The Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia

Suslov and Bodin have assembled a comprehensive guide to some very strange (but very fascinating) worlds. Some of them are frightening to visit, but the books readers could not be in better hands. * Eliot Borenstein, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University, USA * Speculative fiction does not just imagine the future of Putins Russia one of its primary tasks is to process the traumatic legacy of the Soviet Unions collapse. Thus it is not a coincidence, or a trick of marketing, that makes speculative fiction of all sorts (utopian, dystopian, science fiction, fantasy, alt-history, horror) the most widely read literature in Russia today. This volume is a much-needed guide to key authors and trends in post-Soviet utopian writing. * Yvonne H. Howell, Professor of Russian and International Studies, University of Richmond, USA *

Per-Arne Bodin is Professor of Slavic Languages at Stockholm University. Mikhail Suslov is Assistant Professor of Russian History and Politics at University of Copenhagen.

Introduction, Per-Arne Bodin, Mikhail Suslov PART 1. (GEO)POLITICAL IMAGINATION Chapter 1. Provinces, piety, and promotional Putinism: Mapping Aleksandr Prokhanovs counter-utopian Russia, Edith W. Clowes Chapter 2. Othering Russia: Eduard Limonovs retrofuturistic (anti-) utopia, Andrei Rogatchevski Chapter 3. Telluro-cosmic imperial utopia and contemporary Russian art, Maria Engstrm PART 2. SCIENCE FICTION, IDEOLOGY AND POLITICS Chapter 4. Conservative science fiction in contemporary Russian literature and politics, Mikhail Suslov Chapter 5. Religio-political utopia by Iana Zavatskaia, Anastasia Mitrofanova Chapter 6. Respectable xenophobia: Science fiction, utopia and conspiracy, Viktor Shnirelman PART 3. ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES, ALTERNATIVE GEOGRAPHIES Chapter 7. Alternative Russian revolution: Viacheslav Rybakov and Kir Bulychev, Go Koshino Chapter 8. Ressentiment and post-traumatic syndrome in Russian post-Soviet speculative fiction: Two trends, Maria Galina PART 4. LANGUAGE IN/OF UTOPIA Chapter 9. Church Slavonic in Russian dystopias and utopias, Per-Arne Bodin Chapter 10. Contested utopias: Language ideologies in Valerii Votrins Logoped, Ingunn Lunde Chapter 11. `Londongrad as a linguistic imaginary: Russophone migrants in the UK in the work of Michael Idov and Andrei Ostalsky, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke PART 5. POST-MODERN UTOPIA Chapter 12. Parameters of space-time and degrees of (un)-freedom: Dmitry Bykovs ZhD, Sofya Khagi Chapter 12. Lazarus on the ark: Heterotopias in the novels of Vladimir Sharov and Evgenii Vodolazkin, Muireann Maguire Chapter 14. The new norma: Vladimir Sorokins Telluria and post-utopian science fiction, Mark Lipovetsky