ABOUT THIS BOOK

During the late Soviet period, the art collective known as the Mitki emerged in Leningrad. Producing satirical poetry and prose, pop music, cinema, and conceptual performance art, this group fashioned a playful, emphatically countercultural identity with affinities to European avant-garde and American hippie movements. More broadly, as Alexandar Mihailovic shows, the Mitki pioneered a form of political protest art that has since become a centerpiece of activism in post-Soviet Russia, most visible today in groups such as Pussy Riot. He draws on extensive interviews with members of the collective and illuminates their critique of the authoritarian state, militarism, and social strictures from the Brezhnev years to the present.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Alexandar Mihailovic is a professor emeritus of comparative literature and Russian at Hofstra University and a visiting professor of literature at Bennington College.

REVIEWS

"A masterful exploration of the work and world of the Mitki that moves seamlessly between analysis of different art forms—graphic arts, literature, and film—and chronicles the journey of its original members from debauched alcoholism to sobriety."—Emily Johnson, author of How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself

"Russian nonconformist art rises and falls. But the Mitki story, with its goofy heroes, gorgeous colors, and weird affirmation of foolishness and failure as the safest path to freedom, introduces us to the theatricalized postmodern in a form that can never be co-opted by a politics. A mind-bending book."—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

"Mihailovic makes a convincing case for the group's creative disengagement from Soviet discourse and society constituting its most powerful contribution to political protest in Russia."—Slavic Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations

Introduction: Post Modern: The Mitki’s Chronicle of Russian Leadership
1 Glimmer Twins of the Leningrad Underground: The Creation of Dmitri Shagin in Vladimir Shinkarev’s Mitk
2 “Who is This Heroic Man?”: David Bowie and the Mitki’s Queering of Masculinity
3 Fire Water: Alcohol and Rehabilitation in the St. Petersburg of the Mitki
4 Mosaic Authorship: A Co-Production of Olga & Aleksandr Florensky
5 Satire, Sex and Chance: The Creative Diary of Viktor Tikhomirov

Conclusion: Icarus Rising: The Mitki Against the Russia of The Twenty-First Century
Appendix:       Vladimir Shinkarev, “In Praise of the Boiler Room”
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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