ABSTRACT

Contemporary Russia is often viewed as a centralised regime based in Moscow, with dependent provinces, made subservient by Putin’s policies limiting regional autonomy. This book, however, demonstrates that beyond this largely political view, by looking at Russia’s regions more in cultural and social terms, a quite different picture emerges, of a Russia rich in variety, with different regional identities, cultures, traditions and memories. The book explores how identities are formed and rethought in contemporary Russia, and outlines the nature of particular regional identities, from Siberia and the Urals to southern Russia, from the Russian heartland to the non-Russian republics.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

part 13I|57 pages

Framing Russia’s regions

chapter 2|26 pages

Provinces, regions, circles, grids

How literature has shaped Russian geographical identity

part 71II|70 pages

Rethinking European Russian identities

chapter 3|23 pages

Militarized memory

Patriotic re-branding in post-Soviet Pskov

chapter 5|21 pages

“How is Voronezh not Paris?”

City branding in the Russian provinces

part 141III|45 pages

Russian identities in the Urals

chapter 6|17 pages

The strange case of a regional cultural revolution

Sverdlovsk in the perestroika years

chapter 7|26 pages

Enchanted geographies

Aleksei Ivanov and the aesthetic management of Ural regional identity 1

part 187IV|39 pages

Russian identities in Siberia

chapter 8|17 pages

Siberian regional identity

Self-perception, solidarity, or political claim?

part 227V|66 pages

Regional identities outside the Orthodox zone

chapter 10|19 pages

National identity in post-Soviet Tatarstan

Orthodox missionaries in twenty-first century Tatar literature and film

chapter 11|16 pages

Women, memory, and resistance

Dealing with the Soviet past in the Volga-Ural region

chapter 12|14 pages

“Why does Russia need Hadji Murat’s head?”

Hadji Murat, Dagestani identity, and Russia’s colonial exploits

chapter |10 pages

Afterword

The power of the provinces