Mark Lipovetsky

Russian Postmodernist Fiction Dialogue with Chaos

Public Administration and Law has been edited for use as a supplement for an undergraduate or MPA level course on administrative law. The selections, all from the pages of Public Administration Review, have been chosen to enlighten and enliven the contents of any standard administrative law textbook. Each of the books main sections begins with introductory text and discussion questions by the volume editors, Julia Beckett and Heidi Koenig, followed by relevant readings from PAR. The books contents follow the standard pattern established by the fields major textbooks to facilitate the instructors ability to assign readings that illuminate lectures and text material. The book concludes with two invaluable resources - a bibliography of 65 years of PAR articles concerning public law, plus a bibliography of law-related articles appearing in other journals published by ASPA.

Politicizing magic : an anthology of Russian and Soviet fairy tales

Part I: Folkloric Fairy Tales Introduction: Helena Goscilo The Frog Princess The Three Kingdoms Baba Yaga Vasilisa the Beautiful Maria Morevaa Tale of Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf The Feather of Finist the Bright Falcon The Magic Mirror The Magic Ring Danila the Luckless Ilya Muromets and the Dragon The Maiden Tsar Part II: Fairy Tales of Socialist Realism Introduction: Marina Balina Tele of the Military Secret, Malchish Kibalchish and His Solemn Word The Golden Key or The Adventures of Buratino (excerpts) The Flower of Seven Colors The Old Genle Hottabych (excerpts) The Malachite Caskat Part III: Fairy Tales of Socialist Realism: Critique of Soviet Culture Introduction: Mark Lipovetsky Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups The Dragon (excerpts) Tales of the Troika (excerpts) Before the Cock Crows (excerpts) That Same Munchausen (act I)

The Salamander's Return: The Soviet Catastrophe and the Post-Soviet Novel

In conversation, two prominent scholars of Russian literature discuss the post-Soviet novel and trace its particular characteristics to the trauma created by the collapse of the USSR.

Reality Performance: Documentary Trends in Post-Soviet Russian Theatre

Abstract This article sets out to analyse a particular development in recent Russian drama and theatre: documentarism. This phenomenon is placed into a socio-political and cultural context in order to identify its positioning towards postmodernism. The particular features of the documentary theatre and the verbatim technique it employs are analysed in the work of teatr.doc and the playwrights that surround this off-theatre. The themes of teatr.doc are identified, as is the device of the ecolect used to characterize particular marginal social groups in each of the productions and plays. This approach is discussed in depth with reference to September.doc by Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov, a play using blogs about the Beslan tragedy to address issues of ethnic conflicts, in order to explore through the text established notions of Russian patriotism and terrorism.

Strategies of Wastefulness, or the Metamorphoses of Chernukha

I am not the only one to have noticed how the tempos of our life have changed in the last decade. A particularly conspicuous example of this (to me, at least) is found in literary criticism, which in recent years has become far swifter to react, more instantaneous, and generally quicker on the trigger. Like a review of a performance written within hours of the premiere, todays criticism reacts to works written today and frequently even to those yet to see the light of day (those in the galley-proof stage, published on the Internet, or still in manuscript). Clearly, criticisms move from magazines to newspapers has had something to do with this. That said, this is the general tenor of things in the literary world, the result in large part of people writing with literary awards in mind. There has been a lot of discussion to the effect that the recently instituted awards have served to motivate critics and prose writers; everyone is talking about the big hand that is waiting to be won and the awards controversies have everyone interested. That said, peoples attention spans are certainly not what they were. A particular publication is hotly discussed until the award is made, after which it promptly disappears into blessed oblivion. This is fine, of course, for the prize-winning texts, as it increases the likelihood that readers and critics will pay attention to them for longer than might otherwise have been the case. But what if, for whatever reason, an entirely worthy text is judged an also-ran? Then it might as well have fallen into a black hole. The award-winning plot lines naturally become the measure of the literary process itself (I apologize if that turn of phrase makes a lot of people wince, but I find it so old-fashioned as to be worth retaining): a year is the maximum length of the critical attention span. Even the changes suffered by the venerable genre of the review article—which has been almost completely replaced by an annotated listing of the seasons new releases—speaks volumes.

Intelligentsia and cynicism: political metamorphoses of postmodernism

Cynicism has a dual origin as a social phenomenon. Firstly, it is ‘C. of power’ typical of the dominant groups exploiting the population and using their power to enrich themselves in a blatant and amoral fashion (fascism, cult of violence, etc.). Secondly, the term refers to the rebellious attitudes and actions (for instance, vandalism) observed among social strata, groups and individuals suffering from the oppression, lawlessness and the moral hypocrisy of the exploiting class yet finding no relief from their predicament and succumbing to the feeling of spiritual emptiness.