Suchergebnisse

"This first in-depth comparison of Putin's neomedieval memory politics and re-Stalinization proposes new approaches to the study of the right-wing populist memory in Russia and beyond. Two decades before the war against Ukraine, a "special operation" was launched against the Russians' historical memory, to aggressively reshape the nation's understanding of its history and identity. The Kremlin's propaganda of World War II for the militarization of Russia is well documented, but the role of political neomedievalism - the glorification of Russian medieval society and its warlords - in rallying Russians to support Putinism had yet to be explored. The celebration of Ivan the Terrible, the sixteenth-century tsar, and the originator of large-scale state terror has become fused with the rehabilitation of Stalinism in the quest to reconstruct an empire. The post-Soviet case suggests that the worldwide obsession with "everything medieval" is not a purely aesthetic movement but may readily be weaponized against democracy. The book is intended for students, scholars, and non-specialists interested in understanding Russia's anti-modern politics and the ease with which post-Soviet society has accepted the terror that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine"--

Two decades before the war against Ukraine, a "special operation" was launched against Russian historical memory, aggressively reshaping the nation's understanding of its history and identity. The Kremlin's militarization of Russia through World War II propaganda is well documented, but the glorification of Russian medieval society and its warlords as a source of support for Putinism has yet to be explored. This book offers the first comparison of Putin's political neomedievalism and re-Stalinization and introduces the concept of mobmemory to the study of right-wing populism. It argues that the celebration of the oprichnina, Ivan the Terrible's regime of state terror (1565–1572), has been fused with the rehabilitation of Stalinism to reconstruct the Russian Empire. The post-Soviet case suggests that the global obsession with the Middle Ages is not purely an aesthetic movement but a potential weapon against democracy.

The book is intended for students, scholars, and non-specialists interested in understanding Russia's anti-modern politics and the Russians' support for the terror unleashed against Ukraine.

"The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture investigates the emergence and meaning of the cult of death. Over the last three decades, Halloween has grown to rival Christmas in its popularity and profitability; dark tourism has emerged as a rapidly expanding industry; and funerals have become less traditional. "Corpse chic" and "skull style" have entered mainstream fashion, while elements of gothic, horror, torture porn, and slasher movies have streamed into more conventional genres. Monsters have become pop culture heroes: vampires, zombies, and serial killers now appeal broadly to audiences of all ages. This book considers, for the first time, these phenomena as aspects of a single movement, documenting its development in contemporary Western culture. Previous considerations of our fixation on death have not developed a convincing theory linking the mounting demand for images of violent death and the dramatic changes in death-related social rituals and practices. This book offers a conceptual framework that connects the observations of the simulated world of fiction and movies--including The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Diaries, Night Watch, Hannibal, and the Harry Potter series--to social and cultural practices, providing an analysis of the specific aesthetics and the intellectual and historical conditions that triggered the cult of death. It also considers the celebration of death in the context of a longstanding critique of humanism and investigates the role played by 20th-century French theory, as well as by posthumanism, transhumanism, and the animal rights movement, in the formation of the current antihumanist atmosphere. With its critique of movie and book blockbusters and the death-related social rituals, festivals, and fashions that have coalesced into the cult of death, this timely volume will appeal to anyone hoping to better understand a defining phenomenon of our age. Scholars and general readers of cultural studies, film and literary studies, anthropology, and American and Russian studies will find this book thought-provoking"--

In this article, I explore the interconnection between Putin's politics of re-Stalinization, historical memory, and a specific version of the post-Soviet neo-medievalism. I show that re-Stalinization is a mass movement that is grounded in the unprocessed memory of Soviet crimes and atrocities. The popular myth of the "Great Patriotic War" and the myth of Stalinism as the Golden Age exploited by Putin's memory politics became a gold mine for Putin's kleptocracy. I argue that re-Stalinization and the Kremlin-sponsored ideology of Eurasianism represents two interrelated trends of a complex ideological process. Eurasianism combines Soviet denial of individuality with the idea of a state-dependent patriarchal society and Russian historical messianism. It glorifies the reign of Ivan the Terrible and Stalin. The 'medievalist' discourse of Eurasian ideologists, which advocates a return to the medieval society of orders, on the one hand, and the Gothic monsters populating post- Soviet film and fiction, on the other, creates a political language that expresses new attitudes to people in post-Soviet Russia. They depict a new social contract that reconsiders the modern concept of citizenship, and creates a social basis for the criminalization and militarization of Russian society.

Sowohl Erzählliteratur wie Filme lassen sich, so die Verfasserin, als eine Quelle für die Untersuchung historischer Repräsentationen der stalinistischen Vergangenheit analysieren. Unter diesen Genres, so die Autorin, ermöglichen die spezifischen Merkmale der postsowjetischen Fantasy-Literatur einen tiefen Einblick in den Zustand der postsowjetischen Moral. Bei der Analyse der in der postsowjetischen Fantasy-Literatur zum Ausdruck kommenden neuen Moral muss zunächst festgehalten werden, dass die unerwartetste Folge des Untergangs des Sowjetregimes ein Gefühl moralischer Orientierungslosigkeit war. Der Zusammenbruch des Kommunismus, ob dieser nun gefeiert oder verdammt wurde, hinterließ das Gefühl eines moralischen Vakuums, des Mangels an einem kohärenten Wertesystem als Kriterium des moralischen Urteils. Die neue Wirklichkeit des gesellschaftlichen Lebens brachte neue Formen menschlicher Beziehungen hervor, die moralisch beurteilt werden mussten. Das wichtigste Merkmal des propagierten Gesellschaftsbildes ist, so die These, die Verwandlung der "zona", der spezifischen Form des sowjetischen Lagers, in ein Gründungsprinzip der postsowjetischen Gesellschaft. Das völlige Fehlen von Widerstand gegen die Lagerkultur und die mangelnde Bereitschaft zur Reflexion über die Geschichte der Konzentrationslager machen das heutige Russland besonders anfällig für einen solchen Entwicklungsweg. (ICF2)

La chute du système soviétique s'est accompagnée de l'idéalisation de l'Occident. L'image de l'Occident est une vague représentation de la société, libre de tous les défauts du système soviétique et, donc une incarnation de la perfection morale et esthétique de l'existence et des rapports humains. Dans la vision russe de l'Occident, l'idéalisation actuelle marque une toute nouvelle étape. La « nouvelle occidentalophilie » est séparée de celle du 19esiècle par une rupture qui a duré presque un demi-siècle.