Slavic Bazaar 2024

THE SLAVIC BAZAAR

 

Friday, April 26, 2024

The Max Kade Center

3401 Walnut Street, A Wing, Room 329A

 

Schedule

 

9:00-9:30 | Coffee and Conference Opening

 

9:30-10:15 | Panel 1

 

Pushkin’s Mazepa: Forgotten or Erased?

Carolyn Vaziri, University of Pennsylvania

 

“Mazeppa had been long forgotten; Only in a solemn, hallowed site, Each year unto this day, in wrath a Cathedral peals anathema On him.” –Alexander Pushkin, Poltava

 

In 1829, Alexander Pushkin published the poem Poltava, a narrative chronicling a rebellion led by Ukrainian Cossack and Hetman Ivan Mazeppa and his later betrayal of Tsar Peter I in the 1709 Battle of Poltava between the Russian Empire and Sweden. Through a close reading of Pushkin’s work and supplemental research from expert historians, I explore the poem’s incongruence concerning the memory of Mazeppa. This paper argues that Mazeppa captivated a broad audience in Ukraine and unmistakably posed a challenge to the legitimacy of the Russian Empire, undermining Pushkin’s position regarding the remembrance of Mazeppa among future Ukrainians. It interrogates the imperialist politics of memory, weighing the extent to which public monuments as opposed to oral history and folk song are conceptualized in memory and mobilize future generations. This essay also links Pushkin’s contradictory characterization of Mazeppa through the work of historian Serhii Plokhii, who has researched the Russian Empire’s campaign of erasure against Mazeppa in art and literature following the Battle of Poltava. Reactions to Poltava are historically significant because they relate to themes of empire, independence movements, truth, and historical memory. Ultimately, this paper does not extricate Pushkin’s authorial intentions but posits that Poltava, despite its assertions, immortalizes Mazeppa in memory through literature.

 

“Bulgakov’s White Guard as a Narrative of Russian Imperialism”

Henry McDaniel, University of Pennsylvania

 

My topic focuses on Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel White Guard (published in 1925), and its status as a work that promoted and uplifted Russification in the early Soviet period. Although White

Guard is set amid the Ukrainian Revolution (1918-1922), it is not a story of Ukrainian nationalism, but a narrative of Russian Imperialism. This narrative of imperialism is told from the perspective of the Russian Intelligentsia, which consists of the negative portrayal of leaders such as Simon Petlyura and Pavlo Skoropadsky striving for an independent Ukraine, the Turbin family's monarchist views, the condemnation of the Ukrainian peasantry and working class, the glorification of Tsarist autocracy, and the degradation of the Ukrainian language. White Guard includes autobiographical elements from Bulgakov’s experience as a member of the Russian intelligentsia from Kyiv. The novel is told from the perspective of the Turbin family, a Russian intelligentsia family living in Kyiv. Bulgakov uses the perspectives of the Russian Intelligentsia to undermine Ukrainian nationalism and the creation of a Ukrainian state. My argument is relevant to contemporary geopolitics, as Russia actively tries to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and cultural heritage. I primarily used secondary literature from literary and historical scholars to craft my argument.

 

10:15-10:25 | Break

 

10:25-11:10 | Panel 2

 

Lost in Space, Trapped in Memory: the Interhelpo Cooperative and Issues of Post-Soviet Collective Memory in Modern Bishkek

Ryan Hardy, University of Pennsylvania

 

This paper examines the Czechoslovak-founded Interhelpo cooperative’s fading from public memory, as it is affected by official narratives and collective memory in its diaspora community in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Collective memory frameworks derived from the work of Charity Scribner, Pierre Nora, and Svetlana Boym situate histories of the cooperative both temporally, in post-socialist Kyrgyzstani society, and physically, in shared Soviet industrial space and the cityscape of today’s Bishkek. When applied to interviews conducted with descendants of Interhelpo’s founders, who lived and worked in the cooperative’s legacy community during the late Soviet period, these frameworks reveal trends of self-identification with Czech and Russian ethnonational identity as alternatives to a collective Soviet identity. The cooperative’s unique sociopolitical and cultural identity during its operation along with its diverse diaspora complicates collective memory in its legacy community and its members’ relationships to social change as they relate to a post-Soviet world. In spaces like Interhelpo’s legacy community, narratives of East-West geopolitics further unify legacy communities around ethnonational identity with ethnonational labels like “Russian” and “Czech” identity support for a nostalgic past socialist society and modern Kyrgyzstani identity representing dysfunction and a perceived disenfranchisement. This paper is part of a broader research project that culminated in a thesis in completion of honors in Russian and East European Studies.

