Phantoms of a future past : a study of contemporary Russian anti-utopian novels

In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed along with the utopian Communist ideal that had played a major role in world politics for seventy-four years. This book is about the evolution of Russian anti-utopian literature in a post-Soviet environment. A guiding question for the present study has been: What makes us recognize a novel as anti-utopian at a time when the idea of utopia may appear obsolete? The main part of the dissertation is comprised of detailed analyses of the novels: The Slynx (Kys’, 2001) by Tatyana Tolstaya; Babylon/Homo Zapiens (Generation ‘P’, 1999) by Viktor Pelevin; and Ice Trilogy (Ledianaia Trilogiia, 2002-2005) by Vladimir Sorokin. The further development of the genre is subsequently discussed on the basis of seven novels published during the past decade. The dissertation shows how the analysed novels problematize various forms of societal discourse, and how these discourses work as mutations of utopia. Prominent among these are historical discourses – phantoms of the past, which reflect the increasing importance of historical narratives in public political debates in present-day Russia.