SUMMARY: This article explores how the collapse of the Russian Empire and the subsequent rise of the Soviet state forced a generation of humanities scholars to reconstruct intellectual traditions on the "ruins" of old institutions. The author argues that a true decentering of knowledge requires more than just adding new names to history; it involves examining how scholars in diverse geographic hubs – such as Kharkiv, Tbilisi, and Prague – navigated the violent shift from imperial to postimperial reality. By analyzing the unique trajectories of figures like Nikolai Efimov, Aleksandr Beletsky (Oleksandr Biletskyi), Shalva Nutsubidze, and Roman Jakobson, the author demonstrates how personal displacement and political upheaval became the catalysts for theoretical innovation. The new universalist knowledge produced during this era emerged not from a linear progression, but from a radical re-stitching of cultural identity across fragmented national and linguistic borders. Specifically, the article identifies four typological models or scenarios for the production of new theoretical knowledge. The "nomadic" strategy represented by Efimov involved moving between various regional academic centers (such as Odesa, Smolensk, and Central Asia) rather than staying in Moscow or Petrograd. The "remade" or "turned inside out" strategy exemplified by Beletsky in Kharkiv manifested itself in reinterpreting classical cultural traditions within a new Soviet and Ukrainian national framework. The "autochthonous" strategy identified with the Georgian philosopher Nutsubidze focused on constructing a direct line of cultural continuity from early times to the Soviet national republic. Finally, the "unconventionally emigrant" strategy pursued by Jakobson utilized "extraterritoriality" to consolidate and transform academic traditions from abroad.
SUMMARY: This introduction to the book forum "The Power of Soft Matter" discusses Julia Vaingurt's book Soft Matter: The Poetics of Weakness in Late Soviet Socialism (2025), which identifies weakness as a defining aesthetic and ethical strategy in late Soviet nonofficial culture. By analyzing authors who intentionally cultivated vulnerability and failure, the book illustrates how these artists rejected the state's ideological obsession with heroism and power in favor of a shared, tentative humanity. The essay synthesizes diverse scholarly responses to the book in the forum, highlighting its role in reconceptualizing Russian cultural history through the lens of solidarity found in common fragility. Резюме: Это введение к книжному форуму "Сила мягкой материи", посвященному обсуждению книги Юлии Вайнгурт "Мягкая материя: Поэтика слабости в позднесоветском социализме" (2025), в которой поэтика слабости определяется как ключевая эстетическая и этическая стратегия позднесоветской неофициальной культуры. Анализируя творчество авторов, сознательно культивировавших уязвимость и неуспешность, книга показывает отторжение ими навязываемой государством идеологии героизма и силы ради всеобщей, пусть и зыбкой, человечности. Во введении предлагается обзор включенных в форум откликов на книгу и подчеркивается ее роль в переосмыслении истории русской культуры через призму солидарности, обретаемой на основе общей хрупкости.
SUMMARY: In this essay, Julia Vaingurt – the author of the book Soft Matter: The Poetics of Weakness in Late Soviet Socialism (2025) discussed in the forum "The Power of Soft Matter" – responds to the forum participants. Vaingurt clarifies her conceptualization of a poetics of weakness as a deliberate strategy and performance rather than an inherent condition or lack of ability. She argues that choosing weakness functions as an ethical intervention against dominant cultural rhetorics of mastery and force, offering instead a model grounded in receptivity, restraint, and self-questioning. By examining late Soviet literature and aesthetics, Vaingurt defends her framework against critiques regarding gender representation and potential victimization, asserting that abstaining from power creates space for alternative affiliations. Резюме: В этом эссе Юлия Вайнгурт – автор книги "Мягкая материя: Поэтика слабости в позднесоветском социализме" (2025) – отвечает участникам посвященного ей форума "Сила мягкой материи". Вайнгурт проясняют свою концепцию "поэтики слабости" как осознанной стратегии и перформативного акта, а не врожденного состояния или результата неспособности. Выбор слабости служит этическим поступком, направленным против доминирующей культуры господства и силы, предлагая взамен модель, основанную на восприимчивости, сдержанности и саморефлексии. Анализируя позднесоветскую литературу и эстетику, Вайнгурт защищает свою теоретическую рамку от критики, касающейся репрезентации гендера в книге и возможной консолидации политики виктимности, утверждая, что отказ от власти открывает пространство для формирования альтернативных форм солидарности.
