Abstract

The essay discusses the question in which sense there are continuities between the pre-Soviet, the Soviet, and the post-Soviet phase of Russian culture. It discovers in the rejection of the bourgeois value system an important constant factor. Even if originally rooted in the specific orthodox Christian sensibility, it helped prepare the Soviet revolution and survived even after 1991. From the Song of Igor’s Campaign to Tolstoy’s dramas, Eisenstein’s films and his film theory, and Maxim Kantor’s iconic interpretations of the late Soviet Union and its aftermath the essay tries to unveil crucial features of Russian culture.