This volume investigates Russian culture at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with scholars from Britain, Sweden, Russia, and the United States exploring aspects of culture with regard to one overarching question: What is the impact of the Soviet discourse on contemporary culture. This question comes at a time when Russia is concerned with integrating itself into European arts and culture while enhancing its uniqueness through references to its Soviet past. Thus, contributions investigate the phenomenon of post-Soviet culture and try to define the relationship of contemporary art to the past.

Birgit Beumers is professor of film studies at the University of Aberystwyth. Her publications include Directory of World Cinema: Russia, A History of Russian Cinema, and, with Mark Lipovetsky, Performing Violence: Literary and Theatrical Experiments of New Russian Drama. She is also the editor of Intellect’s journal Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.