"To our hopeless affair": a visual anthropology study about women of the Russian Intelligentsia in the post-Soviet era

Gan, Gregory (2010) "To our hopeless affair": a visual anthropology study about women of the Russian Intelligentsia in the post-Soviet era. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

	[English] PDF (Migrated (PDF/A Conversion) from original format: (application/pdf)) - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (36MB) [English] PDF - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. (Original Version)
	[Russian] Video (MP4) (Title of Film: Turning Back the Waves -- with English subtitles) - Supplemental Material Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (617MB)
	[English] PDF (Migrated (PDF/A Conversion) from original format: (application/pdf)) - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (1MB) [English] PDF (PDF Portfolio including supplementary files) - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. (Original Version)

Abstract

This Master's thesis focuses on the narratives of four Muscovite women belonging to the Russian intelligentsia, using life history, social memory and visual anthropology methods. The Russian intelligentsia was often seen as having served a contradictory position as both conformist and oppositional to the Soviet regime. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many academic publications have questioned whether the role of the intelligentsia remains politically relevant in post-Soviet Russia. Using life history techniques to probe participants' memories of various Soviet and post-Soviet eras and focusing on the period of the perestroika between 1985 and 1991, the author problematizes various binary definitions of the role of the intelligentsia, proposing to view membership as a negotiation of meanings, memories and contestations of belonging. A feature-length ethnographic film produced during the period of fieldwork in Moscow and based on participants' memories is appended to the thesis.

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