ABSTRACT
This chapter looks into the case of triumphant performance by one such troupe in Nizhnii Novgorod in February and March of 1909, and the truly avant-garde mass festivities in late May 1909 honoring the centennial of the writer Nikolai Gogol, whose early works formed the core repertoire of Ukrainian musicales. It approaches the phenomenon of the city as a "place-as-contested-space", rather than plots of territory divided into homogeneous blocs marked by distinctive architecture, ethnicity or wealth of their inhabitants. The chapter focuses on one aspect of this process: the role of emotions in establishing the rapport among strangers. Relying on social practices as a language of self-expression and communication, representatives of various local traditions and social segments managed to synthesize a new common space. Positioned on the "interstices" of two cultures, Gogol existed in the in-between space of cultural ambivalence which diluted the imaginary essence of the Russian nation through a distorted Russian language.
