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Memories of the War in Soviet and Russian Spy Cinema Evolution of Trauma

This paper analyzes Soviet and Russian spy films with respect to maintaining and transmitting memories of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) in popular culture. The new Russian post-Soviet cinema (after the 2000s) about the “war spies” is considered not only with regard to its entertainment and ideological functions, but also with regard to its function as a “post-memory” of the traumatic experiences of the war and the Nazi occupation. The new Russian cinema about espionage and spies reinterprets the issues of dependent people, Stalinist repressions, and traumatic memories that were absent in Soviet cinema.

Essay by Viktoriya Sukovata June 17, 2019

In the Russian Imperial Consciousness. Early Photography and Railroad The Poetics of the Chinese Eastern Railroad

This paper is devoted to the semantics of the visual images of the Chinese-Eastern Railroad (KVGD)1 and the “Oriental Other” in the Russian public consciousness of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here it is that the construction of the KVGD was intended to be a symbol of the technological progress and spiritual strength of the Russian Empire in the Russian mass consciousness.

Essay by Viktoriya Sukovata March 8, 2018

Ukrainian popular culture In the context of Bakhtin’s philosophy of laughter & the postcolonial perspective:

The paper is a study of the Ukrainian popular culture based on the material of the Ukrainian TV comedy shows which emerged after 1991. They are: Maski Show, Gentlemen Show, Verka Serduchka, Fajna Ukrajna, Vital’ka, and Evening Kvartal. These TV shows have not been investigated by Western, nor Ukrainian scholars. The Ukrainian TV comedy shows are examined in the context of Bakhtin’s theory of carnival and of the ideas of the Australian Slavic scholar M. Pavlyshyn who has elaborated the concepts anticolonialsim and postcolonialism in relation to contemporary Ukrainian culture.

By Viktoriya Sukovata June 19, 2017