Annual conference of the “New Literary Observer” magazine has become an important event for the cultural community. The Bannye (Bath House) Readings – named after the Banny Pereulok (Bath House Lane) where the editorial office of the magazine has once been situated – attract the leading representatives of liberal arts from both Russia and abroad.

The 15^th anniversary conference of the magazine is dedicated to the study of recent past. The last 15 years are characterized by new experience of perception of history, when speeding-up of historic process has changed the correspondence of the past and the present. The other reason why the subject has been chosen is large-scale and forced “re-signification” of the whole period of post-Soviet transformation in today’s Russia.

How does recent past taken as an object influence traditional research techniques and disciplinary prospects? What makes some trends and events of the last decades move to the periphery of the cultural memory or even obliterate and why? In what way does “hot” historic memory transfer into “cold” one, for example, how has the experience of rethink in 1990s influenced on today’s perception of Soviet epoch and events of the last century on the whole? These and many other questions will be discussed by the participants of the conference of the “NLO” magazine – outstanding philologists, sociologists, philosophers, historians – Hans Ulrich Humbrecht, Kevin Platt, João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Loran Teveno, Andrey Zorin, Konstantin Bogdanov, Natalia Arlauskayte, Yavgeny Senkin, etc. among them.

On March 30 at 11.30 the Bath House Readings will be opened by the presentation of special number of the “New Literary Observer” magazine – “Studying recent history: the 1990^th”. The participants of the presentation are editor-in-chief of the “NLO” magazine Irina Prohorova, historian Dmitry Furman, journalist Sergey Buntman etc.

History of the Future is the provocative title given by the seventeenth-century Jesuit António Vieira to one of his books. If the course of historical events is determined by Providence, then the writing of history should not be a judicious account of things past but an assertive statement of things to come. History would always be prefiguration. In other words, the present is but the promise of a full presence in another temporality.

In this talk, I will draw on contemporary history in order to suggest that an unexpected and bellicose writing of the “history of the future” might have produced a paradoxical media constellation, which needs to be reassessed

The first war against Iraq, the so-called Gulf War, produced a radical rupture with traditional notions of journalistic coverage. Instead of reporting facts which had already happened (even if immediately before the report), the United Nation’s ultimatum (which set January 15, 1991, as the deadline for a peaceful withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait or the war would inevitably start) created a new frame for “the history of the future.” Through satellite transmission, we prepared ourselves on 18 January 1991 to witnessing “beforehand” a firsthand historical event. It was therefore not the “end of history” but the commencement of a novel perception of time through media coverage; after all, history had an appropriate time and place to begin afresh.

Is it not true that the popularity of Cables News Network (CNN), especially in its initial years, depended upon an acute understanding of a new media constellation, if not engendered, certainly fostered by this historical episode? According to CNN’s golden rule all coverage would have to be alive in order to be credible. The simultaneity between the actual happening of a fact and its immediate transmission creates an unheard-of circumstance.

In this talk, I want to establish a critical parallel between Clifford Geertz’s analysis of the anthropologist’s work and this idea of 24-hour television news coverage. According to Geertz the legitimacy of the field work depends on two intertwined movements. First of all, in order to acquire a firsthand knowledge of another culture, the anthropologist has to travel outside his culture– this constitutes the moment of “being there.” The second phase of the field work supposes a return of the anthropologist to his own culture – this constitutes the moment of “being here.” It is as if in contemporary media coverage there is no time for “being here,” it is only “being there” that matters.

Is it not equally true that the worldwide spreading of the so-called “reality shows” shares the same fascination with the immediacy of witnessing a fact while it is “actually” taking place? I will also argue that contemporary cinema has dealt with this problem more keenly than most academics. Indeed, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s acclaimed Babel is a poignant reflection on the overlapping of different historical temporalities brought to an axis of simultaneity through new technologies of communication, which have given to the media an unprecedented power of providing unmediated images.

Finally, this circumstance engenders a paradox, which defines contemporary culture: the media becomes the source of an unmediated aesthetic experience, charged with political and ideological implications. Under this light, we need to ask new questions. Could we say that our problem is no longer providing a venue for experiencing the sheer strength of the present, seen as unmediated presence, but rather envisioning a new type of mediation, which nuances the overwhelming immediacy of contemporary media?