 

“Islands of Freedom in Seas of Autocracy”

Alexander Schrier, University of Pennsylvania

 

How do democratic states surrounded by asymmetrically powerful authoritarian neighbors (APAN) peacefully prevent their neighbors from diffusing authoritarianism into their country? Drawing from Mongolia’s foreign policy strategy, I argue that democratic countries in APAN adopt the “third neighbor policy” to ensure democratic sustainability. The policy consists of three subcomponents that prevent an “authoritarian neighborhood effect”: establishing good economic relations with both its autocratic neighbors and democratic counterparts, remaining neutral on international controversial issues, and increasing the country's global image through strong participation in multinational peacekeeping/development projects. In my empirical section, I seek to generalize the theory by constructing a comparative case study of Mongolia’s successful implementation of the third neighbor policy versus Georgia’s diverging unsuccessful policy. This evidence supports my theory that the third neighbor policy is the most effective measure at preserving the democracies in an “island of freedom.”

 

11:10-11:20 | Break

 

11:20-12:20 | Keynote

 

“Capitalism with Soviet Characteristics: Sources on the Financial History of Stalinism”

Alex Royt, University of Pennsylvania

 

Recently, scholars have begun to approach the topic of Soviet money as a tool for building socialism; they treat money as a symbol of the moral idea of socialism and analyze the contradictions that this notion suggests. However, the Soviet system relied on different forms of money, and the ambivalence and hostility of the Soviet law towards specific forms of monetary exchange has not been analyzed. My talk concentrates on the economic history of Soviet finance in the 1920s and 1930s. Rather than focus on the meaning of money in the context of Soviet ideology, my talk will focus on the legality of a specific form of money, otherwise known as a bill of exchange. Soviet law treated the bill of exchange as money rather than as a security, and the lack of any clear legislation regarding the financial status of this instrument created a grey area where securities trading exploded. In other words, the bill of exchange was operating in conditions of weak enforceability, both known and unknown, legal and illegal, depending on if it was treated as money (such as in the bank) or as a security (such as in the black market). My talk discusses the causes and implications of this explosion in securities trading in the Stalinist period.

 

12:20-12:30 | Break and Lunch Will Be Set Out

 

12:30-1:15 | Lunch

 

1:15-2:15 | Panel 3

 

“Rubles, Chervontsy, and Foreign Currency in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita”

Jack Hutcherson, University of Pennsylvania

 

This paper investigates Mikhail Bulgakov’s calculated emphasis on money in Master and Margarita and how this theme subtly critiques the social and political landscape of Stalin’s Soviet Union. The analysis focuses on references to the Soviet Union’s economic policies of the 1930s, such as the introduction of the Chervonets currency, specifically highlighting how English translations often overlook Bulgakov’s elusive criticism. Furthermore, the research provides a background on the regulation of foreign currency, a repeating theme in Master and Margarita, and the resulting inequality from this currency. This exploration of money’s role in the novel enables readers to better understand how the Devilish character Woland uses it to expose the greed and vanity of the Soviet citizens, directly contradicting the ideal of a “new Soviet person.” By revealing how these core elements of human nature persist across time and cultures, Bulgakov critiques the Soviet sytem of moral values. Through depictions of a deeply intertwined and complex relationship of good and evil, Bulgakov advances his critique of simplistic ideologies. Ultimately, analyzing Bulgakov’s integration of money as a central theme allows readers to understand his clever satirizing of the Soviet experiment while pondering the questions raised about societal and moral values.

 

“Significance and Impact of the Russian Novel in Lyudmila Ulitskaia’s Sonechka”

Catherine Fantuzzo, University of Pennsylvania

 

Lyudmila Ulitskaia’s ‘povest, Sonechka (1992) tells the story of a Soviet Jewish woman coming of age, raising a family, and passing into old age during the long, dark Soviet century, whose biography and very mode of life is sustained by literature. The first line of the ‘povest describes Sonechka as a reader, indicating the importance that the author places on this element of experience. Sonechka spends the first twenty-seven years reading and studying books. The stories within these books, their plots and characters, teach her how to respond to the stringent demands life makes of her later in life when she becomes a wife to her husband, Robert, and a mother to her daughter, Tanya. This paper explores how Sonechka’s self-sacrificial care for her family is informed by the profound ability to comprehend the human condition and to empathize with others that she learned from books.

