1st Edition

Performing Russia Folk Revival and Russian Identity

By Laura Olson Copyright 2004
    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book examines folk music and dance revival movements in Russia, exploring why this folk culture has come to represent Russia, how it has been approached and produced, and why memory and tradition, in these particular forms, have taken on particular significance in different periods. Above all it shows how folk "tradition" in Russia is an artificial cultural construct, which is periodically reinvented, and it demonstrates in particular how the "folk revival" has played a key role in strengthening Russian national consciousness in the post-Soviet period.

    Introduction 1. The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music in Pre-Revolutionary Russia 2. A Unified National Style: Folklore Performance in the Soviet Context 3. The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement 4. Revival and Identity after Socialism 5. Power and Ritual: Russian Nationalism and Representations of the Folk, Orthodoxy, Imperial Russia and the Cossackry 6. Performing Masculinity: Cossack Myth and Reality in Post-Soviet Revival Movements 7. The Village Revives 8. Making Memory: How Urban Intellectuals Re-invent Russian Village Traditions

    Biography

    Laura J. Olson is Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of Colarado, Boulder. She has been researching and performing Slavic folk music since 1987.