 

 

So it turns out that the “end of the Cold War” was not really the “end of history.” This does not mean, however, that “nothing has changed” about History. What has not changed is that, in each present, we are confronted with the leftovers from the past -- both intellectual and material. What has changed dramatically are the modalities under which this confrontation takes place. Independently of political events, the “Historicist paradigm” imploded during the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, transforming the “imperceptibly short presents” to which we had become accustomed, into an “ever-broadening present of simultaneities.” Is the impression true that, in this ever-broadening present, everything becomes contemporary? And what would the modalities be with which we could deal with the broadly remaining past in the widening present? Three concepts and topologies to be tested in this context will be “Catharsis,” “Epiphany,” and (above all) “redemption.”*

 

 [The French "déception" means unfulfilled expectations and, in older literary uses, cheat which the English term means exclusively].

In my contribution, I will consider the scenario of rewriting some initial History of "aid & liberation" to a new History of "resistance & sovereignty", in the relation between a national community and some foreign referent. The scenario involves both déception with regards to unfulfilled hopes and benefits which were expected from being open to the foreign referent, and the bitter suspicion of some deception which results in rejecting this foreign element as an alien threat.

I will relate what we can observe at the level of the nation History (or Histories in this case of rewriting it), and stories collected from social sciences bi-national research programs which compare the building of the community in the two countries. I will suggest a parallel between two experiences: The French-US scenario of déception / deception and a first comparative research program involving social scientists from both countries; The Russian-West comparable scenario and a second comparative Russian-French research program I have also been co-responsible of.

Since these programs have been deliberately designed to provide a reflexive and symmetrical view of differences between the grammars of the community, they provide resources for rewriting another History. Learning from the understanding of misconceptions or mismatched conceptions of different grammars of the community, one may avoid both the submissive following of a foreign model and the reactive or reactionary antagonism against it. Reflexivity about the plurality of grammars and the need to build compromises between them leads to a more sustainable conception of one\'s proper community in relation to others.

 

 

Obviously there are two criteria according to which one can distinguish “history of the latest days” on the one hand from remote history or history in its traditional meaning, and on the other hand from the immediately experienced present. That is, first, feeling of completeness or incompletes of the historic cycle and, second, in many respects depending on the feeling historian’s personal memory and experience structure. A text can be defined as concerning the events of “history of the latest days” if it reconstructs the events as relating to the historic cycle, isomorphic time of its own creation where the author has already changed from biographical to conditional and “has been moved to the past”. Certainly the both cases depend not on objective chronological remoteness of the events but on discourse strategy. Compare: apocryphal statement of Chjou Anlay on historical significance of the Great French Revolution and suggested by J. H. Meade interpretation of I to Me conversion which can be illustrated by diary techniques of self-estrangement. The example of such strategy predicting many historiographic works of the end of the 20^th century is unfinished novel by Tolstoy “The Decembrists” which has become the prototype of “War and Peace” and one of the first, at least in Russian historic consciousness, reflective experience of dealing with “history of the latest days”.

From this point of view one can try to analyze innovative techniques of historic and individual experience reflexion which can be found in two books by H. U. Humbrecht published by NLO.

“1926” shows techniques of ousting of any historic time out of continuing cycle (mutatis mutandis, Heraclites’ thesis of the author about impossibility of re-experiencing of the 1926th is indisputable with respect to any passed year, day or hour). At the same time “Production of Presence” aims at elimination of self-objectification, and fixation in the discourse of widening present continuous experience. Here past is remote, “museum” on the one hand and due to immediate perception on the other hand. It seems that extremely striking vicinity of these books points to utopian character of the ideal non-narrative history.

 

In 1950s-1980s the Russian Orthodox Church led double life. On the one hand it looked like large-scale religious organization obeying the state authorities, on the other hand vast majority of people involved in its work (priests and active parishioners) harboured a grudge against ruling regime and Soviet reality on the whole. This duality provides source basis accessible to contemporary researchers.

History of the Russian Orthodox Church of recent time can be found not only in archives mostly displaying the part of the church activity having been under control of the state but also in memoirs represented by several types of texts. In spite of great difference between the forms the material is given, the content has much in common and is constructed according to one and the same “canon” worked out during the last 15 years.

