Through an analysis of post-Soviet literature, grassroots movements, and political mass protests, I explore various modes of political subjectivity as they have developed in the Russian Federation and Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The research discusses the uses of rhetorical language and protest art as deployed in mass protest actions in Ukraine and Russia by examining the events of the Orange Revolution (2004-05), the Revolution of Dignity (2013-14) in Ukraine, and the White Revolution and some other mass protests in Russia (2011-13).
My work argues that Russian and Ukrainian cultural production developed in different directions after the collapse of the USSR. This difference appears not only in different attitudes toward the past, present, and future of Russia and Ukraine reflected in the novels. It also manifests in other forms of narration and relations to the inherited national literary tradition.
Tetyana Dzyadevych is a researcher, commentator, and analyst of contemporary Russian and Ukrainian culture and literature. Currently, she works at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before, she was an assistant professor of Russian and Eastern European studies at Grinnell College (USA) and a visiting scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Tetyana Dzyadevych was born and raised in Kyiv (Ukraine). She received intellectual training and education in Europe and the USA. She holds a Ph.D. in literary theory from the University of Maria Curie-Sklodowska in Lublin (Poland) and Slavic studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago (USA). Her area of interest is Russian and Ukrainian literature of 19th-21st c., politics and art; and visual and performing arts and pop culture. Her scholarship primarily focuses on works of the late Soviet period, perestroika, and post-Soviet period. Dr. Dzyadevych studies cultural production to explore and explain how art and literature shape and reflect their audiences' political identities.