Die Welt der Slaven LIV, 2009, xxx-yyy.
THE EFFA C EM EN T O F HISTORY, THEA TRIC ALITY AND
PO S T M OD ERN URBAN FAN TA SIES IN THE PR O SE O F
PETRU SµEVSKA J A AND PELEVIN
To discuss Russian contemporary fiction in terms of postmodernist poetics
might be seen as problematic, even though some scholars have en-
thusiastically attempted to do just this in the last decade. Marjorie Perloff
has warned that comparisons between American and Russian new litera-
tures should be approached with caution, given the enormous political,
social and cultural differences between the two countries over the past
century and “the long midcentury hiatus of the Stalinist years”, which
largely suppressed the modernist tradition to which contemporary devel-
opments are supposedly ‘post’ (Perloff 1993, 2). Linda Hutcheon, a leading
theorist of postmodernist literature, also believes that postmodernism and
the contemporary are not interchangeable and suggests that in being pri-
marily European and American (North and South), postmodernist culture
is not an international cultural phenomenon (Hutcheon 1988, 4). By con-
trast, Richard Rorty views postmodernism as a world-wide cultural phe-
nomenon that threatens to become a new grand narrative in its own right
(Rorty 1997).
Despite these uncertainties over the nature of postmodernist culture,
it is important to look at the evolution of postmodern condition in the
context of Russian contemporary culture. It will be argued below that
both Ljudmila Petrusˇevskaja (born 1938) and Viktor Pelevin (born 1962),
two of the most prominent contemporary Russian writers, use the same
strategies to call into question modernism’s faith in the grand narratives of
historical meaning. As will be demonstrated below, both Petrusˇevskaja
and Pelevin actively engage their audience into the postmodern process
of reassessment of the conventions, structures and clichés of narrative
itself, highlighting thereby that their goal departs from the realists’ aim to
clarify the world for their readers. Instead, they immerse their readers into
the problem of representation. The present article will focus on the repre-
sentation of Moscow and the authors’ playful engagement with the so-
called Moscow text developed in Russian literature in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries (see, e.g., Epstein 1999, Dalton-Brown 1997, Belova
1998, Smith 1999), in order to outline some distinct traits of the post-
modern thinking of Petrusˇevskaja and Pelevin linked to the perception of
Russian contemporary life as the end of history.
Prior to analysis of several playful images of Moscow created by Petru-
sˇevskaya and Pelevin, it is worth considering briefly a most promising
© Smith, A. (2009). The Effacement of History, Theatricality and Postmodern
Urban Fantasies in the Prose of Petrushevskaya and Pelevin. Die Welt der
Slaven
2
Alexandra Smith
point of comparison between the US and Russian literary scenes that
comes from the American poet Lyn Hejinian, who has translated con-
temporary Russian poetry into English. Hejinian links contemporary post-
modern thinking to the end of history, comparing the Vietnam War (and
the morally-related Watergate scandal) that contributed to the collapse of
US history to Gorbacˇev’s Perestrojka and the 1991 demise of the Soviet
Union that contributed to the collapse of history in Russia (Hejinian
1993). Hejinian redefines the notion of memory affected by the post-
modern condition thus: “The notion of ‘memory’ no longer suggests con-
templation so much as sentimentality (or its sister, irony), amorality, and
above all novel patterns of logic: ‘wandering’ rather than hierarchically or-
ganised plots. When the cause and effect structuring which determines
that an occurrence is an event breaks down, the event becomes an object.
This object isn’t necessarily isolated – it probably always rests in a matrix of
relationships and association. But they are spatial and it is atemporal”
(ibid.). As some critics note, postmodern fiction has sought to open itself
up to history. In Hutcheon’s view, a return today to the idea of a common
discursive property is evident most of all in the process of embedding of
both literary and historical texts in fiction, but this return might be seen as
problematic by overtly metafictional assertions that present both history
and literature as human constructs (Hutcheon 1998, 124f.). Hutcheon
points to the ability of intertextual parody in historiographic metafiction to
offer a sense of the presence of the past, even if our knowledge of this
past derives from literary or historical texts, or their traces (Hutcheon
1998, 125).
Given the above background, which suggests the postmodern condi-
tion in contemporary Russia could exist having evolved as a result of Gor-
bacˇev’s reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it is logical
to examine how two prominent Russian contemporary writers – Petru-
sˇevskaja and Pelevin – have responded to the collapse of history in Russia.
It will be argued that their responses can be seen as manifestations of
postmodern thinking that presents both history and literature as human
constructs, exposing today’s Moscow as a world of superficiality and depth-
lessness. They portray Moscow as a source of exciting images dominated
by impersonal feelings and a certain sense of euphoria that stems from the
liberation from the older anomie of the centred subject. Indeed, as will be
discussed below, we could detect in Petrusˇevskaja’s and Pelevin’s post-
Soviet writing a vividly expressed notion of the loss of the sense that
today’s Russian society is moving meaningfully through time. This sense
of loss leads to the perception of emotional responses to life as commo-
dities and to the widespread belief in an effacement of history.