution on the list of sensitive professions deserving official recognition. With this focus on the economics of female sexuality as a starting point, we will engage in a socio-economic reflection on the characters of prostitutes in Dostoevsky’s works. The Dostoevskian novel introduces a troubling connivance between marriage and female prostitution, reducing the former to a calculating, cynical economic definition of marital bliss. Like prostitution, marriage paradoxically embodies Dostoevsky’s subversive tool of financial stability for women. At once conformist and transgressive, the narrative gesture reinvests the socio-economic, moral and identity-related questioning of the forms of venal love, making the women who prostitute themselves paradoxical figures situated between norm and deviance, sexuality and unconditional love. Viewed through the prism of gender economics, Dostoevsky’s work invites us to rethink the fixity of norms and gendered identities, revealing the dysfunctions of the patriarchal system and proposing new models.
Guilhem Pousson
« The True is a Moment of the False » : The Narrative of the Origin of the State in What Then Must We Do (by Leo Tolstoy) ?
This article explores the reevaluation of Tolstoy’s political and religious writings in the context of the war in Ukraine and ongoing debates about Russian imperialism. It focuses on Tolstoy’s pamphlet What Then Must We Do ? where he critiques the origins of the state, linking it to conquest and the fiscal exploitation of peaceful peoples, exemplified by the subjugation of Fiji. The analysis underscores the three forms of domination identified by Tolstoy : violence, land confiscation, and taxation, which he posits as the foundations of the modern state. The discussion situates this critique within 19th-century historiographical debates on internal colonization, while also examining how, despite his critique, Tolstoy’s discourse may unwittingly reinforce an imperialist framework.
Anna SANDANO
Revolutions of perceiving through the senses : differing perspectives on the Russian and Soviet avant-gardes of the 1910s and 1920s
The aim of this article is to highlight a new field of research that emerged in the second decade of the 21st century, focusing on the study of the relationship between perception by the senses and the artistic and theoretical production of the Russian and Soviet avant-gardes of 1910-1920. This historiographical field, which departs from the formalist approach to art history, draws on the epistemological method of sensory studies and cultural history and has begun to take root in English- speaking academic circles as well as in European research centres. However, this new line of research is not yet fully recognised in France, although some ground-breaking research has been published in recent years. As well as tracing the origins of this new historiographical field and the epistemological methods used, this text looks at the multiple directions and possibilities offered by the study of perception by the senses in relation to the Russian and Soviet avant-gardes.
Daria TEREBIKHINA-NOEL
“Russian Literature in Exile” : the Role of the Literary Canon in the Reconstruction of the Homeland
Irrevocably or temporally detached from their language, culture and society, Russian-speaking writers who went into exile in New York City constantly return in their autobiographical work to descriptions of their homeland. In the texts of writers exiled in the 1970s, such as Pavel Lembersky and Elena Litinskaya, as well as of writers who left the USSR or Russia in the 1990s, such as Tatiana Tolstoy and Vadim Mesyats, whether written during or after exile, despite ethnic and cultural diversity, belonging to different regions of the USSR and different years of birth and periods of exile, several elements of the representation of the native country are recurrent, such as the presence of nature in scenes describing first love, or the idealized vision of the childhood home. This article hypothesizes that these authors exploit a metatext of exile, which creates a shared symbolism of place, and which is constructed under the influence of a literary tradition of Russian emigration, notably that of texts by Vladimir Nabokov and Ivan Bunin. The aim of this article is to analyse the presence of certain symbols and narrative processes through the prism of the influence of the literary canon on the representation of the native country in a few exile narratives published between 2014 and 2018.
Simon ALBERTINO
In Favour of an Alternative Collection of Russian Literary Fairy Tales from the 1830s : Reshape Pushkin’s Place within the Genre.
This article examines the central role played by Pushkin according to studies dedicated to Russian Fairy literary tales from the 1830s. When establishing a canon of literary fairy tales, one notices that those written by Pushkin are almost systematically named first. This persistent phenomenon within literary studies is symptomatic of a hierarchical representation of the genre, constructed on a series of preconceived ideas and assumptions that position Pushkin as the main actor in the history of the genre. However, this approach does not match the corpus of known texts, whose diversity in form and content exceeds the sole model of Pushkin’s tales. The article highlights the general complacency of the prevailing scientific discourse regarding the common hierarchical classification of literary tales and calls for an awareness among researchers as well as a critical reexamination of discourses on the genre of tales as a whole.
