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Remembering the Future: Time Travel Narratives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia.

紀錄類型:	書目-電子資源 : Monograph/item
正題名/作者:	Remembering the Future: Time Travel Narratives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia./
作者:	Lerner, Amanda.
出版者:	Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, : 2018,
面頁冊數:	211 p.
附註:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 80-09, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International80-09A.
標題:	Slavic literature. -
電子資源:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=13841685
ISBN:	9780438907492

Remembering the Future: Time Travel Narratives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia.
Lerner, Amanda.

Remembering the Future: Time Travel Narratives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. - Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2018 - 211 p.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 80-09, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2018.

This item must not be added to any third party search indexes.

In this dissertation I focus on late-Soviet, post-Soviet, and Putin Era time-travel narratives in order to situate the uniquely Soviet nostalgia that pervades Russia today in the larger history of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. I argue that time travel as a narrative device is used in Russian fiction and television to access the dream of the Soviet Experiment: the spread of state socialism. Using what I term the "SF Mode," I examine texts that do not conform to the typical '`science fiction" generic definitions but that nevertheless utilize SF narrative devices. I consider the use of what I call ``nostalgia-objects" as a focus for an examination of present-day Russia and an interrogation of the Soviet past. I look at case studies from the 1960s, 1970s, and mid-2010s to examine the way time-travel narratives written in the SF Mode explore changing views about the future and past of state socialism across several decades of globally unprecedented political change. In the first chapter I address one of the most uncomfortable tension points in Soviet ideology: the endeavor to build a future that those living in the present day will never be able to see. Though an accelerated push to a sooner tomorrow is a characteristic of many different Soviet genres - amongst them, of course, Socialist Realism - nowhere is this focus on the future so literalized as in science fiction. I address the influence of American science fiction on Soviet SF by juxtaposing the oeuvre of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky with American SF writer Philip K. Dick. Dick's works contain many parallels with the Strugatskys; he also had a profound influence on Western reception of Soviet SF, and his Cold War-era anxieties about socialism provide a crucial counterpoint to Soviet and post-Soviet narratives of a better tomorrow. The second chapter examines the television series Dark Side of the Moon (2011-present, dir. Aleksandr Kott, broadcast on Pervii Kanal and named after the 1973 Pink Floyd album), an adaptation of the American show Life on Mars (itself named after David Bowie's 1971 song), which is actually a remake of the British show of the same name. This series jumps forwards and backwards in time: though the show resists categorization as nostalgia cinema, I argue that it conjures memories of a past that never really was. Throughout the series, the past is glorified and the future is reimagined as Soviet - though of course, with a twist. The second season goes one step further and depicts a future that was never to be: our main characters boomerang back to their home time of 2011, but the Moscow they return to is, anachronistically, still located in the Soviet Union. Through Dark Side of the Moon, a longing for a Soviet tomorrow is reconciled with the reality of Russia today. The third and final chapter focuses Mikhail Elizarov's 2008 novel The Librarian (Ad Marginem). I focus on the power of reading in the novel to temporally transport the reader to the Soviet past, and the responsibilities of the reader herself. Elizarov imagines a post-Soviet Russia that can draw strength and, indeed, even superpowers, from the literature of the Soviet Union - should the works fall into the hands of the right reader. It is each reader's responsibility to imagine, and reimagine. the Soviet Experiment. I argue that Elizarov's novel itself resurrects the dream of a better, brighter, Soviet tomorrow. Finally, my conclusion turns to contemporary attitudes about the disappearance of the Soviet tomorrow. I confront the question perennially posed to Russians: if it were possible to go back in time and prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, would they want to? Just as Dark Side of the Moon imagines such a world, so too do millions of contemporary Russians. The Soviet Dream, reimagined and remixed, offers the ultimate alternative to today's societal problems. I argue that this, too, is a form of time travel by way of nostalgia. We may not be able to fix today, but we can always imagine a better tomorrow and a perfect yesterday.

ISBN: 9780438907492Subjects--Topical Terms:

2144740
Slavic literature.

Remembering the Future: Time Travel Narratives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia.
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500 $a Advisor: Clark, Katerina;Bozovic, Marijeta;Borenstein, Eliot.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2018.
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520 $a In this dissertation I focus on late-Soviet, post-Soviet, and Putin Era time-travel narratives in order to situate the uniquely Soviet nostalgia that pervades Russia today in the larger history of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. I argue that time travel as a narrative device is used in Russian fiction and television to access the dream of the Soviet Experiment: the spread of state socialism. Using what I term the "SF Mode," I examine texts that do not conform to the typical '`science fiction" generic definitions but that nevertheless utilize SF narrative devices. I consider the use of what I call ``nostalgia-objects" as a focus for an examination of present-day Russia and an interrogation of the Soviet past. I look at case studies from the 1960s, 1970s, and mid-2010s to examine the way time-travel narratives written in the SF Mode explore changing views about the future and past of state socialism across several decades of globally unprecedented political change. In the first chapter I address one of the most uncomfortable tension points in Soviet ideology: the endeavor to build a future that those living in the present day will never be able to see. Though an accelerated push to a sooner tomorrow is a characteristic of many different Soviet genres - amongst them, of course, Socialist Realism - nowhere is this focus on the future so literalized as in science fiction. I address the influence of American science fiction on Soviet SF by juxtaposing the oeuvre of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky with American SF writer Philip K. Dick. Dick's works contain many parallels with the Strugatskys; he also had a profound influence on Western reception of Soviet SF, and his Cold War-era anxieties about socialism provide a crucial counterpoint to Soviet and post-Soviet narratives of a better tomorrow. The second chapter examines the television series Dark Side of the Moon (2011-present, dir. Aleksandr Kott, broadcast on Pervii Kanal and named after the 1973 Pink Floyd album), an adaptation of the American show Life on Mars (itself named after David Bowie's 1971 song), which is actually a remake of the British show of the same name. This series jumps forwards and backwards in time: though the show resists categorization as nostalgia cinema, I argue that it conjures memories of a past that never really was. Throughout the series, the past is glorified and the future is reimagined as Soviet - though of course, with a twist. The second season goes one step further and depicts a future that was never to be: our main characters boomerang back to their home time of 2011, but the Moscow they return to is, anachronistically, still located in the Soviet Union. Through Dark Side of the Moon, a longing for a Soviet tomorrow is reconciled with the reality of Russia today. The third and final chapter focuses Mikhail Elizarov's 2008 novel The Librarian (Ad Marginem). I focus on the power of reading in the novel to temporally transport the reader to the Soviet past, and the responsibilities of the reader herself. Elizarov imagines a post-Soviet Russia that can draw strength and, indeed, even superpowers, from the literature of the Soviet Union - should the works fall into the hands of the right reader. It is each reader's responsibility to imagine, and reimagine. the Soviet Experiment. I argue that Elizarov's novel itself resurrects the dream of a better, brighter, Soviet tomorrow. Finally, my conclusion turns to contemporary attitudes about the disappearance of the Soviet tomorrow. I confront the question perennially posed to Russians: if it were possible to go back in time and prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, would they want to? Just as Dark Side of the Moon imagines such a world, so too do millions of contemporary Russians. The Soviet Dream, reimagined and remixed, offers the ultimate alternative to today's societal problems. I argue that this, too, is a form of time travel by way of nostalgia. We may not be able to fix today, but we can always imagine a better tomorrow and a perfect yesterday.
590 $a School code: 0265.
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