SUMMARY: In this interview with the historian Akshya Saxena, she discusses her research on how a global, elite tongue – English – has been transformed into a local tool for democratic inclusion and political resistance in postcolonial India. Saxena challenges the traditional view of English as merely a colonial tool of dominance, arguing instead that it has become a relational and historical medium through which marginalized groups, such as caste-oppressed and minority communities, make political claims. By examining nonliterary sites like dictionaries, transliteration, and subtitling, she reveals how the language is lived and understood even by those who do not formally speak it. The interview highlights Saxena's effort to move beyond binary oppositions of global versus local, suggesting that the "vernacular" is not a fixed site of authenticity but a negotiated space where power is both exercised and contested. Резюме: В этом интервью историк Акшья Саксена рассказывает о своем исследовании трансформации глобального элитного языка – английского – в локальный инструмент демократической репрезентации и политического сопротивления в постколониальной Индии. Саксена оспаривает традиционное сведение роли английского исключительно к инструменту колониального господства. Напротив, она демонстрирует роль английского как динамичного, исторически обусловленного посредника, позволяющего маргинализированным группам – таким как угнетаемые касты и этнические меньшинства – предъявлять свои политические требования. Изучение таких "внелитературных" сфер, как словари, транслитерация и субтитры, позволяет понять, как этот язык проживается и осмысливается даже теми, кто формально на нем не говорит. Интервью подчеркивает стремление Саксены выйти за рамки бинарных оппозиций глобального и локального, представляя "вернакуляр" не фиксированной зоной аутентичности, а пространством переговоров, в ходе которых власть одновременно и реализуется, и оспаривается.
SUMMARY: The historian Akshya Saxena introduces her book Vernacular English: Reading the Anglophone in Postcolonial India (2022), which investigates how a global, elite tongue has been transformed into a local tool for democratic inclusion and political resistance. While typically viewed as a lingering shadow of British imperialism, the author argues that English functions as a vernacular force that bypasses formal literacy to provide marginalized groups, such as Dalits, a means to challenge caste oppression and state-sanctioned Hindu nationalism. Ultimately, the book redefines our understanding of linguistic power by showing how an external, colonial medium can be reclaimed as a symbol of liberation and a vital component of a nation's multilingual identity. Резюме: Историк Акшья Саксена представляет свою книгу "Вернакулярный английский: прочтение англофонии в постколониальной Индии" (2022), в которой исследуется, как глобальный элитный язык трансформировался в локальный инструмент демократической репрезентации и политического сопротивления. Традиционно считающийся пережитком британского империализма, по мнению автора, английский язык теперь выступает в роли местного разговорного языка (вернакуляра). Он предоставляет группам, маргинализированным официальной культурой – таким как далиты ("неприкасаемые") – средства для борьбы с кастовым угнетением и продвигаемым государством индуистским национализмом. В итоге книга переосмысливает наше понимание языкового господства, демонстрируя, как внешний, колониальный язык может быть переосмыслен и присвоен в качестве символа освобождения и важнейшего компонента многоязычной идентичности нации.
