O potworach i trupach, czyli symptomy rozkładu postsowieckiej Rosji w „Ładunku 200” Aleksieja Bałabanowa
About the Monsters And Corpses, Or On the Symptoms of Decay of Post-Soviet Russia In the “Cargo 200” by Aleksei Balabanov

Summary/Abstract: The article is an analysis of the film “Cargo 200” (“Gruz 200”, dir. Aleksei Balabanov, 2007) in the context of post-memory of a traumatic Soviet experience. The background for the interpretation is the state of Russian-post-Soviet identity, dependent on selective amnesia combined with nostalgia, which relate to Brezhnev’s stagnation and the last years of the USSR’s existence. The Soviet past is understood here as a historical horizon and cultural heritage. The main tools of the analysis are theories of communication and cultural memory – the director, in order to talk about traumas that cannot be expressed in his own words, used narratives functioning in Russian culture: literary texts (authored by William Faulkner and Fyodor Dostoevsky) and film. In his vision, which was repeated in a series of films produced in the first and second decade of the 21st century, violence became the main code of social behaviour and the foundation that connects the community.

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