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Parahistory: History at Play in Russia and Beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jeffrey Brooks  and
Boris Dralyuk
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Abstract

This essay examines a variety of popular engagements with history made possible by new technologies, namely the Internet and video games. We term these nondisciplinary appropriations of history parahistorical. Parahistory is an international phenomenon, but it is articulated differently in various national contexts. Russian parahistorical pursuits provide insight into both the phenomenon at large and the peculiarities of the Russian state's and population's attitudes toward history and historical memory. On the basis of a contextualized survey of Russian parahistory, we argue that historians cannot afford to ignore these uses of history beyond the academy which can teach us a great deal about the nature and broader implications of our discipline.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , Spring 2016 , pp. 77 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2016

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References

Thanks to Miguel Aon, Georgiy Chernyavskiy, Peter Jelavich, Elaine May, Thomas Gaiton Marullo, Gabrielle Spiegel, and Christopher Stolarski for reading early versions. Our special thanks to Karen Brooks, Dina Khapaeva, Nikolay Koposov, Richard Wortman, Harriet Murav, and our anonymous reviewers for comments on a recent one.

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77. Ibid.

78. Ibid.

79. The picture is reproduced in Yuri Vasnetsov: Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, Book Illustrations, Lithographs, Theatrical Designs, Porcelain (Leningrad, 1984), plate 109.

80. Mathew Cullerne Bown reproduces and discusses the painting in his Socialist Realist Painting (New Haven, 1998), 209-10,267.

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