My argument is informed by the historical and social account articulated in Yuri Slezkine’s study The Jewish Century. Even though she is not a practicing Jew, Ulitskaya’s povest’ suggests that Sonechka was raised with, at the very minimum, strong Jewish cultural elements. Sonechka is part of a generation of Russian Jews who are departing from the traditional Jewish cultural and religious customs and embracing the Russian ones. This was a generation of Jews, as is typically the case across the entire Jewish diaspora, that strove to become better participants in Russian cultural life than their non-Jewish counterparts. I use Slezkine’s analysis of the history of Jewish people in Russian and Soviet society from the end of the nineteenth century through the twentieth century to provide a deeper background for comprehension of Sonechka’s identity as a reader.

 

“Reading the war in Ukraine in migratory Russian poetry”

Aleksandr Perchatkin, New York University, Shanghai

 

Russian migration during the 20th century has been a significant subject of interest among literary scholars, particularly concerning the emergence of two distinct streams of Russian literature: one from within the Soviet Union and another from outside, often referred to as the "literature of Russian diaspora." This dichotomy has produced contrasting narratives, with authors like Solzhenitsyn critiquing government repression from within, while diasporic writers, such as Nabokov and Brodsky, explore themes of exile and identity.

Against this backdrop, the contemporary war in Ukraine has sparked a new wave of migration, prompting nearly a million people to flee Russia. Among these migrants are notable poets like Vera Polozkova and Dmitry Bykov, whose works offer unique insights into the conflict's impact. Polozkova, a prominent figure in Russian literature, expresses poignant reflections on the war's emotional toll through free verse and concrete narratives. Her poetry navigates themes of loss, guilt, and resilience, offering a personal lens into the human experience amidst turmoil.

In contrast, Bykov's poetry adopts a more overtly political stance, employing historical analogies and patriotic sentiments to critique Russian government actions. His poem "Zmiinyi Island" serves as a prime example, drawing parallels to Ukrainian resistance and condemning Russian aggression. Bykov's language intertwines political commentary with literary tradition, invoking the works of renowned Russian authors to underscore his message.

Through an analysis of Polozkova and Bykov's poetry, this study delves into the complexities of transnational Russian migratory literature. It highlights the perspectives within this genre, demonstrating how poets navigate questions of identity, politics, and artistic expression in the face of upheaval. Ultimately, the research contributes to the understanding of the role of migratory poetry in reflecting and responding to the war in Ukraine.

 

2:15-2:25 | Break

 

2:25-3:10 | Panel 4

 

“The Futurist Dynamism of Dimensionality: Embryos of Artistic Possibility in Malevich and Khlebnikov”

Tova Tachau, University of Pennsylvania

“We are destroying your old world,” declared Futurist poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky, to a captive audience at The Moscow Society of Art Lovers in 1913. Indeed, with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky thrown “overboard from the ship of Modernity,” Russian Futurism exhorted a break with the aesthetic confines of preceding generations and an embrace of the urbanism and technology of the early 20th century, epitomized in their aptly named manifesto, “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste” (“Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu”). Iconoclastic, dynamic, and provocative, Futurists revolutionized the very fundamentals of literature and art: consonants became color and texture, vowels became time and space, and geometric planes became pools of pure intuition. Through Kazimir Malevich’s advent of Suprematism, a method of non-objective creation, and Viktor Khlebnikov’s experimentation with zaum, or ‘beyonsense’ language, both artists invented novel dimensions to expand the human perceptual apparatus beyond the confines of the phenomenal world and, in doing so, freed creative intuition from the shackles of

utilitarian reason. This project queries the role of dimensionality in these figures’ respective approaches to a revolutionary reconceptualization of art as such. Both Futurists thus imbue their art with the revolutionary potential to escape existing dimensions and model new phenomenological frameworks: “economy” and zaum, respectively. Through an interdisciplinary comparison of these manifestations of dimensionality—via both authors’ theoretical writings, Malevich’s visual works, and Khlebnikov’s poetry—this project argues that Malevich and Khlebnikov’s invention of novel dimensions succeeds in expanding the human perceptual apparatus via two disparate, though interwoven, paths of creative intuition which lead beyond the utilitarian world into a nebulous cosmos of primordial, spiritual, and transcendental significance.

