Unattainable Bride Russia: Gendering Nation, State, and Intelligentsia in Russian Intellectual Culture (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory Series)

Focuses on the metaphorical role of the bride that Russia often plays in literature, as well as the role the intelligentsia plays as Russia's rejected or ineffectual suitor, in a book that covers this metaphor from its prehistory in folklore to present-day pop culture reference.

Throughout the twentieth century and continuing today, personifications of Russia as a bride occur in a wide range of Russian texts and visual representations, from literature and political and philosophical treatises to cartoons and tattoos. Invariably, this metaphor functions in the context of a political gender allegory, which represents the relationships between Russia, the intelligentsia, and the Russian state, as a competition of two male suitors for the former s love. In Unattainable Bride Russia, Ellen Rutten focuses on the metaphorical role the intelligentsia plays as Russia s rejected or ineffectual suitor. Rutten finds that this metaphor, which she covers from its prehistory in folklore to present-day pop culture references to Vladimir Putin, is still powerful, but has generated scarce scholarly consideration. Unattainable Bride Russia locates the cultural thread and places the political metaphor in a broad contemporary and social context, thus paying it the attention to which it is entitled as one of Russia s modern cultural myths.

Apocalyptic riders, world souls, western(ized) boys, and Russian girls : before 1900 -- Wooing "My Rus'! My wife!" : (pre- )revolutionary Russia -- Virgin Russia meets Lenin and Stalin : the Soviet years -- Russia's orgasm, or Marrying Putin : late Soviet and post-Soviet culture Focuses on the metaphorical role the intelligentsia plays as Russia's rejected or ineffectual suitor. This book finds that this metaphor is still powerful, but has generated scarce scholarly consideration.