Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation during Perestroika - Softcover

Ries, Nancy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801484162 ISBN 13: 9780801484162

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Soulful, theatrical, intense: Russian talk is notably full of existential musing and dark passion. However, despite the widespread appreciation of Russian talk, no one has analyzed it as a form of cultural performance. As one of the first Western ethnographers to undertake fieldwork in Moscow, Nancy Ries did just that. In this pioneering study, she shows how everyday conversation shapes Russian identity and culture.

Dire stories about poverty, hardship, and social decay recited constantly during perestroika served to fabricate a common worldview―conveying a sense of shared experience and destiny, and casting Russian society as an inescapable realm of absurdity and suffering. Ries agues that while these narratives aptly depicted the chaotic events of the time, they also comprised a kind of contemporary folklore, generic in their lamenting, portentous tones and their culturally poignant details.

The story of a grandmother who stands in line all day in order to bring home a precious kilo of sugar becomes a parable of feminine self-sacrifice and endurance. Sardonic narratives about frustrated communal apartment dwellers pouring hot pepper in their neighbor's soup pot challenge the myth of camaraderie and express the proverbial notion that revenge is sweeter for Russians than reconciliation.

This insightful ethnography suggests the enormous power that ordinary talk has, in any society, to shape social and political attitudes, and to produce distinctive cultural patterns.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy Ries is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Peace Studies and Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Colgate University.

Reviews

In 1989-90, anthropologist Ries (Colgate Univ.) studied the conversations of educated urban Russians and identified recurrent forms of speech, including the litany, the lament, the first-person trickster narrative, and "tales of heroic shopping." Ries skillfully draws connections among these speech forms and the construction of personal and national identity, traditional Russian folklore genres, and contemporary political and media discourse. She argues that while these enduring narrative forms enabled Russians to adapt psychologically to hardship and oppression, they may have prevented people from taking effective action during the relatively liberated era of perestroika. Unfortunately, this interesting interdisciplinary study is often rambling and poorly organized; for example, the author's synopsis of recent Russian history and her presentation of perestroika as a "macro-scale rite of passage" belong in the introduction rather than the conclusion. For specialists in Russian studies, folklore, and linguistic anthropology.?Judy Sierra, Eugene, Ore.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801484162
• ISBN 13: 9780801484162
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240