Authors

Annamaria Vass¹;  ¹ Debreceni Egyetem, Hungary

Discussion

Ever since the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 much attention has been dedicated to Vasily Aksyonov’s anti-Soviet alternative history ’The Island of Crimea’ (1979). The 2014 events provoked a deep ethnic and geopolitical crisis in the peninsula, historically home to many nations. In the novel, national issues result in the birth of a new hybrid nation of the Yaki, uniting people of Russian, Tatar, Greek, Turkish and British origin. Parallels with reality enforce a contemporary reading of the novel through the prism of present reality, with some critics even saying it “predicts Russia’s invasion of Crimea”. In contrast with this view, I argue that “The Island of Crimea” cannot be studied from any political perspective, as such an approach fails to account for the author’s message conveyed in the very title: his Crimea, unlike the real one, is an island, making the novel a fiction. I propose a different reading of Aksyonov, based on the actual analysis of fictional Crimea and the key issues (Russian national identity, minorities, the role of intelligentsia in Russian history) from a cultural point of view, putting aside sociopolitical issues. I show that Crimea has a symbolic meaning in Russian culture, and the novel should be read in the context of so-called “Crimean Text”, by analogy with the well-established “Petersburg Text” in Russian literature. I conclude that this context explains why Aksyonov’s utopia turns into an an anti-utopia.