ABSTRACT
The casual succession of scenes of battalion routine amounts to a denunciation of alienation in military life, with its systematic oppression of the weak and the logic of homo homini lupus. The military component has always been central in Russia, due to historical, economic and ideological causes, from the days of the tsarist empire down to the Cold War and beyond, despite perestroika. If the boundary between the military and civilian sectors was uncertain and often negligible under Soviet rule, even today the two can hardly be described as completely separate. Stroybat and Gaudeamus are two emblematic works that seek to analyse militarism, offering two responses to it. Lev Dodin returned twice in the nineties and the early decades of the millennium to his cult spectacle ‘Gaudeamus’, an essential example of a method, a form of expression and a lucid reflection on the contemporary world and life.
