This thesis analyzes Viktor Pelevin's Chapaev i Pustota (1996) from the perspective of its (extra-)literary context, and status as a threshold text on various levels. It argues that through the expression of satire, parody, and nostalgia, Pelevin's novel exemplifies and transcends the threshold between the Soviet and post-Soviet literary narrative. Against the background of various comparison texts, by such precursors and contemporaries as Kaledin, Makanin, Petrushevskaia, P'ietsukh, Sorokin and Tolstaia, Pelevin's novel is shown both to conform with and diverge from the (post-)glasnost' literary text. Common features on the levels of theme and motif are identified, in order to establish both the notion of literary threshold, and a link to its extra-literary counterpart, in keeping with the crises of national transition from late- to post-Soviet status. Using Bakhtinian theory as a point of departure, the notion of threshold is identified on various levels of Pelevin's text, including theme, motif, and bifurcated structure in the form of dual time frames and plotlines. Through satire, Pelevin is shown to reconcile the notion of threshold as change, with that of frozen transition. / Overtly parodic, Chapaev i Pustota manipulates three principal constructs of Socialist Realism: the positive hero, the mentor/disciple relationship, and the spontaneity/consciousness dialectic. The thesis traces the role and development of these constructs in the four (un-)official versions of the so-called 'Chapaev myth' before examining Pelevin's own manipulation of the constructs against three distinct models of parody by Gary Saul Morson, Linda Hutcheon, and the Russian Formalists. / As an aesthetic manifestation of the extra-literary threshold state, the expression of nostalgia is examined in various texts of the (post-)glasnost' period. Pelevin's parody and satire of nostalgic expression attests to the evolution in his novel from Socialist Realism to sots-art, and beyond.

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Notadamente um dos escritores russos mais bem-sucedidos na decada de 1990, Victor Pelevin se caracteriza por uma obra pouco convencional no que concerne a construção de personagens e mundos em que elas habitam. A transicão poltica e cultural ocorrida após a queda do governo soviético, em 1991, e um dos fatores que influenciam as obras de grande parte dos autores pós-modernos na Rússia; entretanto, o sucesso de Pelevin se deve também as peculiaridades de sua escrita que, em vez de apenas promover críticas a sociedade que o precedeu, também inclui reflexões filosóficas e metafisicas por vezes consideradas pretensiosas demais pela critica que abordam essa transição. Em A metralhadora de argila, romance de 1996, o autor remonta as batalhas da Guerra Civil Russa, em 1919, colocando-as como um mundo paralelo a uma instituição psiquiátrica em 1991. O interesse, então, e estudar o processo de recriação que Pelevin faz da realidade pré-soviética e como ele a compara ao periodo pos-sovietico, apontando aspectos no romance que identifiquem a nocao de identidade e a mudanca a que este conceito esta sujeito apos as transformacoes sociais nesses periodos da historia recente da Russia. / One of the most renowned Russian writers of the 1990s, Viktor Pelevi distinguishes himself for the construction of characters and worlds in which they inhabit. The political and cultural transition after the end of the Soviet government, in 1991, is one of the factors that have an effect on most of the literary works from Post-Modern authors in Russia; although, Pelevin\'s success as well is due to singularities in his writing, which instead of only criticise the Soviet society before him, also includes philosophical and metaphysical thoughts sometimes viewed as too pretentious by the critics that discuss the transition. In The clay machine-gun, a 1996 novel, Pelevin remembers the battles of the Russian Civil War, in 1919, putting them as a parallel world within a madhouse in 1991. So, the interest in this study is to understand Pelevin\'s recreation of the Pre-Soviet reality and how he compares it to the Post- Soviet period, highlighting elements on the novel that trace the notion of identity and the adjustment it takes after the social transformation in these both recente Russian times.

Notadamente um dos escritores russos mais bem-sucedidos na decada de 1990, Victor Pelevin se caracteriza por uma obra pouco convencional no que concerne a construção de personagens e mundos em que elas habitam. A transicão poltica e cultural ocorrida após a queda do governo soviético, em 1991, e um dos fatores que influenciam as obras de grande parte dos autores pós-modernos na Rússia; entretanto, o sucesso de Pelevin se deve também as peculiaridades de sua escrita que, em vez de apenas promover críticas a sociedade que o precedeu, também inclui reflexões filosóficas e metafisicas por vezes consideradas pretensiosas demais pela critica que abordam essa transição. Em A metralhadora de argila, romance de 1996, o autor remonta as batalhas da Guerra Civil Russa, em 1919, colocando-as como um mundo paralelo a uma instituição psiquiátrica em 1991. O interesse, então, e estudar o processo de recriação que Pelevin faz da realidade pré-soviética e como ele a compara ao periodo pos-sovietico, apontando aspectos no romance que identifiquem a nocao de identidade e a mudanca a que este conceito esta sujeito apos as transformacoes sociais nesses periodos da historia recente da Russia. / One of the most renowned Russian writers of the 1990s, Viktor Pelevi distinguishes himself for the construction of characters and worlds in which they inhabit. The political and cultural transition after the end of the Soviet government, in 1991, is one of the factors that have an effect on most of the literary works from Post-Modern authors in Russia; although, Pelevin\'s success as well is due to singularities in his writing, which instead of only criticise the Soviet society before him, also includes philosophical and metaphysical thoughts sometimes viewed as too pretentious by the critics that discuss the transition. In The clay machine-gun, a 1996 novel, Pelevin remembers the battles of the Russian Civil War, in 1919, putting them as a parallel world within a madhouse in 1991. So, the interest in this study is to understand Pelevin\'s recreation of the Pre-Soviet reality and how he compares it to the Post- Soviet period, highlighting elements on the novel that trace the notion of identity and the adjustment it takes after the social transformation in these both recente Russian times.

