Chronicles in Stone: Preservation, Patriotism, and Identity in Northwest Russia

by Victoria Donovan

Overview

Chronicles in Stone is a study of the powerful and pervasive myth of the Russian Northwest, its role in forming Soviet and Russian identities, and its impact on local communities. Combining detailed archival research, participant observation and oral history work, it explores the transformation of three northwestern Russian towns from provincial backwaters into the symbolic homelands of the Soviet and Russian nations.

The book's central argument is that the Soviet state exploited the cultural heritage of the Northwest to craft patriotic narratives of the people's genius, heroism and strength that could bind the nation together after 1945. Through sustained engagement with local voices, it reveals the ways these narratives were internalized, revised, and resisted by the communities living in the region.

Donovan provides an alternative lens through which to view the rise of Russian patriotic consciousness in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, adding a valuable regional dimension to our knowledge of Russian nation building and identity politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501747885
Publisher:	Northern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2019
Series:	NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	246
File size:	8 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Victoria Donovan is a Senior Lecturer in Russian and Director of the Centre for Russian, Soviet, Central and East European Studies at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of research articles in Antropologicheskii forum, Slavic Review, Slavonica and Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. She is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award holder.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Phoenixes from the Ashes: Postwar Reconstruction as a Patriotic Duty
2. Zapovedniks or Tourist Resorts? Marketing Heritage to National Audiences
3. Landscapes of Living History: Folk Architecture in the National Imaginary
4. Burnt-Out Fairy Tales: Preservation as a Metaphor for Loss After Socialism
5. Guardians of Our Heritage: Rebranding the Northwest in the Putin Era
6. "Every Centimeter of this Ground is History": Heritage, Narrative, and Identity
Conclusion
Appendix
Selected Bibliography
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Karl D. Qualls

This study is highly original, timely, and important. The Putin Administration has used history selectively to create new national narratives and forge patriotic unity. Donovan shows that this has been a process with a history of its own.

Edith W. Clowes

What makes this study so valuable is that it combines a number of methodologies in fruitful ways—ethnography, oral history, architectural history, and cultural studies/ cultural anthropology. With these tools Victoria Donovan has managed to answer difficult questions, particularly about the Soviet roots of Russia's current wave of ultranationalism.

Editorial Reviews

Whereas studies of such topics underscore the rupture of 1991, Victoria Donovan's monograph emphasizes the continuities of the postwar Soviet society in the present. Her book is part of a recent trend in historical scholarship to investigate the protection, preservation, and restoration of cultural heritage in state socialism societies.

AB IMPERIO

[Donovan] skillfully weaves her rich and detailed discussion of local dynamics into the national context of the past and present.

Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society (JSPPS)

Victoria Donovan's book on preservation, architecture, and regional identity in Northwest Russia provides a useful corrective to works that have looked at the attempts to preserve medieval and folk Russian architecture as an episode mainly in Russian nationalism and chauvinism.

The Russian Review

Chronicles in Stone tells us a great deal, not only about patriotism and the imagined nation but also of how historical memory is curated by regional actors, as well as the struggles and deal-making between the political centre and the periphery.

Europe-Asia Studies

"What makes this study so valuable is that it combines a number of methodologies in fruitful ways—ethnography, oral history, architectural history, and cultural studies/ cultural anthropology. With these tools Victoria Donovan has managed to answer difficult questions, particularly about the Soviet roots of Russia's current wave of ultranationalism."

Edith W. Clowes

"This study is highly original, timely, and important. The Putin Administration has used history selectively to create new national narratives and forge patriotic unity. Donovan shows that this has been a process with a history of its own."

Karl D. Qualls