Unstuck in Time:

On the Post-Soviet Uncanny

About the Project

Unstuck in Time is the second volume the three-book series with he unofficial title Russia’s Alien Nations.

In this book, which I am serializing on the blog as I write it, I explore fictional and ideological reconfigurations of time in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse. Soviet nostalgia is a familiar part of the post-Soviet landscape, as is the tendency for contemporary Russian literary fiction to focus on the past rather than the present. Unstuck in Time argues that the way time is framed in contemporary Russian cultural productions is connected to a generalized dysphoria regrading the present day, which ends up feeling “off,” if not downright uncanny.

The first chapter is devoted to the immensely popular Russian science fictional subgenre of “popadantsy”—accidental travelers in time and space. In their trips to the past, they inevitably get caught up in important historical events (most often WWII), usually in the hope of achieving a better outcome.. What looks like simple nostalgia proves to be much more complicated; the accidental time traveller's relationship with both his home time period and the world in which he arrives is one of profound dysphoria. Both in the present and in the means by which he travels to the past, he exerts little agency over his own life. Only in the historical fantasyland that greets him does he get to play the hero.

The second chapter examines the construction of fictional alternate Soviet Unions that either exist in the present day (because the USSR never ended) or are recreated in the future. Subsequent chapters will be about fictional and real-life attempts to reconstruct the Soviet Union in our time (as theme park, overambitious film project, or literary experiment); the persistent representation of Russia’s future in decidedly medieval terms; and possibly the Russian postapocalpse and the themes of timelessness and amnesia.

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Eliot Borenstein 12/7/21 Eliot Borenstein 12/7/21

An Officer of the Law

The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation are all avatars of the hero of the country's history: the state

Eliot Borenstein 11/30/21 Eliot Borenstein 11/30/21

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

The Southern states have recreated the Confederacy under the presidency of Chuck Norris

Eliot Borenstein 11/23/21 Eliot Borenstein 11/23/21

Back to the Radiant Future

It is not enough for the USSR to fail to collapse; it has expanded both in territory and hegemonic influence.

Eliot Borenstein 11/16/21 Eliot Borenstein 11/16/21

The China Syndrome

Chernobyl's twenty-first century Soviet Union looks a lot like...China.

Eliot Borenstein 11/9/21 Eliot Borenstein 11/9/21

Building Communism through Time Travel

Chernobyl: Exclusion Zone centers around a group of teenage characters who seem designed to remind older viewers why they hate teenagers.

Eliot Borenstein 11/4/21 Eliot Borenstein 11/4/21

Socialism in One Bedroom

After years of pretending to live in a never-ending Brezhnev Era, both heroines find themselves confused about basic questions of reality.

Eliot Borenstein 11/2/21 Eliot Borenstein 11/2/21

Sim City Socialism

Their apartment is made of four Berlin Walls

Eliot Borenstein 10/28/21 Eliot Borenstein 10/28/21

Goodbye, Brezhnev!, or, The Lenin Who Couldn't Die

To add insult to injury, a German work and a Russian work use the same conceit, but it is in Germany—Germany!—that the results are funny

Eliot Borenstein 10/26/21 Eliot Borenstein 10/26/21

Have a Nice Funeral

Ulitskaya bids farewell not just to an individual man or even a country, but to a relationship between the two

Eliot Borenstein 10/21/21 Eliot Borenstein 10/21/21

As I Lay Dying

The drama of the old system's passing would be embodied in the figure of the dying elder who lies in bed while the outside world moves forward at breakneck speed.