Taming the Wolf: Consequences of the Chechen war for Russian politics

Ivan's Childhood as a Representation of the State of the West

The Role of Women in the Modern Russian Family

A Perplexed Poprishchin and his Jumbled Genres: An Exploration of the Confusion of Tragedy and Comedy in Gogol’s Diary of a Madman

Two Queens of Spades

Pyrrhonic Cynicism and the Role of Mimetic Desire in Lermontov's Hero of Our Time

The Censorship of Chapter X of Notes from Underground, and Its Impact on the Polemic Aspect of Part I

Julie Steinberg, Taming the Wolf: Consequences of the Chechen war for Russian politics

Using the super presidentialist system created by Boris Yeltsin in the years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, current president Vladmir Putin has wielded remarkably expanded powers while dealing with the war in Chechnya. Examination of these powers in the context of the Chechen war reveals a clear pattern: the consolidation of state power and centralization of state functions under the Kremlin. In this essay, I argue that Chechenisation and the transformation of the military and the political system comprised Russian local policy. In addition, federal and foreign policies tightened state control due to Putin's incorporation of the Chechen war into the War on Terror, which ultimately handed Putin a blank check for Russian conduct.

Ross Weber, Ivan's Childhood as a Representation of the State of the West

In his debut major film, Ivan's Childhood, Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky attests to the halt of Western progress after World War II. He philosophically agrees with Adorno and Horkheimer's thesis that that the ultimate end of enlightenment and rationalism has been "disaster triumphant." This motif surrounds the film from several different sides in both the content and form of the film. His filmic techniques, the use of certain lightings and the use of space, attest to the closing a world and a dark post-apocalyptic present. Additionally, through his trademark long takes, he displays images of a natural world destroyed by man's technologies. Within the content the film, the contemporary artist is artistically dead. He is at best a celebrity and, at worst, a political whore of the state. The only true artist left is the artist of the Apocalypse as epitomized in the woodcarvings of Alfred Dьrer. Finally, the portrayal of the character Ivan as someone who is stuck in an immature, uneducated state in a bleak world, whom Sartre labeled as both child and monster, represents both the byproduct of western enlightenment and its death.

Natasha Petrukhin, The Role of Women in the Modern Russian Family

The Role of Women in the Modern Russian Family: Mother, Wife, and Worker
Following the collapse of Communism in the 1990’s, societal changes inevitably quickly followed. As the economic markets adjusted to their free world economic models, and the workplace evolved to resemble its Western counterpart, women found themselves in the vortex of changes both at home and on the job. This paper intends to extrapolate the essence of the modern Russian woman, along with the ways the economic and political upheavals of the last two decades has affected her family and married life. The paper will further show that today’s Russian woman is a unique product of her time and through an examination of her different roles in our modern society, we are able to gain a clearer understanding of the cultural changes that Russia has undergone.

Katherine Mccormick, A Perplexed Poprishchin and his Jumbled Genres: An Exploration of the Confusion of Tragedy and Comedy in Gogol’s Diary of a Madman

Tragedy and comedy are combined in Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman,” mirroring the confusion of the protagonist’s mind and allowing for a broad range of social criticism. Gogol wrote “Diary of a Madman” in 1834 after a long, demonstrated interest in classic Greek literature. This interest manifests itself in his short story about Poprishchin, a low-level civil servant who is driven to madness by the disparity between his actual insignificance and his own ambition. In this paper I explore the presence of both tragic and comedic elements in the story, as well as the social purpose that those elements serve. Drawing from Gogol’s letters to family, friends, and critics, as well as works of scholars on madness in ancient Greece and criticism of Gogol’s other works, I conclude that the story shares many elements of both Greek comedy and tragedy, including the criticism of both Poprishchin and his society. The social criticism is accomplished through Poprishchin’s status as a tragic hero of the Greek tradition who suffers the “slings and arrows” of society, while the criticism of his personal ambition is achieved as we laugh at him, as he is made ridiculous in the eyes of the audience. The tragic hero, the tormented and devalued member of a rigid society, is simultaneously a madman who believes himself to be the King of Spain. Interestingly, he also has great insight, following in the footsteps of other Greek madmen who were suprisingly lucid. As the two Greek genres of comedy and tragedy become increasingly confused, Poprishchin’s thoughts become convoluted, his logic twisted. Gogol could not twist and convolute his language, thereby making it incomprehensible and stripping it of all meaning; the content of the story is therefore reflected in the ambivalence of genre instead of language or form.

