Abstracts
Russia on Edge: Reclaiming the Periphery in Contemporary Russian Culture
Interdisciplinary Workshop, 11-12 December 2009 (CRASSH, University of Cambridge)
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FU Berlin / Peter Szondi Institute
Voices from the Margins: Russian Bloggers from the Countryside
In his 1921 manifesto The Radio of the Future Russian poet Velimir Chlebnikov imagined a new technology uniting mankind and integrating every village into the spheres of cultural communication. His dream, one might suppose, has come true with the Internet, at least theoretically. The geographical gap in Internet usage though has in practice not yet been bridged, neither on a global scale nor within Russia. Thats why the IT president Dmitrij Medvedev keeps on promising cheap and high quality Internet access to all Russian citizens regardless of where they are living.
Meanwhile some Russian bloggers living at the countryside have already started to blog back into the metropolises often using mobile phones in order to connect (a sometimes complicated and always expensive practice). Among them is the renowned writer and illustrator Dmitrij Gorčev who shares impressions of his life in a village in Nevelsky rayon, Pskovskaya oblast with his LiveJournal friends.
How does the intensive media life look like seen from the periphery? How is the Internet conceptualized from within a life experience characterized by the transport of firewood with a horse carriage and a goat in the garden? On the basis of a case study of some Russian village bloggers I will investigate these questions with regard to the more general question of centre and periphery in Russian culture and literature.