The "Wild Nineties" in myth. Trauma, nostalgia and political bogeymen in the pop-cultural discourse on the first post-Soviet decade.
Dissertationsprojekt von Paul Primbs
Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Martin Schulze Wessel
The dissertation examines how the "wild nineties" became a myth in Russian popular culture. It focuses on the "Bandit Cycle", the crime films and TV series that have shaped the image of the first post-Soviet decade from the late 1990s to today.
The project has three chapters. The first studies late 1990s works such as Streets of Broken Lanterns, Bandit Petersburg and Brat and argues that they present crime as a consequence of neoliberal upheaval rather than as individual pathology. The second turns to the early 2000s (Brat 2, Antikiller, Brigada, Bumer and Zhmurki) and asks when and how the nineties came to be seen as a finished past instead of an unresolved present. The third follows the myth after its consolidation, when films, series and online media use it to carry new meanings such as humor, nostalgia or social critique.
Two concepts structure the analysis: neoliberalism and the distinction between finished and unfinished past, that is, whether a work narrates the recent past as concluded or as still unresolved. In close readings of films and series, informed by Foucault's analysis of crime discourse and Barthes's approach to myth, the study examines how the works negotiate subjectivity, masculinity, nation and class. These readings are complemented by an analysis of production contexts and of audience reception in film journals and online comments.
A central argument is that the negative image of the nineties cannot be explained by top-down political framing alone. It emerged from a broader discourse in which popular culture played an active part."