Hannah Nicholas, Two Queens of Spades

In Alexander Pushkin’s short story, Queen of Spades, there are two interpretations embedded in each charade-like event that occurs. The interpretations that arise, one serious and literal, and the other unconcerned with such severity, add to the intricacy of the work. However, this contradictory tone is lost in Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky’s operatic version, Pique Dame. The tone of the short story is replaced by a sense of unhindered and uncomplicated fatalism conjured by Tchaikovsky’s dramatic music and equally so by the lyrics, written by his brother, Modest . Thus, what is unique and exclusive to Pushkin’s work is diminished so much by the pera that the new mood, one of dark and tragic melancholy, becomes more pervasive than the deliberate mockery once inseparable from the work. In the present paper I argue that the two works – “Queen of Spades” and “Pique Dame” – are indeed separate in their very nature. The drastic difference innate in their form, short story versus opera, gives away their clashing temperaments. Pushkin concludes his work very matter-of-factly. By complete contrast, the Tchaikovsky brothers give their work a sense of burden and tragedy, evoking unease and eventually grief from their audience. The charisma of Pushkin’s short story is swallowed by the vivid exhibition of the opera.

Brian Niblo, Pyrrhonic Cynicism and the Role of Mimetic Desire in Lermontov's Hero of Our Time

Lermontov’s Byronic anti-hero in A Hero of Our Time, Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, is a study in contradictions. Pechorin’s psychodynamics with women, in particular, are key to understanding the ways in which Lermontov sought to criticize broader social trends. In many of the most dramatic scenes of the novel, Pechorin’s romantic pandering yields tragic results. Here, Lermontov tacitly condemns Pechorin’s brand of aimless seduction, and psychological orchestrations, for the suffering they bring about. However, Pechorin’s conquests of these women are also representative of the broader Nationalist pursuit for Empire, which his role in the Russian army served to put into effect. My argument is that Pechorin is more than just a young Byronic hero, preoccupied with questions of fate and mortality. The persona of Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin is that of an active cynic, whose actions unravel the moral codes on which the social connections of the novel are formed. By doing this, Pechorin activates a kind of revolution away from the personal relationships, which bind society together. These relationships kept us human in an age when scientific and political rationalism threatened to undermine family life, romantic love, and friendship, as intangible social commodities. I’ll seek to present Pechorin’s way of mimicking desire within the tradition of the ancient Pyrrhonic skeptic, who knew only the process of inquiry—a means without an end—as the basis for human emotional and intellectual activity. This is process we see repeated over and over in Pechorin’s use—and abuse—of mimetic desire.

Evan Swain , The Censorship of Chapter X of Notes from Underground, and Its Impact on the Polemic Aspect of Part I

When the chapter that contained the essential idea of Notes from Underground was heavily censored, why did Dostoevsky fail to restore it? This is because the polemic aspect of Part I is generated by the impossibility of monogizing the polyphonic world of this novel. This paper defends this thesis based on historical context and textual analysis. From the former, the issues at hand and the likely target of the polemic aspect is established. From the latter, Dostoevsky’s awareness of the difference between the way a novel is written and read and the consequences of removing the essential idea from the text are established.

It has been suggested that the polemic aspect of Part I of Notes from Underground lies in the individual arguments of the underground man against specific ideas of the West. However, the true polemic aspect lies in the lack of conclusions to these arguments—the underground man’s inability to become an authoritative consciousness that can voice such conclusions in the polyphonic world of the novel. And it is by this failure to reach a monological world view that Notes from Underground undermines the ideas of the West, for they rely on such world view as their ground.