Mirja Lecke

The paper analyzes two artistic artefacts, one graphic reportage and one novel from and about post-Soviet Georgia, focusing on the problem of religious difference within Orthodox Christianity. In imperial history, the fact that Georgia is an Orthodox Christian country was employed by the Russian side to legitimate the Georgian Church's inclusion into the Russian ecclesiastic hierarchy and, what is more, of Georgia into the Russian empire. Georgian Orthodoxy was thus at least partly and in certain periods denied its religious autonomy. This parallels other strategic renouncements of differences from the Russian side, as for instance in the contemporary usage of the concept "Russian World" that combines the claim of "unity in faith" with language use and cultural consciousness into a mobilizing nationalist trope. The analysis of Viktoria Lomasko's travel feature about Georgia and of Lasha Bugadze's documentary novel "A Small Country" shows how contemporary artists and writers reassess the question of Georgia's religious heritage and its difference from the Russian religious heritage. Whereas Lomasko is critical of the Georgian Church's moral authority, she also gives ample room for presenting Georgian Orthdoxy's difference as advantageous with regard to the Russian Church. Bugadze, by contrast, scrutinizes the Georgian Church's fatal entanglement with the state that engendered both, nationalism and an uncanny allegiance with Russia.

The production and circulation of literary, documentary, and political texts were among the main activities of dissenters in the Soviet Union. Many of them also kept diaries or notebooks, wrote memoirs or engaged in other forms of life writing. While these texts more or less explicitly claim to authentically represent reality, they nonetheless arise as a construction based on literary strategies. The analysis of the latter in Ludmilla Alexeyeva and Paul Goldberg’s The Thaw Generation is the subject of this article. We discuss the rhetoric of these memoirs focusing particularly on stylistic features and argumentative structures that are meant to grant the text credibility among American and Russian readers.

The article is dedicated to the topos of the street in literary texts about Odessa. It discusses the Odessan street drawing on well-known authors such as Aleksandr Pushkin and Vladimir Zhabotinskii, as well as lesser-known writers like Semen Iushkevich, Eduard Bagritskii, and Iurii Olesha. Contextualizing their texts with approaches in urban studies that were developed with reference to Western cities, the article shows Odessa’s unique imagery of public space, arguing that the street provides not only insight into changing perceptions of the self and the individual’s status in public space, but fulfills a significant function in Russia’s symbolic order – indeed, it is the key literary topos used to explore the country’s ethnic diversity.

Multinational imperial Odessa was a unique city on Russia's periphery. After its destruction, it lived on in the Odessan style and as the myth of "Old Odessa," both of which provided Russian culture with ways of talking about diversity. The article analyzes the right-wing Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky's novel The Five against the backdrop of the Odessa myth. It argues that its narrative construction and stylistic composition were designed to undermine a politicized, "textbook" reading of the plot. Jabotinsky instead draws a multivocal artistic image and, in his poetic activity, overcomes the confines of nationalist ideological discourse. Многонациональная Одесса была уникальным городом российской географической и культурной периферии. Она жила и развивалась в "одесском стиле" и в "одесском мифе", которые в российской куль- туре функционировали как пространства, где был возможен разговор о разнообразии. Мирья Лекке обращается к одному из произведений "одесского стиля" – роману правого сиониста Владимира Жаботинского "Пятеро", который она рассматривает на фоне "одесского мифа". Лекке показывает, что нарративная конструкция романа и его стилистическая композиции подрывают политизированное, начетническое прочтение сюжета. Жаботинский создает внутренне многообразный, сложный художественный образ и на уровне поэтики преодолевает ограничения националистического идеологического дискурса.

The article is dedicated to the topos of the street in literary texts about Odessa. It discusses the Odessan street drawing on well-known authors such as Aleksandr Pushkin and Vladimir Zhabotinskii, as well as lesser-known writers like Semen Iushkevich, Eduard Bagritskii, and Iurii Olesha. Contextualizing their texts with approaches in urban studies that were developed with reference to Western cities, the article shows Odessa’s unique imagery of public space, arguing that the street provides not only insight into changing perceptions of the self and the individual’s status in public space, but fulfills a significant function in Russia’s symbolic order – indeed, it is the key literary topos used to explore the country’s ethnic diversity.

The Polish writer Aleksandr Wat's fame is based on his memoirs entitled "My Century: Spoken Diary" (London 1977). This book played an improtant role in the Polish intelligentsia's critical self-reflection about its ensnarement with Communism. The article sheds a light on the way Wat deals with questions of medial representation of poetry and, moreover, language in general. It argues that throughout his entire artistic life, Wat made an issue of the materiality of the word and therefore was troubled by the necessity to medially represent it.

My article explores Pushkin’s statements on Russian imperial expansion found in Journey to Arzrum. First, I explore how the poet utilizes the Journey to overcome traditional romantic representations of the South and the East, including his own, in Russian literature. Specifically, in breaking with the sublime depictions of the Orient, as well as benevolent views of Russia’s military domination over these regions, Pushkin specifically challenges conventional romantic literary devices, even those present in his own earlier texts. The article then examines Pushkin’s depictions of the border, the war and the physical disfigurement of the conquered territory of Arzrum, representations that are significant for determining Pushkin’s attitudes towards a vanquished, alien people. Finally, the article concentrates on investigating how Pushkin’s critical depiction of Russia’s Islamic enemies is ultimately utilized to provide a positive image of a universal European civilization.