The superfluous and the colonised: self-colonisation in Russian literature

Hansen, Jeppe Heino ORCID: 0000-0001-6514-6180 (2025). The superfluous and the colonised: self-colonisation in Russian literature. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This dissertation examines the narrative of self-colonisation and discourses of empire in Russian literature from the imperial and Soviet eras. Over the course of the period of concern (1790-1959), the Russian Empire went from being submerged with policies of Europeanisation to Pan-Slavism before being engulfed by the Bolshevik ideology after October 1917. While self-colonisation remained a serious factor in Russian policy during these epochs, it took different forms, and the dissertation tracks the development of self-colonisation discourses as they went from concerning high ranking individuals in the early 1800s to concerning the vast proletarian masses in the Soviet era. Simultaneously, the dissertation will track the expansion of the Russian borders and show the interconnectedness between Russia’s modes of colonisation: External- and internal colonisation, and self-colonisation. While these are connected, and sometimes occur in the same spaces, I argue that it is important to draw distinctions between the victims of the three modes of colonisation, especially given that racism was an important element in the justification of external- and internal colonisation, while it remained completely absent from self-colonisation.

The narrative of self-colonisation emerged in Russian historiography in the nineteenth century and created a sense of victimhood amongst the Russian population, which had a profound impact on Russian identity. This dissertation uses postcolonial theory to shed light on the issues of Russian identity, which the nation’s authors represented in their literary works and reveals that while authors generally approved of the colonising nature of ‘their’ Empire, they disapproved of the suffering of Russia’s peasants at the hands of the same Empire. The development of this phenomenon is described in Part I, “Self-Othering in Centre and Periphery: The Perception of Self in Russian Imperial Era Literature (1790-1916),” where first Alexandr Radishchev’s Journey from Petersburg to Moscow criticises the Empire’s conduct in both centre and periphery, while Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time and Nikolai Leskov’s The Enchanted Wanderer show a remarkable disregard for the experience of Russia’s colonised subjects. The last literary work of concern in Part I, Andrei Belyi’s Petersburg, uses racial stereotypes to create the otherness of the Russian population, namely its workers, which foregrounds the representation of the superfluous masses in Soviet Era dissident literature analysed in Part II, “Othering the Masses: Individuality and Collective Representation in Soviet Era Dissident Literature (1925-1959).” Here, analyses of Mikhail Bulgakov’s A Dog’s Heart, Andrei Platonov’s The Foundation Pit, and Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales show how the concern of the Russian authors was completely turned towards the Russian self, and that issues of race had almost completely vanished from literary production.

The examination of the narrative of self-colonisation in literature reveals that these authors showed a remarkable tendency to orientalise their homeland and the Russians who lived at the Empire’s core. The central literary topic at the heart of this research is the superfluous man, who is studied as a character alienated by imperialist ideology and discourse. Over the course of the thesis, superfluity develops from concerning very few individuals to concerning the masses such as the Empire’s enserfed peasants and the Soviet Union’s so-called kulaki. The examination of this phenomenon and its influence on Russian literary production, finds that tropes such as self-othering and self-Orientalism are not only recurring in Russian imperial and Soviet era literature, but that they tend to serve different functions: Sometimes they comment on the hardships of the nation’s peasants, sometimes they criticise existing narratives by mimicking imperial decrees, and sometimes they highlight the perception of Russians as ‘other’ by comparing them with perceived ‘uncivilised’ peoples at the borders of the Russian Empire.

The narrative of self-colonisation shows that Russian intellectuals were occupied with questions of their own identity, which is also evident in literary production. However, the connection between these phenomena remains unexplored in academia. This is noteworthy, especially given that the narrative of self-colonisation, which materialises itself in Russian literature through discourses of self-Orientalism and self-othering, is consistent in Russian literary history, as this dissertation argues. Thus, by drawing even closer connections between Russian literature and empire than have

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):