Ilya Budraitskis

Ideology, Politics and the Left in Post-Soviet Russia

Dissidents among Dissidents

Marta Dziewańska

Ekaterina Degotʹ

Ilʹi︠a︡ Budraĭtskis

Ilʹi͡a Budraĭtskis

By placing emerging artists in their political and social contexts, this book attempts to confront the activist scene that has arisen in the Russian art world during the past years. The recent explosion of protests in Russia is a symptom of a fundamental change in culture heralded by Vladimir Putin's second election (2007). While much of what is emerging is too new to be completely understood, this volume seeks to bring to light the important work of Russian artists today and to explicate the political environment that has given rise to such work. Post-Post-Soviet features both criticism by writers and scholars, as well as dialogues with artists which are preceded with an extensive timeline of artistic and sociopolitical context.

Art, Politics & Society in Russia at the Turn of the Decade

Post-post-Soviet?

How have the fall of the USSR and the long dominance of Putin reshaped Russian politics and culture? Ilya Budraitskis, one of the country's most prominent leftist political commentators, explores the strange fusion of free-market ideology and postmodern nationalism that now prevails in Russia, and describes the post-Soviet evolution of its left. He incisively describes the twists and contradictions of the Kremlin's geopolitical fantasies, which blend up-to-date references to "information wars" with nostalgic celebrations of the tsars of Muscovy. Despite the revival of aggressive Cold War rhetoric, he argues, the Putin regime takes its bearings not from any Soviet inheritance, but from reactionary thinkers such as the White émigré Ivan Ilyin. Budraitskis makes an invaluable contribution by reconstructing the forgotten history of the USSR's dissident left, mapping an entire alternative tradition of heterodox Marxist and socialist thought from Khrushchev's Thaw to Gorbachev's perestroika. Doubly outsiders, within an intelligentsia dominated by liberal humanists, they offer a potential way out of the impasse between condemnations of the entire Soviet era and blanket nostalgia for Communist Party rule--suggesting new paths for the left to explore.

Arseniy Zhilyaev

A fascinating project involving art, history, and literature. Pedagogical Poem is an interdisciplinary research program and exhibition conceived by Arseny Zhilyaev and Ilya Budraitskis and organized by the V-A-C Foundation. This unique project bridges history, contemporary art, and pedagogy. It originated from a series of over 100 lectures and seminars conducted by Russian and international artists, historians, and cultural theorists at the Presnya Historical Memorial Museum, Moscow, from March to November 2012. The project culminated in the exhibition The Archive of the Future Museum of History devised by a group of participants at the Pedagogical Poem series and presented at the museum as the outcome of the educational program and independent archival research work carried out there.

The Archive of the Future Museum of History

Pedagogical Poem

Ilya Budraitskis

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