 

“Form and Figure in the Russian Avant-Garde: Mikhail Kuzmin’s Stroinost’ from Symbolism to Filmic Montage”

Liam Phillips, University of Pennsylvania

 

In Mikhail Kuzmin’s (1872-1936) essay “On Beautiful Clarity” (“O prekrasnoi iasnosti,” 1910), Kuzmin distinguishes between two kinds of artists: those who bring chaos and division [rasshcheplennost’] to art and those others who bring harmoniousness and fullness [stroinost’]. The word stroinost’ appears in Kuzmin’s novel Wings (Kryl’ia, 1906) to describe the orderliness of a figure “which was striking even beneath a jacket, that captivated you and made you feel embarrassed” (Kuzmin 35). The narrator of Kuzmin’s poetry cycle Alexandrian Songs (Aleksandriiskie pesni, 1905-1908) describes the stroinost’ of a figure with gray eyes under dark eyebrows. In his prose, poetry, and theory, Kuzmin uses stroinost’ to refer to (1) the orderliness of literary form that brings one closer to beautiful clarity and (2) the orderliness of a body–a figure–that is the homoerotic object of desire for Kuzmin’s narrator or protagonist. Through this concrete term, Kuzmin proposes a theory of aesthetics that attempts to connect literary form and genre to the sensual and concrete form of a figure. This project proposes to expound on Kuzmin’s aesthetic theory of this period through a close examination of his poetry and prose, primarily Wings and Alexandrian Songs. This project will turn to theories and techniques of Soviet montage and visual art that succeeded Kuzmin–primarily film director Sergei Eisenstein’s (1898-1948) collection of theoretical writings on montage, form, and visual art–to illustrate Kuzmin’s aesthetic concept of stroinost’ as an intervention in the larger genealogy of aesthetic theory.

 

3:10-3:20 | Break

 

3:20-4:05 | Panel 5

 

“Eisenstein the Collector: Historical Materialism and Petrification”

Sophia Ampgkarian, University of Pennsylvania

 

“There are many kinds of collectors and each of them is moved by a multitude of impulses. As a collector Fuchs is primarily a pioneer," writes Walter Benjamin about Edward Fuchs. This paper aims to draw the portrait of Sergei Eisenstein as his own kind of collector, one moved by the

revolutionary impulse to achieve the highest form of proletarian art. Assembling moments from his early films as well as his Notes on Capital, I attempt to demystify Sergei Eisenstein's preoccupation with the petrified in his thinking: petrified statues, petrified animals, petrified bodies. I argue that his reflections culminate in a new understanding of Marx's "dance" of "petrified conditions" through montage, which bears, as Eisenstein sees it, the strongest critical and affective potential for future cinema.

 

“Mimino: A Portrait of an Intermediary of the Soviet Family of Nationalities”

Zach McGrath, University of Pennsylvania

 

Mimino, Soviet Georgian director Georgiy Daneliya’s 1977 film comedy, presents the story of the eponymous protagonist’s quest to become a commercial airline pilot while navigating life as a Georgian within the Soviet “family of nationalities.” While popular across the former Soviet Union, some critical analyses of Mimino characterize this film as an unserious, stereotyping-romp that demeans the non-Russian nationalities in the USSR it depicts. In distinction from these interpretations, I argue that through Mimino, Daneliya created a sophisticated portrait that is both a generally positive portrayal of the Soviet project and a brutally honest critique of the double standards for Soviet minorities that required abandonment of local cultures in order to advance professionally and assume the identity of a fully modern Soviet person.

The film is a unique time capsule of the hopes, frustrations, and realities of an era in which cross-cultural cooperation was ideologically mandated in the region. By closely examining the way Daneliya frames interactions between Mimino and traditional Georgian village life, the Russian metropole, and his Armenian companion Rubik, we are able to better understand the social reality of late Soviet nationalities policies and difficulties in their implementation. Further, this paper examines Mimino’s role as an intermediary between the Soviet metropole and rural Georgia, and his personal unhappiness when forced to lean too far into metropole life in order to attain his dream of becoming a commercial airline pilot. My paper concludes that through Mimino, Daneliya advocates for a balance, in both personal and social realms, between maintaining one’s local cultural background and all-Soviet identity within the Soviet project.