The use and evolution of socialist realism, in both Stalinist times (Polevoi- A Story About a Real Man) and in post-soviet reflections (Pelevin- Omon Ra).

This thesis examines the applicability of the postmodern theories of consumerism and simulacra to the post-Soviet Russian context by undertaking a case study of Viktor Pelevin's novel Generation "Π". In today's environment of economic globalisation and its accompanying global culture, Western theories concerning the postmodern condition have attempted to explain social dynamics in regions outside of their native context. This thesis seeks to contribute to the debate regarding the global applicability of the postmodem theoretical models by applying the perspectives of Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard to post-Soviet Russian cultural material. Such an analysis will help offer an indication as to whether Russia is merely a regional variant of a larger Western-oriented social paradigm, or a society and culture seeking to follow its own distinctive path of development. Generation "Π" portrays Russia in terms of its post-Soviet experiences of globalisation and media simulation. This novel engages the theories of the postmodern and their application into the post-Soviet Russian context and offers an effective depiction of Russian culture in terms of its similarities and differences to the West. In addition, Pelevin's disenchantment with the cultural dominants within post-Soviet Russia and global culture in general are strongly expressed. This thesis argues that while Pelevin's engagement with, the totality of post-Soviet consumerism and media simulation supports the applicability of many of the discussed theoretical concepts to the post-Soviet context, his work also highlights the distinctiveness of the postmodern cultural condition in Russia. This distinctiveness is not only a result of Russia's transition to the market economy but also stems from Russia's literary quest for an organic culture.

This thesis examines the concepts of textual order and chaos, and how Relevance Theory can be used to translate texts that do not adhere to conventional textual practices. Relevance Theory operates on the basis of presumed order in communication. Applying it to disordered communicative acts provides an opportunity and vocabulary to describe how communication can break down, and the consequences this can have for translation. This breakdown of order, which I am terming a ‘chaos principle’, will be examined through the lens of a Russian-language short story called “Lunokhod”, a story in which textual order, as described by Relevance Theory, breaks down. In this thesis, I first lay out several translation challenges presented by my corpus, discuss each with reference to Relevance Theory, and examine the implications for translation through sample translation segments. This deconstruction section argues that conventional translation methods fail to properly address the challenges of my corpus. Next comes a reconstruction section, in which I develop a theoretical framework for my translation that has roots in Relevance Theory but that frees the translation from the constraints imposed by an ordered view of communication. Finally, I present the translation itself.

The aim of this dissertation is to study the evolution of the Russian anti-utopian literary genre in the new post-Soviet environment in the wake of the defunct Soviet socialist utopia. The genre has gained a renewed importance during the 2000s, and has been used variously as a means of dealing satirically with the Soviet past, of understanding the present, and of pondering possible courses into the future for the Russian Federation. A guiding question in this study is: What makes us recognize a novel as anti-utopian at a time when the idea of utopia may appear obsolete, when the hegemony of nation states has been challenged for several decades, and when art has been drawn towards the aesthetics of hybridity? The main part of the dissertation is comprised of detailed analyses of three novels: The Slynx (Kys', 2001) by Tatyana Tolstaya; Homo Zapiens/Babylon (Generation ‘P’, 1999) by Viktor Pelevin; and Ice Trilogy (Ledianaia Trilogiia, 2002−2005) by Vladimir Sorokin. The further development of the genre is subsequently discussed on the basis of seven novels published in the past decade. A main argument in the dissertation is that the genre has been modified in ways which can be seen as a response to social and political changes on a global scale. The waning power of the nation state, in particular, and its broken monopoly as the bearer of social projects marks a new context, which is not shared by the classic works of the genre. Analysis of this evolution in post-Soviet anti-utopian novels draws on sociological as well as literary studies. The dissertation shows how the analysed novels use the possibilities of the genre to problematize various forms of societal discourse, and how these discourses work as mutations of utopia. Prominent among these are historical discourses, which reflect the increasing importance of historical narratives in public political debates in the Russian Federation.

ix, 67 p. / For centuries, Russian writers have stressed the important role the Caucasus played in the Russian Empire. In the last few decades, much attention has been directed at the Caucasians in literary works and movies as a result of the two Chechen wars. This thesis addresses the evolution of the Caucasian theme in Russian literature beginning from the 18th century with a focus on the contemporary representation of the peoples of Caucasus, mainly Chechens, in three works: a Soviet-era movie by Leonid Gaidai, <italic>Kidnapping, Caucasian Style</italic> (1966); Vladimir Makanin's story, <italic>Captive of the Caucasus</italic> (1994) and Viktor Pelevin's story, <italic>Papakhi na bashniakh</italic> (1995). The central research question is to what degree contemporary authors have transformed the image of the Caucasians compared to the Romantic period. Of particular interest is the issue of Russia's self-representation in these works. / Committee in charge: Dr. Susanna Soojung Lim, Chairperson; Dr. Katya Hokanson, Member

This thesis offers a thematic analysis of Victor Pelevin’s Generation ”П” and Empire V. The objective is to determine which themes can be regarded as central when the novels are compared to one another, and how these themes function in the two novels. This analysis shows that in Generation ”П” and Empire V, Pelevin constructs two overarching, parallel myths – the myth of Babylon and the myth of the Word, building a narrative that is solidly anchored in contemporary discourse. The study concludes that these myths are not built to serve as narrative explanations of, or answers to, the issues explored in the novels. Instead, the myths serve as vehicles for an open-ended, exploratory process, which might never be finally concluded. In contrast to previous research, this study contends that the construction of these myths may be the novels’ primary purpose and that through these myths the novels present the reader with a fictional framework, through which to regard the real world.