ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism. Said referred to the Russians only briefly, indicating an awareness of parallelisms between them and the other colonial powers. Neither Russian writers nor Russian intellectuals have acknowledged the realities of Russian imperialism; indeed, they tend to respond with indignation to suggestions that their literature is filled with imperialist rhetoric. In Russian literature, Siberia became an extension of the Russian landscape and mores, as if Russian geography and countryside could be moved eastward at will. The interpreters of the fall of the Soviet Empire have not yet confronted the model of Russia as a stubbornly imperialistic state that has depopulated the Russian mainland to plant Russians in various parts of Asia and the Caucasus where they hardly belong. The literary and artistic texts of the late Soviet and post-Soviet period reinforce the imperial posture and continue to assume the centrality of the imperial vision.
