>From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>
>***** Gregory Freidin, "Transfiguration of Kitsch: Timur Kibirov's
>Sentiments, A Farewell Elegy for Soviet Civilization"
>
>...Double Exposure: A Found Object
>
>The enormity of the Soviet stylistic legacy and the epoch-making break with
>communism suggest that contemporary nostalgia for Soviet aesthetics cannot
>be accounted for by an appeal to either fashion or the subculture models.7
>The paradoxical return of this aesthetic, indeed, the phenomenon of Soviet
>nostalgia as a whole, was prefigured by the practitioners of sots-art
>(Grois; Andreeva) in the late Soviet era. Its extension into post-communist
>Russia may be seen as a continued unfolding or, as Freud might have put it,
>a working through by the former Soviet citizens of their "Soviet complex."
>This is a process by means of which the individuals and groups, shaped by
>Soviet experience, come to terms with and assimilate the break with their
>Soviet past and the ever-revised revisions of their collective and personal
>Soviet histories.
Yes. Russian society is healing itself. This is a very good thing, and boy is it needed. This was also at work in bringing back the Soviet anthem and the Red Star, which received a lot of really rock-stupid coverage in the West.
Then:
>
>The Big Picture
>
>No matter how fantastic it may appear in retrospect, the late Soviet
>universe...existed for generations of Soviet citizens as the sole
>proverbial "common place" [obshchee mesto]; a space of common, public use;
>the communal, communicating place such as the communal bathroom; or kitchen
>in a communal flat (as in many Il'ia Kabakov's installations); or the place
>of communion with the state and its spirit of communism, such as the
>ultimate Soviet common place, the All-Union Exhibition of the Achievements
>of the People's Economy, a bright picture of which shimmers behind the
>propaganda-red Welcome! [Dobro pozhalovat'!] in Erik Bulatov's eponymous
>masterpiece. Kibirov refers to these over-inscribed places with a haunting
>tautological succinctness:
>
>These are commonplaces,
>Our common places....
Unless Freider spent a lot of time in the late USSR, how on earth can he get away with saying "No matter how fantastic it may appear in retrospect"? Aargh.
Anyway, yes. It provided a collective identity and sense of togetherness. Russia has no national idea at present, which is one reason why ethnic tensions are rising. There is little sense of of what it means to be "russyain" (a Russian citizen) as opposed to "russki" (ethnic Russian), or Moldovan, Ukrainian, Georgian, etc. This is a major problem the state has tried with little success to address by invoking Soviet imagery of inclusiveness.
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