This “canon” allows to concern the Church to be a “sacrifice” of authorities, emphasizes outstanding merits (as a rule in sphere of mystics) of the memorialist himself or of the person to whom the memoirs are devoted. At the same time the memoirs exclude themes related to administrative structure, everyday parish and diocesan activity, conflict-free relationships with secular community. It is explained by the fact that while presenting itself as a sacrifice the Church lobbies different compensations from state and society quite successfully. The other reason is that vast majority of the episcopacy and clergy of the late-Soviet period adapted to Soviet system and now it is both unpleasant and unfovourable.

 

Ginzburg’s “notes” and essays are patterned after two texts of the authors whose representation of recent history is hot on the trail. The first one is “Memoirs” by Saint-Simon – chronicles of the last years of reign of Louis XIV and period of Regency based on the “Diaries” of Dangeau. The second book is “Maxims” by La Rochefoucauld – generalized extracts taken from experience of political life at court represented in the “Memoirs”. Ginzburg’s texts thoroughly edited in 1960s-1980s are diaries and notes made in 1029s-1950s. Rewriting is the main principle of the book. On the one hand this principle is heritage of the epoch of combinatorics – montage and literature of fact which have been actual at the moment Ginsburg comes into literature. On the other hand the interest in the French moralists is provided by understanding of writing as rational description and generalization of social and psychological facts. While editing her notes for many years the formalists’ disciple depicts historic reality with all possible objectivity and analyticity. Her observations were highly popular during “perestroika” and afterwards – when numerous retrospective description of socialism life were created (novels, memoirs, films, publications of diaries and letters). But her retrospection of the utopia goes long back and is not based on the natural historic “instinct” of reconstruction of the events preceding recent shock. While looking back and rewriting her own notes of recent time Ginzburg chooses the way of generalization of historic experience that can be commensurable with forward phenomenological reflexion – from individual impressions to understanding of more and more general rules of experience of the epoch. In the end of 1920s she and her friends Boris Bukhshtab and Nina Gurfinkel has taken a great interest in exposition of Edmund Husserl’s philosophy from his disciple Gustav Shpet’s “Esthetic fragments”. So we see her version of history right in this fragment form resembling both laconic statements of French rationalists and “Literary Mixture” by P. A. Vyazemsky.

In this talk I will examine the technique of editing in details – in what way the text of retrospective history is constructed.

 

Today many researchers and commentators in Ukraine use the term “revolution” relating to 1991^st – perhaps which has become a commonplace. Action “Ukraine without Kuchma” in winter-spring of 2000-2001^st is defined as frustrated revolution. The events of November-December of 1004^th are called “orange revolution”, the term is included in schoolbooks. The conflicts in Rada between the “lefts” and the President’s “majority” on December 1999^th-February 2000^th were also called “velvet revolution” that soon was forgotten. So we can see 4 revolutions in 15 years.

An unbiased observer will ask in this respect a number of questions which I suggest for discussion: why are the events defined as “revolution”? Can one find in them any characteristics of revolution? What social groups can be interested in obtrusion the idea? In what way and by whom the myth is created? Are there discusiions on the problem or the suggested myths are given as ready forms out of court? What is the dynamics of appearing of the myths and their “installation” into social consciousness? Where is the border between “virtuality” and “reality”?

Here I will also analyze the existing now versions of the “orange revolution” and “post-revolutionary” syndromes.

 

In 1990s collapse of the Soviet Union and formation of the Russian Federation were realized through the prism of “revolutionary” conception of the historic process. It concerns the idea of historic succession according to which social experience of post-Soviet Russia is determined by its principal opposition to the Soviet period. In the light of the idea of instantaneous passage to fundamentally different historic period there were formulated post-Soviet political, social and esthetic values which relied on seemingly solid soil of the political coup. Yet in last 3-4 years this standard version of the historic narrative of recent time gave place to “new” ideas of continuity of historic processes of the end of 1980s-beginning of the 1990s. The ideas like that are shared both by people who reconstruct political and historic significance of the Soviet era as an element of genealogy of contemporary regime and by people who see the roots of today’s abuse in incomplete post-Soviet Russia’s renunciation of Soviet one. The talk analyses this revaluation of the historic present of the beginning of 1990s and the consequences of it for the contemporary political discourse and esthetics.

