Otto Boele (Universiteit Leiden)
Abstract
This paper explores the figure of the dissident-writer in recent Russian cinema and TV drama, specifically the way in which these productions appropriate and (de-)construct mythologies of the shestidesiatniki (men/women of the 1960s) making them subservient to current narratives on protest and political dissent in late-Putinist Russia (post 2012). The purpose is to show that by “domesticating” some of these former dissidents or otherwise ostracized authors (while excluding others), these films and TV series reimagine the 1960s as a seemingly romantic, but essentially anomalous time in which the literary forces of the Russian heartland (Aleksandr Vampilov, Nikolai Rubtsov) were undeservedly marginalized by the noisy avant-gardists in the capitals (Akhmadulina, Yevtushnko, Voznesensky). Focusing primarily on Tainstvennaia strast’ (Furman, 2016), a Channel One production based on Vasily Aksenov’s last novel, and Oblepikhovoe leto (Alfiorov, 2018), a biopic on the career of Aleksandr Vampilov, I hope to demonstrate how one of the most liberal periods of Russia’s twentieth-century history is being cinematically exploited for the purpose of alerting the viewer about “similar” phenomena in the present (“latte-sipping hipsters” in Moscow vs. the “glubinnyi narod”, “Gayropa vs. “traditional values”etc.).
Biografie
Otto Boele obtained his MA degree in Russian at the University of Amsterdam and his PhD at the University of Groningen. He is now Associate Professor of Russian literature at the University of Leiden. He is the author of The North in Russian Romantic Literature (1996), Erotic Nihilism in Late Imperial Russia. The Case of Mikhail Artsybashev’s “Sanin” (2009) and a co-editor of Post-Soviet Nostalgia. Confronting the Empire’s Legacies (2019). Recently, he has published a number of articles on glasnost cinema and the collective memory of the 1990s.