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[Vladimir Bilenkin]

Kenneth Brostrom wrote:

>
>    Cultural studies has become a significant dimension of Slavic
> studies in the past decade at least, and anyone with knowledge of
> this area understands the meaning of the term "the Other."  It is not
> necessary to enumerate the studies by Slavists who have explored this
> idea in connection with the history of the former Soviet Union and
> Russia before the Revolution.  Do we have nothing to add when our
> President says repeatedly during the last few days that "This is a
> struggle between Good and Evil"?  We have heard these same words in
> the very recent past from Osama bin Laden.  So--despite all the
> dissonance produced by our anguished reactions to the crimes of
> September 11: Are there no cultural issues here that we can discuss
> after the experience in the Soviet Union during the twentieth
> century?  Do we, as Slavic specialists, have nothing to say?

I guess I side here with Eliot Borenstein.  Whatever I can and will say (in a
different place)
about the Washington war-mongerers and the chauvinistic mobs around this country
cheering
them I will say as a political activist,  not as a historian of Russian literature,
and most certainly,
not as a "specialist" or  "professional", the salaried "other" of my human self.

Having said that, I would like to benefit from other salaried "others" on this
list.
Next spring I will have to teach a new course on cross-national representations
"Russia and the West: Under each other's eyes".  (To make it even worse, this is
an undergraduate course).  I have enough materials on Western "constructs" of
Russia/SU, including Malia's _Under the Western Eyes_, which can be utilized as
a quasi textbook, not to mention profitably exploited as such a "construct"  in its

own right.  But the Russian side of this course is much weaker in interpretative
literature.  I was able to find only several topical articles (like Riasanovsky's
"Russia and the West in the Teaching of Slavophiles"), but nothing like Malia's
book, or even a survey type of an article on the history Russian perceptions of
Europe/the West.  I suspect that generally this poverty of my bibliography reflects

the real situation in the field of Russian cultural history.  We do not have
anything even approaching
Said's type and scope of theorizing in regard to Russia-the West relations.
But I may be wrong and will be happy to learn I am.
Thanks for any suggestions.

Vladimir Bilenkin,
FLL, NCSU

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