Abstract

The last two decades of Soviet Union's existence witnessed the emergence of new art forms, characterized by the critical investigation of totalitarian culture and of the mindset of its subjects, by the reappropriation and simulation of its language and the subversion of that language from within, by the breakdown of aesthetic taboos and the exploration of underrepresented, "marginal" experiences and identities. Although these changes occurred largely autonomously from the west, this new art shares many of the concerns expressed in the works of what is known in the west as postmodernist culture. The present dissertation suggests it is indeed productive to consider this new Soviet culture as a form of postmodernism. It offers a critical survey of theories of postmodernism, western as well as Soviet, and explores several key paradigms of the literature and other arts of the Soviet postmodern--from direct simulations of socialist realism to the creation of alternative realities and experiments with language. It also highlights the issues at stake in the representation and self-representation of women, sexual minorities and the "subaltern" nations