Presentations by Streams

The worldwide death toll, boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the most recent phase in the Middle East conflict, invites a discussion whether there is such a thing as a national concept of death. The papers in this panel approach the issue through, on the one hand, late Soviet and post-Soviet (Russian) countercultural sources, such as the legacy of the Iuzhinskii circle and Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevism. On the other, the symbolic appeal of the (un)dead, apparent in reinvigorated accusations of zombification following the outbreak and intensification of the war in Ukraine, point to anxieties about contagion and the presumed power of propaganda.