In Search of the True Russia

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This book examines the provincial theme in post-Soviet literature, film, and journalism as a cultural representation of Russian nationalism. Its focus is on "the provinces" of cultural myth: the imagined domain of authentic Russianness, and collective contemplation of the recurring questions concerning Russia's past and future, what it means to be "Russian," and where "true" Russians reside. Cultural production today locates true Russianness outside the newly prosperous, multiethnic, and westernized Moscow. In mass culture, the traditional privileging of the center, over the backward provinces, yields to a view of the provinces as the repository of national tradition and moral strength. Conversely, high literature and art-house cinema provide an alternative, harshly critical image of the provinces. Differing perspectives notwithstanding, both are negotiating a particular concept of Russianness, in which the provinces play a central role and, ultimately, function to both redirect nationalist discourse away from the deeply unsatisfying model of Russia versus the West, and put forth a hermetic national identity, based on the opposition of "us versus us," rather than "us versus them."