Valentin Rasputin the Conservative

Abstract

Rasputin has experienced great popularity in Russia in recent years. An obvious explanation for his revival is the conservative-nationalist turn in Russia, among both the political class and the electorate, which has transformed the kind of ideas found in Rasputin’s work - anti-materialism; love of home; concern over the consequences of the spread of liberal conceptions of the family and attitudes to religion - from apparent anachronism into a powerful and persuasive political vision. Celebrated as a voice of opposition during the post-Thaw Soviet Union, then rejected by liberal critics in the 1990s as a mouthpiece of chauvinism, has Rasputin’s perspective finally found its way to power? This dissertation studies Valentin Rasputin as a Russian conservative, examining how that conservatism is expressed in all six of Rasputin’s short novels (Den’gii dlia Marii (1967), Poslednii srok (1970), Zhivi i pomni (1974), Proshchanie s Materoi (1976), Pozhar (1985) and the most recent, and little studied in the West, Doch’ Ivana, mat’ Ivana (2004)) as a means of understanding better the resurgent appeal of this worldview not only in Putin’s Russia, but throughout the world.

Date of Award	6 Nov 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Rajendra Chitnis (Supervisor)