Anastasia Kozyreva
The History of Russian Literature between the Golden and Silver Ages : the Chrononyms Issue
While the legitimacy of the definition of “Silver Age” in Russian literature is regularly questioned, a similar chrononym, “Golden Age”, is often taken for granted. As the narrative of Russian literary history is typically structured by these two expressions, it is relevant to consider them as a paradigm of historiographical construction and of reception. Used in literary and critical texts during the nineteenth century as a metaphor, the expression “Golden Age” draws upon Greek and Latin conceptions of the myth of the Golden Age, which Russian literary historiography appropriates at different stages of its construction. While the Greek concept of the “golden race”, with its idea of an irreversible succession of generations, is recurrent in nineteenth-century Russian poetry and criticism, the literature of the early years of the following century uses the historicising Roman approach. By commenting on examples from literary and critical texts, this article suggests questioning the use of the chrononyms “Golden Age” and “Silver Age” by interrogating the “periodising imaginary” of Russian literary historiography.
Pierre-Etienne Royer
Russia’s Fears and Horrors [Страхи и ужасы России] : Russia’s War Seen by Gogol – a Moral Appraisal.
The aim of this paper is to cast a moral judgement on Russia’s war in Ukraine and look at it from the vantage point of one of Gogol’s lesser known texts, Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, published in 1846. A utopian attempt to rebuild Russia on moral grounds, Gogol’s Passages contain a number of unrealistic views. Condemned by Belinsky, they fell into oblivion for many decades among critics and the reading public. However, this book also contains valuable musings on the advent of modernity as seen by Gogol. His meditations on what may become of Russia in Dead Souls are carried one step further as he delineates the two directions which Russia’s future may take : asserting power through blind force, or developing its spiritual potential. Gogol opts for the latter, and that is why rereading Selected Passages is essential today.
Denis LAKINE
The three magical letters : mat and the Great Russian Literature (GRL)
This article explores the relationship between mat, a form of slang, and the Russian literary canon against the backdrop of a resurgent Russian expansionism. The concept of Great Russian Literature, GRL, frequently invoked in discourses that assert Russian superiority and exceptionalism, is grounded in a selective and narrow interpretation of cultural heritage. Mat, as a marginalized element considered incompatible with the conservatism ascribed to the GRL in narratives about Greater Russia, holds the potential to serve as a tool for deconstructing the ideas embedded in the national narrative. Its presence in works by canonical authors has noticeably caused discomfort in Russia. By examining the controversies this slang provokes among proponents of the established literary canon, this article seeks to uncover the potential impacts that a broader inclusion of mat could have on our understanding of Russian literature.
Anastasia LEBEDEVA
Queer in Post-Soviet Russian Cinema. Analysis of the Film Winter Journey [Зимний путь].
The present article is an analysis of the 2013 film Winter Journey [Зимний путь], which is part of the doctoral research conducted by Anastasia Lebedeva at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne. Her thesis is titled Queer in Post-Soviet Russian Cinema. The polysemic term "queer" is used here as a generic term encompassing all manifestations of gender identities and sexual and romantic orientations, as well as all behaviors that are non-cisgender and non-heteronormative. After years of criminalization and subsequent decriminalization of queer identities and behaviors in Russia, recent years have witnessed a resurgence of oppression. The film analyzed in this article was produced within this context of growing oppression. Through this analysis, it becomes evident that the representation of queer individuals in the film reflects the state of Russian societal norms at the time of its release.
Antoine NICOLLE
Who’s guilty ? The intellectual debate on collective responsibility and contemporary Russian autofiction’s judicial scene
In this article, the theoretical and symbolic stakes around the intellectual debate on collective responsibility for Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine are reviewed. The various positions held in the debate are examined, their philosophical references and notably those of the German theorists of responsibility are questioned and finally the author seeks to understand the issue within a historical perspective. In addition to the intellectual debate, he also considers a parallel approach taken by some contemporary Russian writers who explore the question of collective responsibility not from an abstract, general point of view, but rather from their own experience of engagement or disengagement in Putinian Russia.
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