THE ORIGINALITY OF MODERN RUSSIAN ANTI-UTOPIA (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE WORKS OF T. TOLSTOY AND A. GROMOV)

Abstract

This talk investigates the rhetorical and mythopoetic techniques deployed by ultranationalist journalist Aleksandr Prokhanov to transform geographical “space” into claims for Russianoccupied “place.” Prokhanov’s project is designed to support Putin’s drive for the incremental re-annexation of border areas with significant Russian population to the south and west of the Russian Federation. Documentation and discussion will include Prokhanov’s three main political projects: as chairperson of the Izborsk Club, Prokhanov’s physical building of “sacred mounds” in border areas and his rhetoric attached to these projects; the editorial bully pulpit in Prokhanov’s rightist newspaper, Zavtra, that support redrawing and expanding the existing western borders of the Russian Federation; Prokhanov’s ultranationalist novels, such as Gospodin Geksogen (2002) and Krym (2014) that script a reinvigorated Russian national identity. Although his writings have little to do with science fiction or even utopia per se—but seen in terms of speculative right-wing place-making rhetoric—Prokhanov’s pathos, vocabulary, and geographical imagination fit well with the themes and keywords of the 2017 Uppsala conference on “‘Russian World’ and Other Imaginary Places: (Geo) Political Themes in Post-Soviet Science Fiction and Utopias.” To start with, his writing embodies one prominent form of the contemporary Russian rightist political imagination. Many of his themes pair well with conference themes: of overcoming the trauma of territorial loss, creating an alternative historical narrative of re-membering imperial greatness; combining Russian Orthodoxy and the pagan occult to create new rituals of nationhood; and invoking the Ukrainian crisis (2014 - ) to build new fictions of Russian greatness.