 

The talk deals with the trends and methods of conceptualization of social and political life in Russia of 1990s in contemporary publicism and professional historiography. Central point of the talk is discourse analysis of the texts which represent different ways of reconstruction of “recent history”. Comparison of publicistic works (“paper” journalism, informational-analytical programs of central TV channels) and professional reviews on up-to-date history of Russia reveals discourse commonness of two types of texts, principal dependence of views of political historiography on authorative-ideological directions of engaged publicistic works. Numerous hypercritical negative representations of Russian history of 1990s create a “new space of social memory” in mass social consciousness. The 1990s appear as the culmination of “discord”, “destruction” of national values and foundations. At the tame time these years are understood as historic point of overcoming of “ catastrophic” condition of Russian state and society, and beginning of “accumulating energy” for passage to the “positive present”.

 

The metaphorical repertory for Europe is actualizing in the new Russian poetry under the influence of political situation having been changing till the latest time. The report considers how development of “European” metaphors are related to writing strategies; wider – how poetical system corresponds with narrativized/non-narrativized course of history.

 

The first part of the report is the description of genre peculiarities of a contemporary’s biography which has come to Russia in the 2^nd half of the 18^th century, and fixation of changes it has had in the following epochs. According to the Russian tradition the appearance of a contemporary’s biography coincides as a rule with substantial changes in social life, in the press and book market, liberalization of the society and revival of public discussion. Debates on the published biographies are always debates concerning justification and legitimation of this or that history of life. Denoting this genre as polyfunctional and synthetic practice (history, literature, document) I will consider biographical narratives as mechanism activating “critical capacity” of a person realizing himself as a member of society. In the second part of the report I will concern the biographies written in 1990s and 2000s and point to some peculiarities of contemporary biographism.

 

“History of conceptions” as a research program appeared in the context of “linguistic turning-point” in science and philosophy of the 2^nd half of the 20^th century from reflexion on the fact that cultural experience unavoidably has its linguistic expression. Thereby the main notions of the language acquiring conceptual cut and content filling in philosophical discourse can be concerned both as expressions of cultural experience in its historic dynamics and as factors giving the experience a definite direction.

Concepts of personality are “key” for the new-European cultural areal in the mentioned respect: according to R. Koselleck they play the role of “indicators” of historic transformation and “factors” organizing the cultural experience. As far as in Russian intellectual history these concepts are concerned as key too with characteristic of European philosophical “ideologems” tendency to politicization and ideologization (such concepts as “democracy”, “property” or “state”), it can be regarded as a part of all-European history of notions.

Formation and development of the concepts of personality in Russian thought reveals tendencies though related to European history of these notions but characterized with different thematic preferences and semantic accents. In history of Russian language the concepts of person, subject and I appear relatively late: they have been widely spread only in 30-40s of the 19^th century mostly due to reception of German philosophy in Russian publicism.

Historical-cultural background of these semantic processes is perception and development of European romanticism in Russia. Romantic “individuality” and its relationships with nature and history has become a key plot of philosophical and literary-publicistic projects of infant intellectual community since 30s of the 19^th century. Since then the theme of “creative personality” especially opposed to “Philistinism” has become a symbol of self-identification of Russian intellectuals. Discourse of “personality” (opposed to society or on the contrary dissolved in it) forms rigid cognitive and value frame with the help of which the intellectuals formulate their understanding of their place in society right up to the time of “perestroika”.

In the post-Soviet period we can see the transformation of paradigm of “creative individuality”. It is replaced by the paradigm of “identity” in its basic features opposite to the understanding of a personality as a “creative individual”.

 

“Breaking” as a specific form of festive pastime of Pskov peasants in the 20^th century, liveliness of traditions in the epoch of Pskov independence during Moscow occupation. Ritual, music, traditional ceremony of jumping into breeches from an oak and its influence on combat training of Pskov division of air-landing troops. Destructive influence of Soviet power on traditions of Pskov “breaking”. Development of it into today’s “fooling”, its peculiarities and realization (the ritual of fight at bath bars and dance pavilions.