Charlottengrad

Russian culture in Weimar Berlin

Roman Utkin (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

256 Seiten

2023 | 1. Auflage
University of Wisconsin Press (Verlag)
978-0-299-34440-5 (ISBN)

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As many as half a million Russians lived in Germany in the 1920s, most of them in Berlin, clustered in and around the Charlottenburg neighborhood to such a degree that it became known as “Charlottengrad.” Traditionally, the Russian ÉmigrÉ community has been understood as one of exiles aligned with Imperial Russia and hostile to the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet government that followed. However, Charlottengrad embodied a full range of personal and political positions vis-À-vis the Soviet project, from enthusiastic loyalty to questioning ambivalence and pessimistic alienation.

By closely examining the intellectual output of Charlottengrad, Roman Utkin explores how community members balanced their sense of Russianness with their position in a modern Western city charged with artistic, philosophical, and sexual freedom. He highlights how Russian authors abroad engaged with Weimar-era cultural energies while sustaining a distinctly Russian perspective on modernist expression, and follows queer Russian artists and writers who, with their German counterparts, charted a continuous evolution in political and cultural attitudes toward both the Weimar and Soviet states.

Utkin provides insight into the exile community in Berlin, which, following the collapse of the tsarist government, was one of the earliest to face and collectively process the peculiarly modern problem of statelessness. Charlottengrad analyzes the cultural praxis of “Russia Abroad” in a dynamic Berlin, investigating how these Russian ÉmigrÉs and exiles navigated what it meant to be Russian—culturally, politically, and institutionally—when the Russia they knew no longer existed.

Roman Utkin is an assistant professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies as well as feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Wesleyan University, specializing in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Russian culture, literature, and society.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Translation

Introduction

1. Unsentimental Journeys: Berlin as Trial Emigration
2. Guides to Berlin: Exiles, ÉmigrÉs, and the Left
3. Performing Exile: The Golden Cockerel at the Berlin State Opera
4. Nabokov, Berlin, and the Future of Russian Literature
5. Queering the Russian Diaspora

Conclusion

Appendix: The Russian Poets Club Meeting Minutes, Berlin, 1928
Notes
Bibliography
Index

“A groundbreaking book—an innovative, compelling, and important contribution to the study of Russian and Russophone cultural life during the interwar era. This is a bold and necessary corrective to narratives concerning global Russian culture in the postrevolutionary period.”
—Kevin M. F. Platt, University of Pennsylvania

Erscheinungsdatum	24.06.2023
Zusatzinfo	Illustrationen
Verlagsort	Wisconsin
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	272 g
Einbandart	gebunden
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-299-34440-1 / 0299344401
ISBN-13	978-0-299-34440-5 / 9780299344405
Zustand	Neuware