SUMMARY: This essay is a contribution to the book forum "The Power of Soft Matter" discussing Julia Vaingurt's book Soft Matter: The Poetics of Weakness in Late Soviet Socialism (2025), which identifies weakness as a defining aesthetic and ethical strategy in late Soviet nonofficial culture. By analyzing authors who intentionally cultivated vulnerability and failure, the book illustrates how these artists rejected the state's ideological obsession with heroism and power in favor of a shared, tentative humanity. However, this essay complicates Vaingurt's optimistic reading by arguing that weakness is ethically ambivalent, not only functioning as a strategic aesthetic choice but also potentially leading to alienation, despair, or even collaboration with the regime. Резюме: Это эссе является частью книжного форума "Сила мягкой материи", посвященному обсуждению книги Юлии Вайнгурт "Мягкая материя: Поэтика слабости в позднесоветском социализме" (2025), в которой поэтика слабости определяется как ключевая эстетическая и этическая стратегия позднесоветской неофициальной культуры. Анализируя творчество авторов, сознательно культивировавших уязвимость и неуспешность, книга показывает отторжение ими навязываемой государством идеологии героизма и силы ради всеобщей, пусть и зыбкой, человечности. Автор эссе усложняет оптимистическую интерпретацию Вайнгурт, показывая, что слабость этически амбивалентна. Помимо стратегического эстетического выбора, она может вести к отчуждению, отчаянию и даже коллаборационизму с властью.
SUMMARY: This text introduces a little-known 1925 article by the Ukrainian critic Feliks Iakubovs'kyi, written during the Soviet indigenization campaign and reflecting a contemporary perception of Viktor Shklovsky as embracing superficial stereotypes regarding Ukrainian culture. The introduction also traces Iakubovs'kyi's biographical arc – from navigating the asymmetry of power between Russian and Ukrainian literatures to his role in official state censorship during the 1930s and his eventual death during the Stalinist repressions in 1937. Резюме: Это введение к публикации малоизвестной статьи украинского критика Феликса Якубовского, написанной в 1925 г. – в разгар советской кампании коренизации – и отражающей восприятие Виктора Шкловского как автора, тиражирующего поверхностные стереотипы об украинской культуре. Введение также прослеживает жизненный путь Якубовского: от борьбы с асимметричными отношениями между русской и украинской литературами – к участию в работе органов государственной цензуры в 1930-х годах и, наконец, к гибели в ходе сталинских репрессий в 1937 году.
SUMMARY: This is the Ukrainian original of a little-known 1925 article by a Ukrainian literary critic, Feliks Iakubovs'kyi. In it, Iakubovs'kyi critiques "Khokhlology," a term he uses to describe a willful cultural misinterpretation of Ukrainian identity, pervasive among the Russian cultural elite. He argues that this misinterpretation manifests as great-power chauvinism, ranging from the "philistine" annoyance of moviegoers about Ukrainian subtitles to the distorted orthography and linguistic mockery found in the works of prominent Russian intellectuals like Viktor Shklovsky. Резюме: Это перепечатка малоизвестной статьи украинского критика Феликса Якубовского, написанной в 1925 г. Якубовский критикует "хохлологию" – так он называет распространенную среди российской культурной элиты практику намеренно карикатурного изображения украинской идентичности. Якубовский утверждает, что эта практика проявляется в форме великодержавного шовинизма, в диапазоне от обывательского раздражения кинозрителей по поводу украинских субтитров до искаженной орфографии и пародирования языка в произведениях таких видных российских интеллектуалов, как Виктор Шкловский.
This essay is a contribution to the forum discussing Julia Vaingurt's book Soft Matter: The Poetics of Weakness in Late SovietSocialism (2025), which identifies "weakness" as a defining aesthetic and ethical strategy in late Soviet nonofficial culture. By analyzing authors who intentionally cultivated vulnerability and failure, the book illustrates how these artists rejected the state's ideological obsession with heroism and power in favor of a shared, tentative humanity. The essay highlights the book's dual temporality, linking the stagnation era to the present-day invasion of Ukraine, noting how its protagonists radically differ on the issue of Russian aggression. The author argues that choosing to be "weak" allows for a more honest, compassionate engagement with the world that rejects the dangerous allure of totalizing power.
