A Generation That Has Squandered Its Men: The Late Soviet Crisis of Masculinity in the Poetry of Sergei Gandlevskii.

The present paper explores the role images of masculinity play in the work of the contemporary Russian poet Sergei Gandlevskii. Gandlevskii's treatment of masculinity, the paper argues, serves as a vehicle for commentary on the historical situation of the late Soviet era, as well as providing an outlet for the poet's reflection upon his own life path and, at times, for an implicit moral self-judgment within the context of a general condemnation of Soviet society. Gandlevskii's poetry, the paper attempts to show, reflects what the sociologists Elena Zdravomyslova and Anna Temkina have termed a 'crisis of masculinity' characteristic of late Soviet society: it associates a masculine life-path with the notions of futility, moral failure and existential impasse. At the same time that Gandlevskii treats Soviet-era paradigms of masculinity with skepticism and distance, however, he also does engage to some extent in fantasies of masculine autonomy and agency as possible even within the context of Soviet society. This ambivalence is preserved in Gandlevskii's work through the poet's use of various masculine personae (some more distant than others from his biographical self), as well as by the abundance of quotations from other poets and from official Soviet discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]