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The present article focuses on the tension arising from Pavel Katenin's aesthetic and literary vision for the reception of Antiquity in Russian mythological drama: his avid support of Classical purism and his denunciation of dramatists, for whom ancient myths served merely as a resource of historical parallels, is challenging to reconcile with the revolutionary conception of his play Andromache. The paper argues that Katenin regarded antiquity as an idealized universe from which numerous motifs could be drawn for inspiration. Semantic and structural means employed in the tragedy are analyzed as shedding light on the extent of Katenin's transformation of the ancient myth to reflect the ideology of his time. The paper suggests that Classical antiquity served as a "mask," allowing contemporary Decembrist circles to apply ancient models and situational resolutions to their own political crises. The dramatist's conflation of masked political ideology with extreme innovation and intricate intertextual allusion is put forward as a cause of the brevity of the stage life that Katenin's Andromache was allowed in St. Petersburg's Bolshoi Theater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Kul'tura povsednevnosti. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2021. 536 pp. R600.00. ISBN 978‐5‐4448‐1598‐4. Makarov, I. A., et al. Povorot k prirode: Novaia ekologicheskaia politika Rossii v usloviiakh "zelenoi" transformatsii mirovoi ekonomiki i politiki. Doklad po itogam serii situatsionnykh analizov. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 2021. 97 pp. ISBN 978‐5‐7133‐1691‐4. Michlin‐Shapir, Vera. Fluid Russia: Between the Global and the National in the Post‐Soviet Era. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Ithaca: Northern Illinois University Press, 2021. 264 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐6054‐9. Logvinenko, Igor O. Global Finance, Local Control: Corruption and Wealth in Contemporary Russia. Cornell Studies in Money. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. 246 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐5960‐4. Weiss‐Wendt, Anton. Putin's Russia and the Falsification of History: Reasserting Control over the Past. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. 336 pp. $115.00. ISBN 978‐1‐35‐013053‐1. Frye, Timothy. Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. 228 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978‐0‐691‐21246‐3. Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam. Galvanizing Nostalgia? Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. xvi + 254 pp. $31.95 (paper). ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐6131‐7. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. xiv + 269 pp. $70.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4962‐2216‐9. Serdiuk, V. A. Zabytyi personal: Zhenskii trud na zheleznikh dorogakh Rossiiskoi imperii. Moscow: Nestor‐Istoriia, 2020. 264 pp. R800.00. ISBN 978‐5‐4469‐1708‐2. Kolonitskii, Boris. Comrade Kerensky: The Revolution against the Monarchy and the Formation of the Cult of "The Leader of the People" (March–June 1917). Translated by Arch Tait. New Russian Thought Series. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2021. x + 380 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978‐1‐5095‐3364‐0. Edgar, Adrienne, and Benjamin Frommer, eds. Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia: Mixed Families in the Age of Extremes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2020. xii + 344 pp. $75.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4962‐0211‐6. Buell, Paul D., E. N Anderson, Montsterrat de Pablo Moya, and Moldir Oskenbay. Crossroads of Cuisine: The Eurasian Heartland, the Silk Roads and Food. Leiden: Brill, 2020. x + 340 pp. $159.00. ISBN 978‐90‐04‐43205‐5. Pickett, James. 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This paper formulates a new perspective on Vissarion Belinskii's seminal role as the leading figure in early Russian realism–while attempting to account for the unique, culturally‐specific evolution of realism in Russia, particularly its fundamental interconnection with the rise of what we now call "the intelligentsia." Within this context, Belinskii's distinct mode of realism–epitomized in his call for "sociality or death"–can be termed "phenomenological," because it derived so much from the narrative logic of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, as a continuous striving for self‐realization. In this sense, Belinskii's influence hinged on his constructed, phenomenological metanarrative of Russian literary history: a philosophical narrative that established a logical evolution within Russian literature and explained the emergence of realism as a rational necessity. The conceptual foundations of Belinskii's metanarrative can be traced back to his period of intense immersion in Hegel's philosophy as a member of the Stankevich circle, when he and the others looked to Hegel's philosophy as a practical guide to personal self‐realization. Ultimately, however, Belinskii transposed this narrative of self‐realization onto the logic of Russian literary history. Accordingly, the realism of the Natural School marked the culminating moment when Russian literature finally attained self‐realization, legitimacy, cultural autonomy. The entire process, moreover, was contingent on the emergence of a certain kind of unified, self‐conscious reading public–which became the basis for what we now know as the intelligentsia. Thus, Belinskii's realist agenda was ultimately focused on fostering the development of this "imagined community," which entailed establishing a stable and autonomous niche for intelligentsia discourse within the competitive field of literary production, as well as shaping the distinct socio‐historical sense of self that engendered the intelligentsia's defining propensity for conscientious social action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-Soviet Russia, science fiction has become a huge literary industry with hundreds of titles published yearly, and dozens of regular events for authors and fandom. Having recovered from the dominance of translated science fiction in the 1990s and reliance on Strugatsky's style and spirit, today's writers have developed a specific 'sub-genre' of imperial science fiction. Using the example of fifteen novels, this paper explores interconnections between this sub-genre and the ongoing processes of identity-making in Russia. It argues that 'imperial science fiction' paradoxically exposes quasi-post-colonial sensibility, the loss of agency, and feelings of disempowerment, but by so doing it contributes to a geopolitical and revanchist way of thinking, entertained by authors and readers alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leskov researchers have often and justifiably focused on the influence of Old Russian literature and folklore in his prose. However, nineteenth-century Russian literature is equally essential to his work. Leskov often borrowed plot devices, images, and names from his contemporaries; these aspects of his work, namely his 'intertextuality' and literature-centrism are underappreciated. This paper demonstrates this aspect of his poetics using his play The Spendthrift, showing that The Spendthrift presents a combination of allusions to nineteenth-century works including Griboedov's Woe From Wit, Gogol's The Inspector General, Ostrovsky's Krechinsky's Wedding and Sukovo-Kobylin's The Case. Using the terminology of postmodernism, the term 'pastiche' may rightfully be applied to Leskov's play. Whereas in postmodern art, pastiche is the result of the author's frustration with everything already having been written, Leskov uses others' texts for polemical purposes with the intention of formulating his own literary position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]