The article revisits the challenge of decentering the Eurocentric epistemic map of cultural theory. It argues that merely adding neglected figures to the existing canon is insufficient; rather, the very spatial logic used to conceptualize theory, authority, and cultural knowledge must be revised. This thesis is illustrated by the case of Nikolai Marr, whose work reflected a double positionality: rooted both in the Caucasus as an imperial periphery and the Russian imperial and Soviet institutions of scholarly authority. His Japhetic hypothesis began by challenging the Indo-European framework's marginalization of Caucasian materials, eventually evolving into the totalizing New Theory of Language. Rather than reducing this trajectory to biographical, nationalist, or ideological motives, the article situates Marr within the broader field of early twentieth-century epistemic reconfiguration. This shift was shaped by work at the boundaries of disciplines, cultures, and scholarly traditions, in both Western Europe and Europe's East. Marr's case reveals both the productive potential and the risks of such epistemic remapping: inclusion without transformation, compensatory counter-totalization, and withdrawal into particularism. The article concludes that to decenter theory, one must allow peripheral or hitherto excluded sites to do more than merely join the field; they must completely transform how the field itself is understood.
The article critiques recent scholarly efforts to decenter Russian Formalism, arguing that they often reinforce imperial hierarchies by treating "non-Russian" or "peripheral" - for example Ukrainian-contributions not included in the mainstream canon as mere "commentaries." Dubbing them "Russophone" conveys this hierarchy while overlooking the bilingual complexity and agency of 1920s Ukrainian intellectual currents. The author contends that the Ukrainian intellectual movement was not a peripheral and derivative commentary but a theoretically original site of production that addressed substantial methodological gaps within the Russian "center." This thesis is backed by the case of Aleksandr Beletsky (Oleksandr Biletskyi), who anticipated modern reception theory by shifting the analytical focus from the text's formal properties to the active role of the reader as an autonomous, historically situated cocreator of meaning. The article calls for a "defamiliarized" history of literary theory that recognizes the agency of non-Russian intellectual traditions as constitutive elements of a common transnational intellectual field rather than mere appendixes to a Moscow-centered narrative.
This essay is a contribution to the book forum "The Power of Soft Matter" discussing Julia Vaingurt's book Soft Matter: The Poetics of Weakness in Late Soviet Socialism (2025), which identifies apoetics of weakness as a defining aesthetic and ethical strategy in late Soviet nonofficial culture. By analyzing authors who intentionally cultivated vulnerability and failure, the book illustrates how these artists rejected the state's ideological obsession with heroism and power in favor of a shared, tentative humanity. The essay's author connects Vaingurt's analysis to her own research on marginalized writers who used naivete and insignificance as a subversive tool to navigate a society obsessed with overachievement and rigid masculinity. These creators often performed a double underground existence while remaining deeply rooted in the broader Russian literary tradition. While praising the book, the essay offers a critical intervention regarding the exclusion of women from these all-male intellectual circles, questioning whether a philosophy of weakness can be truly transformative if it continues to reinforce gendered hierarchies.
This article examines Viktor Shklovsky's 1945 Russian translation of Abai Kunanbaiev's Gaklia: The Book of Words to challenge the interpretation of Shkolvsky's formal method as a precursor to postcolonial theory. Through the lens of Orientalism and the socialist sublime, the article illustrates how Shklovksy's translation process, underpinned by the consistent application of a formal method, resulted in an erasure of the specific cultural nuances ofAbai's work and their replacement with a unified Soviet literary language that prioritized Moscow's aesthetic hierarchy over peripheral autonomy. Shklovsky's practice is characterized as an act of colonial appropriation that replaced the authentic voices of Kazakh intellectuals with an Orientalized rendering of the claimed universalist-but essentially ethnoculturally Russian-cultural form.
This essay is a contribution to the book forum "The Power of Soft Matter" discussing Julia Vaingurt's book Soft Matter: The Poetics of Weakness in Late Soviet Socialism (2025), which identifies weakness as a defining aesthetic and ethical strategy in late Soviet nonofficial culture. By analyzing authors who intentionally cultivated vulnerability and failure, the book illustrates how these artists rejected the state's ideological obsession with heroism and power in favor of a shared, tentative humanity. The essay highlights how Vaingurt identifies a unique "middle ground" for the individual, navigating between traditional liberal autonomy and total absorption by state discourse through a rigorous and unpredictable application of queer theory. The author explicates the book's commitment to ethical nuance oversimple historical remediation and demonstration of how fragile, nonbinary identities and unreliable memories functioned as quiet forms of resistance against the rigid certainties of mature socialism.
