Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation during Perestroika
In 1989-90, anthropologist Ries (Colgate Univ.) studied the conversations of educated urban Russians and identified recurrent forms of speech, including the litany, the lament, the first-person trickster narrative, and "tales of heroic shopping." Ries skillfully draws connections among these speech forms and the construction of personal and national identity, traditional Russian folklore genres, and contemporary political and media discourse. She argues that while these enduring narrative forms enabled Russians to adapt psychologically to hardship and oppression, they may have prevented people from taking effective action during the relatively liberated era of perestroika. Unfortunately, this interesting interdisciplinary study is often rambling and poorly organized; for example, the author's synopsis of recent Russian history and her presentation of perestroika as a "macro-scale rite of passage" belong in the introduction rather than the conclusion. For specialists in Russian studies, folklore, and linguistic anthropology.?Judy Sierra, Eugene, Ore.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.