Ilya Kalinin

Ilya Kalinin’s research interest concentrates on reconstructing the tension between the social/ideological and the national/imperial trends in modern post-Soviet culture, as well as in discovering its origin in the national politics of the Bolsheviks. A hundred years after the formation of the USSR and thirty years after its collapse, it becomes obvious that the process of this collapse has not yet been completed and, perhaps, it is right now entering its critical phase. The topos of “Russian culture” in the frame of official Russian discourse of patriotic hegemony is transformed into a conceptual politically correct palliative or euphemism of “Russian empire”; or more precisely, the appellation to “Russian Culture” takes an opportunity to combine nationalism as a political instrument of mobilization around a set of national values and the imperial optics of territorial transgression. This context gives the study of the imperial / socialist origins of the USSR and (post-) imperial / (post-) socialist trajectories not only historical and cultural but also social and political relevance.

This Fellowship is part of the Progressive Int. Initiative.

Scholarship on contemporary Russia frequently describes its economy as a system focused on the exploitation of natural resources. Description of Russia’s “conservative turn” and cultural politics that legitimate the current regime is no less commonplace. Escaping the attention of commentators, however, is the connection between these two dimensions. My project seeks to demonstrate the mutual link between forms of economic activity dependent on natural resources and forms of cultural life emphasizing a beneficial dependence on the past and national traditions.