KEYNOTE SPEECH: SERGEI LEBEDEV: LITERATURE AS A POLITICAL TOOL
Born as a mass phenomenon in the XIX century, when the Russian Empire was rapidly conquering the Caucasus and Central Asia, Russian literature bears the hidden traits of this conquest, serving as a bard of colonisation and an instrument of it. The privileged treatment of the Russian language meant linguistic expansion and the erasure of cultural identities. Selectively incorporated into the Soviet project, the Russian classics became a core of Soviet cultural imperialism, while the Russian language played a double role of sovietization / russification. What is the way to rethink Russian literature today?
KEYNOTE SPEECH: SERGEI LEBEDEV: LITERATURE AS A POLITICAL TOOL
Born as a mass phenomenon in the XIX century, when the Russian Empire was rapidly conquering the Caucasus and Central Asia, Russian literature bears the hidden traits of this conquest, serving as a bard of colonisation and an instrument of it. The privileged treatment of the Russian language meant linguistic expansion and the erasure of cultural identities. Selectively incorporated into the Soviet project, the Russian classics became a core of Soviet cultural imperialism, while the Russian language played a double role of sovietization / russification. What is the way to rethink Russian literature today?
Contributors
