Russian Postcolonial Poetry

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

9 March 06

Dear Elena Gapova, and other Slavist colleagues -

Yes, the injured narcissism of empire continues to grow in the 
post-Soviet space.  This sort of thing was less common, say, ten years 
ago, during the chaos of the Eltsin administration.  Only 7% of 
respondents in a 1996 Russia-wide representative sample agreed with the 
statement that "Russia should be revived as a strong military empire 
with the boundaries of the former USSR" (see my _Russian Nationalism 
 From an Interdisciplinary Perspective_, Edwin Mellen Press, 2000, p. 
164; also available in Russian translation from Ladomir).  From the 
postings I have seen recently on JRL and elsewhere, this percentage has 
now tripled at least (I don't have the exact figures at hand).

In any case, the poet you have quoted is expressing an increasingly 
acceptable sentiment.  This poet's self-esteem is wounded by the 
historical fact of the disintegration of the Soviet empire, and he 
lashes back at imagined enemies, he wants to bring back the knout, his 
grandiose need is not even satisfied with the fact that the Russian 
Federation - after all those 14 other republics have been shed - is 
still the largest country on earth.

Even historians without a psychological orientation have recognized the 
psychological problem.  Writing in 1997, Richard Pipes said: "Since the 
seventeenth century, when Russia was already the world's largest state, 
the immensity of their domain has served Russians as psychological 
compensation for their relative backwardness and poverty.  Thus the loss 
of empire has been for the politically engaged among them a much more 
bewildering experience than for the British, French, or Dutch" (qtd on 
p. 164 of my book).

Much more could be said about the mentality of Vladimir Shemshuchenko, 
based on his poetry.  But I shall refrain.  More important will be the 
political consequences of this mentality as it grows in Russia.

Regards to the list,

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere





Elena Gapova wrote:

>By the same author:
>* * *
>Империя не может умереть!
>Я знаю, что душа не умирает...
>Империя - от края и до края -
>Живет и усеченная на треть.
>
>Оплаканы и воля, и покой,
>И счастье непокорного народа.
>Моя печаль - совсем иного рода,
>Она созвучна с пушкинской строкой.
>
>Пусть звякнет цепь, пусть снова свистнет плеть
>Над теми, кто противится природе...
>Имперский дух неистребим в народе,
>Империя не может умереть!
>
>стр. 4 
>
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