Provincial and Arctic cities in Russian literature of the 2000s and 2010s
Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation examines representations of provincial cities in Russian prose and graphic novels published in the 2000s and 2010s. Since the first half of the nineteenth century, the province and the provincial town have occupied a unique position in Russian literature. Often serving as a metonymy for the whole nation, the province has provided writers with tools to discuss broader societal issues. The province has remained a prominent milieu and trope in post-Soviet fiction and, since the turn of the millennium, it has been studied from multiple perspectives in both Russian and Anglophone studies of Russian literature. This dissertation further develops the earlier perspectives of Russian literary studies on provinces. However, it also emphasizes the need for analysis that focuses on urban spaces. The dissertation examines how contemporary literature reconstructs or rewrites the provincial myth, developed in nineteenth-century literature. Furthermore, it analyzes how contemporary literature portrays the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first post-Soviet decades through depictions of provincial cities. This dissertation also integrates the study of Arctic cities into the framework of provincial studies and analyzes the themes that arise from representations of Arctic provinciality in contemporary Russian literature. The first publication argues for diverse theoretical perspectives for analyzing Arctic provincial cities. It shows how the Arctic provincial city has a role as the city of future, and as a place in which the depiction of nature carries multifaceted meanings. The second publication applies diverse theoretical approaches to literary geography. It demonstrates how the provincial city, carrying reminiscences of the Soviet era, evokes contradictory emotions in the narrator-protagonist, being at the same time cozy and familiar in a recognizable way, but also something in need of rewriting. The third publication incorporates feminist comics studies and shows how female artist’s growing up in the Arctic provincial city is a corporeal experience. The publication shows how urban space and the surrounding northern nature form a place from which the protagonist wants to escape, but which she at the same time accepts as a meaningful part of her life story. The fourth publication applies the concept of chronotope and nostalgia theory in its analysis and shows that the nostalgia felt toward provincial cities is often ambiguous, and that city and sport together can offer an escape from mundane life in the capital. In addition, the fourth publication shows how sport thematics and the provincial city as a setting can together serve as a tool for presenting societal critique. This dissertation argues that provincial cities in contemporary Russian literature are palimpsests, and in addition to the temporal layering of the text itself, these representations frequently highlight or even focus on depicting the historical layers of the urban space. These depictions emphasize the Soviet era and the post-Soviet decades, and they often reflect the protagonists’ ambiguous and contradictory relationships with these temporal layers. Comprising four publications, the dissertation proposes an interpretation of provincial cities that emphasizes the heterogeneity of contemporary Russian literature: although the provincial cities in this literature often share similarities, they narrate Russia and its recent history from distinct and ambiguous perspectives.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Lappela, Anni
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7197176896