Ironic imperialism: how Russian patriots are reclaiming postmodernism

Abstract

This essay analyzes the recent appearance in Russian letters of ultranationalist fantasies about the restoration of Russia's imperial or totalitarian status. This new trend has its roots not only in the increasingly patriotic tone of Russian society and politics, but also in the dynamics of the literary field itself. 'Imperialist writers' such as Aleksandr Prokhanov and Pavel Krusanov have both revived and reacted against postmodern themes and motifs from earlier decades. Relying on the legacy of sots-art and stiob, the 'imperialists' advance a new model in Russia's postmodern tradition, one that is balanced on the very borderline between irony and ideological militancy. In playing the game of ambiguous fanaticism, these writers have been able to attract the attention of a broad and diverse public, and have moved from an intellectual periphery into the cultural mainstream.The last decade has witnessed the advent in Russian letters of megalomaniac fantasies about the restoration of Russia's imperial or totalitarian status. This trend has received various labels ('new imperial literature', 'radical literature', 'new political literature ', etc.), and it appears in the work of very diverse writers, including Aleksandr Prokhanov, Dmitrij Bykov, and a group of authors called the 'Petersburg Fundamentalists'.1 Typically, the plots of these 'imperial novels'B. Noordenbos (&) University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands e-mail: B.Noordenbos@rug.nl 1 The members of this group are Vadim Nazarov, Sergej Nosov, Nal' Podol'skij, Vladimir Rekšan, Il'ja Stogov, Pavel Krusanov and the philosopher Aleksandr Sekackij. In 2001 these writers and thinkers-all of whom were publishing their books (mostly in small print runs) at the Amfora publishing house in St.