Times of trouble : violence in Russian literature and culture / edited by Marcus C. Levitt and Tatyana Novikov.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Levitt, Marcus C., 1954-

Novikov, Tatyana, 1952-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Russian literature--Themes, motives.

Russian literature.

Violence in literature.

Violence--Russia--History.

Violence.

Violence--Soviet Union--History.

History.

Soviet Union.

Russia.

Physical Description:

x, 324 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, [2007]

Summary:

Looking at the country that has added to our vocabulary such colorful terms as "purges," "pogroms," and "gulag," this collection investigates the conspicuous marks of violence in Russian history and culture. Russians and non-Russians alike have long debated the reasons for this endemic violence. Some have cited Russia's huge size, unforgiving climate, and exposed geographical position as formative in its national character, making invasion easy and order difficult. Others have fixed the blame on cultural and religious traditions that spurred internecine violence or on despotic rulers or unfortunate episodes in the nation's history, such as the Mongol invasion, the rule of Ivan the Terrible, or the "Red Terror" of the revolution. Even in contemporary Russia, the specter of violence continues, from widespread mistreatment of women to racial antagonism, the product of a frustrated nationalism that manifests itself in such phenomena as the wars in Chechnya.

Times of Trouble is the first book in English to explore the problem of violence in Russia. From a variety of perspectives, essays investigate Russian history as well as depictions of violence in the visual arts and in literature, including the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Isaac Babel, Mikhail Lermontov, and Nina Sadur. From the Mongol invasion to the present day, topics include the gulag, genocide, violence against women, anti-Semitism, and terrorism as a tool of revolution.

Contents:

Introduction: the consciousness of violence in Russian history and culture / Marcus C. Levitt

The scourge of god: the Mongols and violence in Russian history / Charles J. Halperin

Violent outcomes: Mikhail Lermontov and Romanticism's insoluble problems / David Powelstock

The spectacle of the scaffold: performance and subversion in the execution of the Decembrists / Ludmilla A. Trigos

The invisible scaffold: execution and imagination in Vasilii Zhukovskii's works / Ilya Vinitsky

The wounded young heart: Dostoevsky's Netochka Nezvanova as Bildungsroman / Elena Krasnostchekova

Violence and the word: Dostoevsky / Harriet Murav

Nihilists and terrorists / Daniel Brower

Violence and the legacy of "Bakuninism" in the Russian Revolution / Frank J. Goodwin

On blood, scandal, renunciation and Russian history: Ilya Repin's Ivan the Terrible and his son / Kevin M. F. Platt

Alimentary violence: eating as a trope in Russian literature / Ronald LeBlanc

Russian-Jewish writers face pogroms (1881-1917) / Brian Horowitz

The origins of Soviet state terrorism: 1917-1921 / Anna Geifman

The problem of revolutionary violence in Isaac Babel's stories / Victor Peppard

State violence in the Stalin period / J. Arch Getty

The struggle against treason: the great purges of 1936-38 in the mirror of the Oprichnina / Maureen Perrie

A substitute for writing: representation of violence in incidents by Daniil Kharms / Mark Lipovetsky

The sadists' club: struggling with the legacy of Stalinism in Vasilii Aksenov's The burn / Nina Efimov

Circles of hell, circles of life: two responses to violence in Gulag memoirs / Natasha Kolchevska

Violence in Victor Astafev's fiction / Julian D. Moss

Death and the maiden: erasures of the feminine in the Soviet literature of the fin-de-siècle / Nadya L. Peterson

Violence in modern Russian utopia and anti-utopia / Boris Lanin and Elena Vassileva

The female face of violence: Russian culture and violence against women / Teresa L. Polowy

Angry women's voices: revenge fantasies in Nina Sadur's stories / Tatyana Novikov

Violence, madness, and the female grotesque in Nina Sadur's The South and Svetlana Vasilenko's Little fool / Elizabeth Skomp

Chechen war memoirs and nationalist identity in contemporary Russia / Anna Brodsky.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0299224309

9780299224301

OCLC:

126802656

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description