ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the neo-conservative visual metaphor of Daughterland [Rodina-Doch] in order to demonstrate how the idea of Russia's eschatological mission, and the concept of Russia as katechon/restrainer, in particular, is visualized in contemporary art, and popular culture, music and film. It describes the emergence of the post-Soviet conservative avant-garde, which took shape in the 1990s but is only today announcing itself as a powerful cultural and political project that can be used in the Kremlin's rhetoric on Russia's 'conservative turn' or 'counter-reformation'. The chapter focuses on the concept of Daughterland to demonstrate how the meanings, images and symbols created by a closed circle of conservative avant-garde artists almost twenty years ago are currently spreading throughout Russian society. Neo-conservatism in post-Soviet Russia initially appeared not at the formal level of authority or as a bureaucratic resource but as a certain type of subculture.
