Russian Émigré Culture

Russian Émigré Culture
Author: Christoph Flamm
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1443863661

A quarter of a century ago, glasnost opened the door for a new look at Russian émigré culture unimpeded by the sterile concepts of Cold War cultural politics. Easier access to archives and a comprehensive approach to culture as a multi-faceted phenomenon, not restricted to single phenomena or individuals, have since contributed to a better understanding of the processes within the émigré community, of its links with the lost home country, and of the interaction with the cultural life of the countries of adoption. This volume offers a collection of critical articles that resulted from the international interdisciplinary symposium which was held at Saarland University in November 2011 as part of a one-week festival, “Russian Music in Exile”. Scholars from around the world contributed essays reflecting current perspectives on Russian émigré culture, shedding new light on cultural diplomacy, literature, art, and music, and covering essentially the whole 20th century, from pre-revolutionary movements to the present. The interdisciplinary approach of the volume shows that émigré networks were not confined to a particular segment of culture, but united composers, artists, critics, and even diplomats. On the whole, the contributions to this volume document the fascinating diversity, the internal contradictions, as well as the impact that the largest and most durable émigré movement of the 20th century had on European cultural life.

Utopia's Discontents

Utopia's Discontents
Author: Faith Hillis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190066334

Utopia's Discontents provides the first synthetic treatment of the Russian revolutionary emigration before the Revolution. It argues that neighborhoods created by Russian exiles became sites of revolutionary experimentation that offered their residents a taste of their anticipated utopian future.

How it was Done in Paris

How it was Done in Paris
Author: Leonid Livak
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2003
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780299185145

Here, reintroduced into literary circulation, is an ignored yet rich and original page in Russian literary history--the "unnoticed generation" of Russian writers who took up residence in France after the Bolshevik coup of 1917. Leonid Livak analyzes the position of these writers in the context of French modernist literature, examining the ways in which French literary life influenced émigré artistic identities and oeuvre. The book challenges commonly accepted notions of émigré isolation from French literature and culture and is instrumental in reaching a fuller understanding of the cultural mechanisms involved in the effort by an expatriate community to carry on a creative existence.

Transcending the Borders of Countries, Languages, and Disciplines in Russian Émigré Culture

Transcending the Borders of Countries, Languages, and Disciplines in Russian Émigré Culture
Author: Christoph Flamm
Publisher:
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2018
Genre: Russia
ISBN: 9781527505353

The political changes at the end of the last century in the Soviet Union, and later the Russian Federation, had deep-reaching repercussions on the interpretation of Russian culture in the time of division between "Russia Abroad" and "Russia at Home". Ever since, scholars have tried to understand and to describe the interrelationship between the two Russias. In spite of intensive research, numerous conferences and publications, there are still many discoveries to be made and a number of questions to be answered.This volume presents a selection of articles based on papers presented at an international conference on Russian èmigrè culture that was held at Saarland University, Germany, in 2015. The essays assembled here offer new insights into aspects of Russian èmigrè culture already known to scholarship, but also to explore new facets of it. As such, it is not the well-known centres and leading figures of Russian emigration that are highlighted; instead the authors give prominence to places of seemingly secondary importance such as Prague, Istanbul or India and to such lesser-known aspects as collections and collectors of Russian èmigrè art and the impact of cultural activities of the Russian emigration on the culture of the respective host countries.

Russian Émigrés in the Intellectual and Literary Life of Interwar France

Russian Émigrés in the Intellectual and Literary Life of Interwar France
Author: Leonid Livak
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 551
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0773590986

In a pioneering exploration of the intellectual and literary exchange between Russian émigrés and French intelligentsia in the 1920s and 1930s, Leonid Livak provides an impressively comprehensive bibliographic overview of a veritable "who's who" of Russian intellectuals and literati, listing all the material published by Russian émigrés or on topics pertaining to them during the period under study. Focusing attention on a largely ignored chapter of European cultural history, this volume challenges historical assumptions by demonstrating processes of cultural cross-fertilization and illuminates the precedents Russians set for political exiles in the twentieth century. A remarkable achievement in scholarship, Russian Émigrés in the Intellectual and Literary Life of Inter-War France is a valuable resource for admirers and researchers of French and Russian culture and European intellectual history.

