What is to be done with the socialist realist canon: Nikolai Chernyshevskii in late and post-Soviet cultural imagination

Margarita Vaysman

doi:10.1353/see.2022.0015

What is to be done with the socialist realist canon: Nikolai Chernyshevskii in late and post-Soviet cultural imagination

Margarita Vaysman

Russian

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Nikolai Chernyshevskii (1828-1889), a major nineteenth-century writer and thinker, continues to play in important role in contemporary Russian culture as a subject of artistic performances and political discussions. This article argues that the current regenerative engagement with Chernyshevskii’s legacy was preceded by another period of intense fascination with the writer and his work, specifically in late Soviet conceptualist art. It examines representations of Chernyshevskii in different media created in the period from 1980 to 1991: sots-art paintings by Vitalii Komar and Aleksandr Melamid, essays and performances by Moscow Conceptualists like Dmitrii Prigov and ‘proto-postmodernist’ early texts of Viktor Pelevin.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	268-294
Number of pages	27
Journal	Slavonic and East European Review
Volume	100
Issue number	2
Early online date	31 Oct 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1353/see.2022.0015
Publication status	Published - 3 Nov 2022

Keywords

Post-soviet
Conceptualism
Realism
Socialist-realism
Sots-art
Prigov
Pelevin
Komar and Melamid

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10.1353/see.2022.0015

Vaysman-2022-What-is-to-be-done-SlavEastEuroRev-100-2-0268
Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1353/see.2022.0015.
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Cite this

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abstract = "Nikolai Chernyshevskii (1828-1889), a major nineteenth-century writer and thinker, continues to play in important role in contemporary Russian culture as a subject of artistic performances and political discussions. This article argues that the current regenerative engagement with Chernyshevskii{\textquoteright}s legacy was preceded by another period of intense fascination with the writer and his work, specifically in late Soviet conceptualist art. It examines representations of Chernyshevskii in different media created in the period from 1980 to 1991: sots-art paintings by Vitalii Komar and Aleksandr Melamid, essays and performances by Moscow Conceptualists like Dmitrii Prigov and {\textquoteleft}proto-postmodernist{\textquoteright} early texts of Viktor Pelevin.",

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What is to be done with the socialist realist canon: Nikolai Chernyshevskii in late and post-Soviet cultural imagination

Abstract

Keywords

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