Conspiracy Culture: Post-Soviet Paranoia and the Russian Imagination

Contemporary Russia stands apart as one of the most prolific generators of conspiracy theories and paranoid rhetoric. Conspiracy Culture traces the roots of the phenomenon within the sphere of culture and history, examining the long arc of Russian paranoia from the present moment back to earlier nineteenth-century sources, such as Dostoevsky’s anti-nihilist novel Demons.

Conspiracy Culture examines the use of conspiracy tropes by contemporary Russian authors and filmmakers including the pos...