Russians Abroad

Russians Abroad
Author: Greta Nachtailer Slobin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2013
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781618112149

This book presents an array of perspectives on the vivid cultural and literary politics that marked the period immediately after the October Revolution of 1917, when Russian writers had to relocate to Berlin and Paris under harsh conditions. Divided amongst themselves and uncertain about the political and artistic directions of life in the diaspora, these writers carried on two simultaneous literary dialogues: with the emerging Soviet Union and with the dizzying world of European modernism that surrounded them in the West. The book's chapters address generational differences, literary polemics and experimentation, the heritage of pre-October Russian modernism, and the fate of individual writers and critics, offering a sweeping view of how exiles created a literary diaspora. The discussion moves beyond Russian studies to contribute to today's broad, cross-cultural study of the creative side of political and cultural displacement.

Global Russian Cultures

Global Russian Cultures
Author: Kevin M. F. Platt
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0299319709

Is there an essential Russian identity? What happens when "Russian" literature is written in English, by such authors as Gary Shteyngart or Lara Vapnyar? What is the geographic "home" of Russian culture created and shared via the internet? Global Russian Cultures innovatively considers these and many related questions about the literary and cultural life of Russians who in successive waves of migration have dispersed to the United States, Europe, and Israel, or who remained after the collapse of the USSR in Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the Central Asian states. The volume's internationally renowned contributors treat the many different global Russian cultures not as "displaced" elements of Russian cultural life but rather as independent entities in their own right. They describe diverse forms of literature, music, film, and everyday life that transcend and defy political, geographic, and even linguistic borders. Arguing that Russian cultures today are many, this volume contends that no state or society can lay claim to be the single or authentic representative of Russianness. In so doing, it contests the conceptions of culture and identity at the root of nation-building projects in and around Russia.

Russia Abroad

Russia Abroad
Author: Marc Raeff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 1990-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195363493

The dramatic events of the twentieth century have often led to the mass migration of intellectuals, professionals, writers, and artists. One of the first of these migrations occurred in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, when more than a million Russians were forced into exile. With this book, Marc Raeff, one of the world's leading historians of Russia, offers the first comprehensive cultural history of the "Great Russian Emigration." He examines the social and institutional structure of the emigration and describes its rich cultural and intellectual life. He points out that what distinguishes this emigration from other such episodes in European history is the extent to which the emigres succeeded in reconstituting and preserving their cultural creativity in the West. The flourishing Russian communities of Paris, Berlin, Prague and Kharbin not only enriched Russian arts and letters, but also significantly influenced the culture of their Western hosts, and Raeff concludes with an assessment of their impact on the development of modern Western and Soviet culture.

Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020

Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020
Author: Maria Rubins
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2021-03-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1787359417

Over the century that has passed since the start of the massive post-revolutionary exodus, Russian literature has thrived in multiple locations around the globe. What happens to cultural vocabularies, politics of identity, literary canon and language when writers transcend the metropolitan and national boundaries and begin to negotiate new experience gained in the process of migration? Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 sets a new agenda for the study of Russian diaspora writing, countering its conventional reception as a subsidiary branch of national literature and reorienting the field from an excessive emphasis on the homeland and origins to an analysis of transnational circulations that shape extraterritorial cultural practices. Integrating a variety of conceptual perspectives, ranging from diaspora and postcolonial studies to the theories of translation and self-translation, World Literature and evolutionary literary criticism, the contributors argue for a distinct nature of diasporic literary expression predicated on hybridity, ambivalence and a sense of multiple belonging. As the complementary case studies demonstrate, diaspora narratives consistently recode historical memory, contest the mainstream discourses of Russianness, rewrite received cultural tropes and explore topics that have remained marginal or taboo in the homeland. These diverse discussions are framed by a focused examination of diaspora as a methodological perspective and its relevance for the modern human condition.

Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky

Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky
Author: Bryan Karetnyk
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2017-04-27
Genre:
ISBN: 9780241310908

Fleeing Russia amid the chaos of the 1917 revolution and subsequent Civil War, many writers went on to settle in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere. In exile, they worked as taxi drivers, labourers and film extras, and wrote some of the most brilliant and imaginative works of Russian literature. This new collection includes stories by the most famous �migr� writers, Vladimir Nabokov and Ivan Bunin, and introduces powerful lesser known voices, some of whom have never been available in English before. Here is Yuri Felsen's evocative, impressionistic account of a night of debauchery in Paris; Teffi's witty and timely reflections on refugee experience; and Mark Aldanov's sparkling story of an elderly astrologer who unexpectedly finds himself in Hitler's bunker in Berlin. Exploring displacement, loss and new beginnings, their short stories vividly evoke the experience of life in exile and also return obsessively to the Russia that has been left behind - whether as a beautiful dream or terrifying nightmare. By turns experimental, funny, exciting, poignant and haunting, these works reveal the full range of �migr� writing and are presented here in masterly translations by Bryan Karetnyk and others.