Academic Studies Press Charms of the Cynical Reason: Tricksters in Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture (Cultural Revolutions: Russia in the Twentieth Century)

The impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and little-explored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and fascinating literary and cinematic images of soviet and post-soviet tricksters, including such “cultural idioms” as Ostap Bender, Buratino, Vasilii Tyorkin, Shtirlitz, and others. The steadily increasing charisma of Soviet tricksters from the 1920s to the 2000s is indicative of at least two fundamental features of both the soviet and post-soviet societies. First, tricksters reflect the constant presence of irresolvable contradictions and yawning gaps within the soviet (as well as post-soviet) social universe. Secondly, these characters epitomize the realm of cynical culture thus far unrecognized in Russian studies. Soviet tricksters present survival in a cynical, contradictory and inadequate world, not as a necessity, but as a field for creativity, play, and freedom. Through an analysis of the representation of tricksters in soviet and post-soviet culture, Lipovetsky attempts to draw a virtual map of the soviet and post-soviet cynical reason: to identify its symbols, discourses, contradictions, and by these means its historical development from the 1920s to the 2000s. Review “Mark Lipovetsky’s work makes a critical intervention in the study of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture. Recent scholarship has made great strides in overcoming the binary categories that once characterized accounts of Soviet society―in most different ways―in both the USSR and the West: official vs. unofficial, conformist vs. dissident, socialist bloc vs. the capitalist West, etc. As works in history, anthropology and sociology have begun to show, life in the Soviet Union was painted in shades of grey, admitting a huge range of economic behaviors, social interactions, and political values located “between and betwixt.” With this book, in one brilliant stroke, Lipovetsky has brought home these insights with regard to the study of Soviet literature and culture. The figure of the trickster, which Lipovetsky finds across an enormous range of important, canonical and beloved works, was at once the embodiment of socialist values and a subversive, concretizing the special forms of identity and social skills required for survival in the Soviet Union. This study shows us in a new manner what was distinctive about Soviet social and cultural history and in what ways it should be seen as a variety of the common story of modernity. Further, it explores how the cultural life of present-day Russia has inherited these structures and patterns. Lipovetsky’s erudition is vast, his critical acumen is impressive, and his writing is superbly nuanced and exciting. In short, this is a remarkable addition to scholarship.” -- Kevin Platt, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at University of Pennsylvania, and author of History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution “By focusing on the figure of the trickster, Mark Lipovetsky develops a new language for talking about subjectivity and ideology in Soviet and post-Soviet literature. The trickster shows just how inadequate talk of accommodation and resistance is when approaching the discourse of power in modern Russia. It turns out that the famously dualistic Russian culture has plenty of ways to go beyond “either/or,” and the trickster knows them all. Fortunately for us, Lipovetsky knows them as well.” -- Eliot Bornstein, Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies at NYU and the author of Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture “Mark Lipovetsky has produced a welcome addition to the growing area of scholarship examining performative discourses in Soviet and post-Soviet culture….In this pioneering work Lipovestky fuses contemporary postmod