In Search of the True Russia: The Provinces in Contemporary Nationalist Discourse by Lyudmila Parts (review)

The rise of global nationalism and populism is seen in the Brexit movement, in a number of recent presidential and parliamentary elections in Europe and the United States, and in the popularity of authoritarian leaders in the Russian Federation, Belarus, and Hungary. Such developments invite contemporary intellectuals to search for the causes of these global phenomena. One approach to this question is to rethink the traditional dichotomy between the metropolis and the provinces, as well as nationalism and its role in boosting collective self-confidence in the public sphere.

Lyudmila Parts's monograph usefully contributes to discussing these questions, by tracing the origins of recent nationalist movements through an examination of nationalist discourse in the Russian provinces in the post-Soviet era. Specifically, Parts looks at nationalist discourse in Russia through the lens of the cultural "myth of province" (Pp. 6, 17), which on the one hand had long existed within Russian culture, but on the other hand was modified in interesting ways in the post-Soviet period (Pp. 10–15). In this regard, Parts's monograph raises important questions about the cultural and political subjectivity of provinces and its role within the contemporary Russian nationalist agenda.

Parts shows that the contemporary cultural myth of provinces is deeply rooted in an earlier Russian self-understanding as "'a provincial' in Europe" (P. 19). She develops her main argument about the increasing role of provincial subjectivity in the past three decades by analyzing provincial journalism, literary fiction that emphasizes the special role of provinces in maintaining "true Russianness," film and television productions depicting the Russian provinces as "true, essential Russia" – provinces that are sharply distinguished from the westernized, rotten metropolises of Moscow and St. Petersburg (P. 46).

This sort of Russian nationalist discourse has significantly increased since 2014, and the phenomenon corresponds to Russian–Ukrainian affairs (including the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the war in Southeast Ukraine). Though Parts's monograph suggests that this phenomenon began to show up in Russian discourse much earlier than even the Russian–Georgian War of 2008, she shows that the contemporary discourse really began to form during the late perestroika period with the collapse of the USSR when the Russian people were upset by the decision of the former Soviet republics to assert national independence and sovereignty (P. 42).

In the introductory section, Parts presents her theoretical frame, which is grounded in contemporary studies of nationalism, postcolonialism, and political resentment. She applies concepts of symbolical geography and cultural mythology to the discourse of the Russian provinces. Such theoretical concepts allow her to highlight the linguistic/literary origins of this phenomenon in cultural production. Interestingly, the author contextualizes her study within an expanded frame of reference by connecting rural nationalist discourse to the larger Russian literary tradition of representing the provinces, as in the works of masters such as Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov.

Still, her work perhaps overgeneralizes somewhat about the previous way of portraying provinces with the result that she oversimplifies the current situation. Consequently, readers might be prevented from grasping the real complexity of this cultural mythologeme. For instance, Gogol's attitude to the provinces was more complex and nuanced than Parts would have us believe. This oversimplification occurs to some degree because she limits her discussion to only his most famous book, Dead Souls (P. 23).

Parts shows that the traditional binary opposition "Russia versus West" becomes rearranged if we take into account the rising voices of the provinces. She emphasizes that "the focus on the provinces offers a model of national identity based on 'us versus us' rather than the traditional oppositions of 'us versus them' [the symbolical West]" (P. 5). This approach allows a rethinking of the cultural space inside and outside of the country: "The division into capital and provincial space in Russian culture creates an international parallel to the transnational model of Russia versus...