The ‘Visible’ and ‘Invisible’ Empire: Feasible Reflections on the Topic of the Empire in the Russian Post-Soviet Fiction

Article

Abstract

[In Russian]

The conceptual focus of the article is a split between “visible” and “invisible” Empire constitutive for the Russian literature. Empire is taken in its (geo)political reality as an utopian in its nature image of Empire as a promise of grandeur, unity, universality and synthesis of different cultures. In the framework various manifestations of “invisible Empire” in the Russian post-Soviet fiction are considered. A special attention is paid to Eduard Limonov’s project “Other Russia” as seemingly congenial to ideological foundations of Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic.