Seditious Modernism(s) in Stout Dictatorships (Two Cunning Fictional Strategies)
Seditious Modernism(s) in Stout Dictatorships (Two Cunning Fictional Strategies)

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on two masterpieces of Russian modernism that foreground Moscow and Petersburg, two urban spaces that are well-rooted in collective and individual local consciousness: Master and Margarita by Michail Bulgakov and Petersburg by Andrei Bely. Both cities are portrayed in the turbulent political context of early 20th century as real borders between the European civilization on the one hand and the worst barbarity on the other. My aim is to compare the strategies of both key representatives of Russian modernism whose approaches to the same task is rather different. They project dystopic worlds whose inhabitants have lost faith in art, religion and science and where history is only a bad dream, from which the individual can no longer wake up. The article identifies concepts used to explore these urban spaces, emphasizing the auto-referential style of both authors.

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