SUMMARY: This essay is a contribution to the book forum "The Power of Soft Matter" discussing Julia Vaingurt's book Soft Matter: The Poetics of Weakness in Late Soviet Socialism (2025), which identifies weakness as a defining aesthetic and ethical strategy in late Soviet nonofficial culture. By analyzing authors who intentionally cultivated vulnerability and failure, the book illustrates how these artists rejected the state's ideological obsession with heroism and power in favor of a shared, tentative humanity. The essay explores how a discourse of weakness serves as a subversive tool to deconstruct grand narratives and patriarchal structures of power, noting that while weakness fosters nonconformity and subversion, it also risks being co-opted by "strong" imperialist rhetorics or collapsing under the weight of grand narratives. The author agrees that recognizing a universal vulnerability can foster a new solidarity capable of resisting modern authoritarianism and militant hypernormativity. Резюме: Это эссе является частью книжного форума "Сила мягкой материи", посвященному обсуждению книги Юлии Вайнгурт "Мягкая материя: Поэтика слабости в позднесоветском социализме" (2025), в которой поэтика слабости определяется как ключевая эстетическая и этическая стратегия позднесоветской неофициальной культуры. Анализируя творчество авторов, сознательно культивировавших уязвимость и неуспеш-ность, книга показывает отторжение ими навязываемой государством идеологии героизма и силы ради всеобщей, пусть и зыбкой, человечности. Исследуя функцию дискурса слабости как инструмента, подрывающего господство гранд-нарративов и патриархальных структур, эссе отмечает двойственный эффект этого дискурса. Хотя "слабость" способствует развитию нонконформизма и размыванию иерархий, она также может эксплуатироваться "сильной" империалистической риторикой или сломаться под тяжестью иных гранд-нарративов. Автор согласен с тем, что признание всеобщей уязвимости может стать основой новой солидарности, способной противостоять современному авторитаризму и воинствующей гипернормативности.
SUMMARY: This article is a response to the concept of Russophonia, which has gained currency in contemporary Russian studies scholarship through the work of Naomi Caffee, Nina Freiss, and others, especially since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The authors of this article, based in the field of modern languages, recognize that Russophonia provides a welcome return to a critical emphasis on language, while also offering a framework that is keenly attuned to the nexus of language, culture, and politics, and the power relations therein. The authors compare Russophonia with other critical models that take Russian Studies beyond the boundaries of the Russian Federation, including their own volume Transnational Russian Studies and Kevin Platt's Global Russian Cultures . While the authors highlight that Russophonia has been posited as a framework to decenter Russia and decolonize Russian Studies, they observe that such attempts can paradoxically end up reinforcing the centrality of Russia in its most negative aspects. The authors examine how these paradoxes play out in contemporary Russophone poetry, analyzing the way certain Russophone writers have charted their changing relationship to their own language and culture since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The authors reflect on questions of scholarly positionality, suggesting an approach inspired by quantum theory that recognizes the dynamic relationship between subject and object of study. They offer "language commons" and the "planetary" as concepts that might allow us to build on the tools offered by Russophonia. Резюме: В статье обсуждается концепция "русофонии", получившая широкое распространение в современной русистике, особенно после начала полномасштабного вторжения России в Украину в 2022 г. Знаменуя собой долгожданный поворот к критическому осмыслению роли языка, "русофония" предлагает аналитическую рамку для осмысления слож-ного переплетения языка, культуры и политики, находящего проявление во властных отношениях. Авторы сравнивают эту аналитическую рамку с другими подходами, растождествляющими русистику с Российской Федерацией, включая подход, предложенный ими в сборнике "Транснациональная русистика" ( Transnational Russian Studies , 2020), а также модель "глобальных русских культур" Кевина Платта. Отмечая, что "русофония" позиционируется как концептуальная основа для децентрирования роли России и деколонизации русистики, авторы обращают внимание на обратный эффект этого подхода. Парадоксальным образом "русофония" может способствовать фиксации на России в ее наиболее негативных проявлениях. Статья исследует этот парадоксальный эффект на примере современной русскоязычной поэзии, анализируя, как некоторые ее представители переосмысливают свои отношения с родным языком и культурой после полномасштабной агрессии России против Украины. Обращаясь к проблеме позициональности исследователя, авторы формулируют подход, вдохновленный идеями квантовой теории и учитывающий динамический характер взаимоотношений между субъектом и объектом исследования. Они предлагают развить аналитический инструментарий, предлагаемый "русофонией", за счет концепций "общего языкового ресурса" ( language commons ) и "планетарного подхода".
