Metamorphoses of the Past: Post-Soviet Memory in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This dissertation examines how memories of the Soviet past are addressed and reimagined across three distinct cultural spheres: religion, literature, and film. It engages with the problem of fragmented and incomplete historical memory—a condition that many scholars identify as central to memories of the Soviet past. My dissertation explores how these three cultural domains attempt to respond to this challenge. I argue that disrupted memory demands more creative engagement in order to be shaped into a coherent narrative and to be more closely linked to the identity of its beholder. I also suggest that the creative strategies used to approach this memory must remain flexible and open-ended in order to accommodate its fragmented nature. In the discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), these memories take shape through the theological concept of martyrdom, adopting a highly antagonistic mode of memory. In contrast, the literary works of Maria Stepanova and Sergei Lebedev are treated as examples of cosmopolitan memory. These texts reject moral binaries and instead embrace the ethical complexity of the past. Finally, I analyze Il’ia Khrzhanovskii’s Dau project, an experimental cinematic work in which people improvised their lives within a simulated Soviet society. Dau is an example of an agonistic memory that presents the Soviet past as a multifaceted, ethically ambiguous landscape. These three examples of engagement with Soviet memory challenge simplified narratives of the past and reveal the creative potential of memory work.