Lipovetsky, Mark <br/><br/>
Charms of the Cynical Reason : The Trickster's Transformation in Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture 

 -  Academic Studies Press  20101201 
<br/><br/> Open Access 
<br/><br/> The impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and little-explored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-Soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and fascinating literary and cinematic images of soviet and post-Soviet tricksters, including such “cultural idioms” as Ostap Bender, Buratino, Vasilii Tyorkin, Stierlitz, and others. Soviet tricksters present survival in a cynical, contradictory, and inadequate world, not as a necessity, but as a field for creativity, play, and freedom. Through an analysis of the representation of tricksters in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Lipovetsky attempts to draw a virtual map of the soviet and post-Soviet cynical reason: to identify its symbols, discourses, and contradictions, and by these means its historical development from the 1920s to the 2000s. 
<br/><br/><br/>Creative Commons 
<br/><br/><br/>English 
<br/><br/><label>ISBN: </label>j.ctt21h4wjt 9781618118509 
<br/><br/><label>Standard No.: </label>10.2307/j.ctt21h4wjt  doi 
<br/><br/><label>Subjects--Topical Terms: </label><br/>Literary studies: general
<br/><br/><label>Subjects--Index Terms: </label>Literature Literary Criticism Soviet studies Postmodern Russia Russian cinema