Introduction: Centrifuge and Fragmentation

The seismic changes inaugurated by desovietization not only recast the entire framework of Russia's cultural priorities, production, and reception, but ultimately revised fundamental concepts of what constitutes culture... This introductory material is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol24/iss1/2 Introduction: Centrifuge and Fragmentation Helena Goscilo University of Pittsburgh The seismic changes inaugurated by desovietization not only recast the entire framework of Russia's cultural priorities, production, and reception, but ultimately revised fundamental concepts of what constitutes culture. The reduction, then withdrawal, of formerly guaranteed state subsidies, a steady barrage of nationwide financial crises amidst the announced transition to a market economy, increased contacts with the West, and the emergence of the New Russians as an influential (and highly controversial) quasi-class resulted in comprehensive rethinking and reformation in all spheres. Seventy-year-old habits and fulfilled expectations died a slow but, in several cases, violent and irreversible death. As the centralized, government-sponsored model of culture, with its sacrosanct hierarchies and huge organizational networks, ceded to a dizzying welter of discrete, smaller-scale enterprises, seemingly unassailable institutions within traditional structures teetered and crumbled. Literature, art, film, music, theater, and ballet lost not only official sponsorship, but also status and audiences. Under the impact of widespread disillusionment with ideology, the elimination of censorship, and an initially uncritical receptivity to Western forces, popular culture rapidly dislodged High Culture. The axiom "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" acquired vivid life as state publishing houses foundered, mammoth subscriptions to major literary journals evaporated, the country's premier libraries and museums (e.g., the Lenin Library in Moscow, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg) verged on collapse and curtailed their services, the Bolshoi Theater broadcast desperate appeals for foreign aid, and the film industry shrank to the point of near-evanescence. Formerly lionized writers at both extremes of the political spec1 Goscilo: Introduction: Centrifuge and Fragmentation Published by New Prairie Press 8 STCL, Volume 24, No.1 (Winter, 2000) trum (Rasputin, Solzhenitsyn, Limonov) proved irrelevant to those cultural developments that galvanized the media and the urban population. Russian culture of the 1990s, in a sense, reflected the vagaries of Yeltsin's presidency in its ever-shifting parade of figures and entities enjoying shortlived glory in the fickle but tirelessly focused spotlight. (Mark Lipovetsky's article identifies the major currents in the readership-poor Russian literature of the 1990s, while Mikhail Gnedovskii' s article on the prize-winning museum in Krasnoiarsk, Siberia, addresses the phenomenon of creative vitality on the "periphery.") Media Might and Pop on Top While Culture as conceived during the Soviet era dwindled into an endangered species, new genres overran the cultural market, which catered to a steadily growing appetite for visual stimulation and light entertainment, as well as enthusiasm for the outsized gesture and the violation of cherished taboos. Pulp fiction garnered millions of readers; glossy magazines flooded kiosks and bookstalls; television shows responding to a taste for the confessional, scandalous, and voyeuristic thrived; flamboyant, extravagant, and highly publicized receptions, parties, and presentations became a dominant urban form (often dubbed tusovka); sales of pirated recordings, videos, and software grew into a multi-million dollar industry; cafes and privately owned restaurants, clubs, galleries, beauty salons, and countless small businesses materialized almost overnight, altering the face of Moscow and transforming it into Cellular-phone City. The exclusive Central House of Literati (TsDL), the jealously guarded citadel of Moscow's literary elite, became a ruinously expensive culinary haven affordable only to New Russians. While internationally renowned, landmark museums struggled to survive, Marat Gel' man' s modest-sized, programmatically irreverent gallery drew visitors and media coverage with such tongue-in-cheek shows as "The Art of the Kompromat" and, to commemorate Pushkin's bicentennial this year, "Fak iu, Danthes!"-a title and rhetorical position calculated to shock while eliciting Pushkin-empathy. (The article by Helena Goscilo in this issue analyzes the role of glossies during the decade.) The apparent replacement of monolithic state conglomerates by diverse multiplicity was partly illusory, for the nineties witnessed the birth of sizable private empires wielding incalculable influence: 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 24, Iss. 1 [2000], Art. 2 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol24/iss1/2 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1473