In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Mikhail Epstein Postmodemism, Communism, and Sots-Art Translated from the Russian by John Meredig IN 1991, the same year in which Soviet communism died, a reborn post-Soviet literature was immediately christened in the baptismal font ofa new "ism." In the spring of 1991, a major conference on postmodernism was held at the Literary Institute in Moscow, after which this "ism" began its triumphant march across the country-everything from this movement was declared interesting and important, while everything else was immediately relegated to the archives. Already in early 1992, Viacheslav Kuritsyn noted in Novyi mir that postmodernism had become the sole fact of life in the literary process. And although the demise ofcommunism and the arrival ofpostmodernism in Russia seemed to coincide only by chance, from the very beginning there appeared a "similarity ofopposites," a kind ofcontinuityin the very means of controlling the public consciousness. Mark Lipovetsky points out the extent ofRussian postmodernist claims to ideological and aesthetic rule: "Indeed, postmodernism does not claim to be just one more movement in a pluralistic landscape-it insists on its own dominance in all ofculture" (193). And while it is well known that the spirit ofpostmodernism is full pluralismthe diktat of minorities, the inherent value of diversity-postmodernism itself appears as a sort of all-encompassing system that legitimizes this plurality. Perhaps no other "ism" has arisen since the time of socialist realism that has so captured the attention and normative aims ofthe artistic community . The appearance of this new concept has spawned a !fiultitude of tailormade works and has brought about the belated recognition ofearlier works as having foretold its appearance. The role ofthe "founder" ofpostmodernismthe role that Maxim Gorky filled for socialist realism with his novel Mother [Maf]-is ascribed variously to Vladimir Nabokovwith The Gift [Dar], Mikhail Bulgakov with The Master and Margarita [Master i Margarita], Andrei Bitov with Pushkin House [Pushkinskii dom], and Venedikt Erofeev with his story "Moscow-Petushki" ["Moskva-Petushki"]. Here too the pluralism is apparent-preoccupied, however, with the creation of its universal canon. It seems to me that the similarity between postmodernism and communism as programmatic methods of influencing public consciousness is not at all coincidental. In Russia, the similarity represents two phases in the real3 Mikhail Epstein ization of the same intellectual/aesthetic project. Whereas communism proclaimed the coming triumph of ideas that would transform reality, postmodernism reveals the absence of any reality other than the reality of ideas themselves (signs, images, names). And although postmodernism has been a topic ofdiscussion in the West since the early 1970s and in Russia only since the early 1990s, it is in essence, like many such movements nominally adopted from the West, a deeply Russian phenomenon. One may even maintain that Russia is the birthplace of postmodernism, and the time has finally come to acknowledge this surprising fact. Although postmodernist doctrines came to Russia from the West, primarily from France and the United States, the very readiness of Russian minds to immediately multiply and apply these doctrines to their native culture and make them a banner ofspiritual renewal testifies to a certain innateness of postmodernism on Russian soil. If a communist mentality existed in Russia before Marx, then is it not possible that a postmodern mentality existed long before Derrida and Baudrillard? The quick and easy change from the communist project to the postmodem project in itself indicates that they might have something in common . This is confirmed on the one hand by the predilection of the Russian practitioners of postmodernism-writers and artists-for sots-art, for communist imagery and socialist-realist ideolOgical cliches. On the other hand, it is confirmed by the transparent leftist political leanings of all the leading Western postmodernist theorists. Is not postmodernism, to use a vivid Leninesque expression, the highest and final stage of communism? In fact, postmodernism has inherited much from the communist project , first and foremost that which relates to the end of modernity, to the exhaustion of such modem categories as truth, reality, individuality, authorship , time, and history. In the first part ofthis essay, I will examine the general features of postmodernism that make it comparable to Soviet communism. In the second part, I will examine the two basic stages in the development of communism into postmodernism: socialist realism and sots-art. POSTMODERNISM AND COMMUNISM Discussed below are a series ofpostmodern parameters ofcommunism, which at the same time could be described as the communist elements of postmodernism , at least in the interpretation of postmodernism shared by...

Share