ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 8 ( 2019/1 ) |
MAKING MARTYRS, THE LANGUAGE OF SACRIFICE IN RUSSIAN CULTURE FROM STALIN TO PUTIN, By Ayse Dietrich*,
Published by: University of Rochester Press, USA. Written by Yuliya Minkova, Year of
Publishing: 2018. Subject Area: Russian history, culture and literature,
Book Type: Literature and Language. Total Number of Pages: 246. ISBN:
9781580469142, $65.00 (Hardcover).
This
book is about the language of canonization and vilification in Soviet and
post-Soviet media, official literature and popular culture. The book argues
that Soviet discourse not only introduced various heroic and sacrificial
figures into Russian society as a means of self-policing and censure, but also
used them as a means of asserting ideology’s continued hold on society, while
the post-Soviet discourse of victimhood appeals to nationalist nostalgia. The
book investigates the cultural mechanisms that allow the coexistence of
aggressive behavior and self-identified victimhood in the same political
subject. In her analysis, to examine the issue of sacrificial mythology, she
uses newspaper articles, fiction, memoirs, and films, and for theoretical
framework of the book, she relies on Giorgio Agamben’s
Homo Sacer:
Sovereign Power and Bare Life and Oleg Kharkhordin’s
The Collective and the Individual in
Russia: A Study of Practices.
The
book is composed of five chapters. Chapter I discusses the two main characters
of sacrificial narrative: the enemies of the people and the partisan hero of
WWII. The author shows how the official discourse of WWII manipulates media
canonizations and portrays the warriors. This chapter also examines the Thaw
period after the death of Stalin and the treatment of the sacrificial mechanism.
Chapter
II talks about the distress of two aerial hijacking events which occurred after
the Thaw and their representation in Soviet press, literature and film. This
chapter introduces the depiction of the figure of a heroic flight attendant,
women and pilots in media, literature, and films as an heiress to the legacy of
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and
other martyrs of WWII. It also examines how hijackers were treated as traitors,
enemies of people in Stalinist media and literature. It shows that the metaphor
of the sacred victim was crucial to Soviet discourse and remained
operative even after the war.
Chapter
III discusses the heroic death of the Chilean singer Victor Jara
at the hands of General Pinochet’s junta. The author is interested in the
official language used in the print media between the 1970s and 1990s which
reflects the ideology of the Soviet state in the image of the Chilean martyr
for communism that helped the Soviets to strengthen and legitimize their
regime. The author concludes that the language used in regard to sacrifice in
the 1970s and 80s harks back to the style used in the 1930s and 1940s,
particularly in its portrayal of the stark contrast between betrayal and
loyalty, and its use of religious imagery in discussions of patriotism.
Chapter
IV examines the wartime sacrificial figures in post-Soviet nationalist
literature, and discusses the return of the wartime hero in the late-Soviet and
post-Soviet literature and popular culture. The author examines fiction,
essays, journalism and interview with the popular writers Zakhar
Prilepin, German Sadulaev,
and Dmitry Cherkasov and talks about the war in
Afghanistan in the 80s, the military operations in Chechnya and the military conflicts
in Yugoslavia and in Ukraine. She argues that during perestroika, despite the erosion
of the Soviet state and the resulting loss of prestige and influence, Soviet
idealism retained a hold on the public imagination. Consequently, a new hero
figure began to emerge, one who continued to symbolize sovereignty in
post-Soviet Russia. Elements of the now discarded official Soviet narrative
began to re-emerge in cinema, media and literature.
In
the Chapter V, the author discusses Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s treatment in the
media and popular culture, that created a character of
a businessman-hero for popular culture. The author is interested in the
construction of heroic victimhood and patriotism, and examines the ways in
which modern Russian intellectuals advocate a more liberal society within this
framework.
In
the Conclusion of this book, the author provides a number of contemporary
examples to support her claim that the language and imagery of heroic victims
and sacrifice, freed from the bounds of official discourse has entered popular
culture and is used in everything from talk shows to statements by officials.
This
scholarly written book delivers a satisfactory information
on sacrificial language used during the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet era. I
would recommend this book to anyone who were interested in the discourse
analysis of the Soviet and post-Soviet era in media, official literature and
popular culture.
*Ayse Dietrich - Professor, Part-time, at Middle East Technical University, Department of History, and Eurasian Studies. Editor and the founder of the International Journal of Russian Studies e-mail: editor@ijors.net, dayse@metu.edu.tr, dietrichayse@yahoo.com
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