This is the English translation of a little-known 1925 article by a Ukrainian literary critic, Feliks Iakubovs'kyi. In it, Iakubovs'kyi critiques "Khokhlology," a term he uses to describe a willful cultural misinterpretation of Ukrainian identity, pervasive among the Russian cultural elite. He argues that this misinterpretation manifests as great-power chauvinism, ranging from the "philistine" annoyance of moviegoers about Ukrainian subtitles to the distorted orthography and linguistic mockery found in the works of prominent Russian intellectuals like Viktor Shklovsky.
This essay is a contribution to the book forum "The Power of Soft Matter" discussing Julia Vaingurt's book Soft Matter: The Poetics of Weakness in Late Soviet Socialism (2025), which identifies weakness as a defining aesthetic and ethical strategy in late Soviet nonofficial culture. By analyzing authors who intentionally cultivated vulnerability and failure, the book illustrates how these artists rejected the state's ideological obsession with heroism and power in favor of a shared, tentative humanity. The essay expands on Vaingurt's thesis by tracing late Soviet cultural resistance back to a rejection at the turn of the twentieth century of vulgarized Nietzscheanism, an ideology that fused with Marxism to promote a cult of willpower, heroic self-sacrifice, and masculine dominance. The author argues that this historical embrace of softness serves as a vital resource for resisting contemporary militarism and the global resurgence of anti-liberal, cynical cults of strength.
This article explores how the collapse of the Russian Empire and the subsequent rise of the Soviet state forced ageneration of humanities scholars to reconstruct intellectual traditions on the "ruins" of old institutions. The author argues that a true decentering of knowledge requires more than just adding new names to history; it involves examining how scholars in diverse geographic hubs-such as Kharkiv, Tbilisi, and Prague-navigated the violent shift from imperial to postimperial reality. By analyzing the unique trajectories of figures like Nikolai Efimov, Aleksandr Beletsky (Oleksandr Biletskyi), Shalva Nutsubidze, and Roman Jakobson, the author demonstrates how personal displacement and political upheaval became the catalysts for theoretical innovation. The new universalist knowledge produced during this era emerged not from a linear progression, but from a radical re-stitching of cultural identity across fragmented national and linguistic borders. Specifically, the article identifies four typological models or scenarios for the production of new theoretical knowledge. The "nomadic" strategy represented by Efimov involved moving between various regional academic centers (such as Odesa, Smolensk, and Central Asia) rather than staying in Moscow or Petrograd. The "remade" or "turned inside out" strategy exemplified by Beletsky in Kharkiv manifested itself in reinterpreting classical cultural traditions within a new Soviet and Ukrainian national framework. The "autochthonous" strategy identified with the Georgian philosopher Nutsubidze focused on constructing a direct line of cultural continuity from early times to the Soviet national republic. Finally, the "unconventionally emigrant" strategy pursued by Jakobson utilized "extraterritoriality" to consolidate and transform academic traditions from abroad.
This essay offers initial considerations on the intersections between the emerging field of Russophone studies and Formalism. Focusing on Ukraine - where the local Formalist tradition is currently being rediscov-ered - the author examines how the Formalist method provides insights into Russophonia, a highly contested area within Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. By framing these entanglements within Russia's war of aggression, the essay highlights the resulting challenges for Ukrainian culture. It specifically addresses the tension faced by scholars seeking to maintain scientific rigor alongside active solidarity.
