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This PowerPoint introduces the idea of postmodernism and its manifestations in the Russian context.
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Russian Postmodernism
Mikhail Epstein
“The Origins and Meaning of Russian Postmodernism”
(1995)
In Russia models of reality have always replaced reality itself.
• 988: Prince Vladimir forcefully introduced Christianity
• Early 18th c.: Peter the Great introduced Western culture, built St. Petersburg
• Late 18th c.: Potemkin villages• 20th c.: artificial communist ideals and
enthusiasm• 1990s: ideas of capitalist economy and free
enterprise are pure conceptions against the background of a devastated society
“Russians have only names for everything, but nothing in reality. Russia is a country of façades.[...] How many cities and roads
exist only as projects.[…]”Marquis de Custine, 1839
“Signs of a new reality, of which Soviet citizens were so proud in the thirties and
fifties, from Stalin’s massive hydroelectric plant on the Dnieper River to Khriushchev’s
decision to raise corn and Brezhnev’s numerous autobiographies, were actually pure
ideological simulations of reality. This artificial reality was intended to demonstrate the superiority of ideas over simple facts.”
Mikhail Epstein
Russian Sots-Art
Vitaly Komarand
Alexander Melamid
Lenin and Stalin
Self-Portraits as Lenin and Stalin, 1972
Red Square
Ideal Slogan, 1972
Quotation, 1972
Komar’s Wife with Their Son and Melamid’s Wife, 1972
Stalin and the Muses, 1982
Lenin Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin Will Live, 1982
Nostalgic View of the Kremlin from Manhattan, 1982
Erik Bulatov
Krasikov Street, 1977
Sunrise or Sunset, 1989
Symbols of the CenturyAlexander Kosolapov, 1982
Adam and Eve
Stalin
Cutlery
Device for Determining Nationality
Young Hope of the World
Contemporary Bank Advertisement