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E-book
Author Barskova, Polina, author.

Title Besieged Leningrad : aesthetic responses to urban disaster / Polina Barskova
Published DeKalb, IL : Northern Illinois University Press, [2017]

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 232 pages) : illustrations
Contents Walking through the siege: routes, routines, and the paths of the imagination -- Spatialized allegory: speaking dystrophy otherwise -- Paradoxes of siege vision: darkness, blindness, and knowledge -- Framing the siege sublime: urban spectacle and cultural memory -- The spatial practice of siege reading -- Reading into the siege: heterochronic directions of escapist reading
Summary During the 872 days of the Siege of Leningrad (September 1941 to January 1944), the city's inhabitants were surrounded by the military forces of Nazi Germany. They suffered famine, cold, and darkness, and a million people lost their lives, making the siege one of the most destructive in history. Confinement in the besieged city was a traumatic experience. Unlike the victims of the Auschwitz concentration camp, for example, who were brought from afar and robbed of their cultural roots, the victims of the Siege of Leningrad were trapped in the city as it underwent a slow, horrific transformation. They lost everything except their physical location, which was layered with historical, cultural, and personal memory. In Besieged Leningrad, Polina Barskova examines how the city's inhabitants adjusted to their new urban reality, focusing on the emergence of new spatial perceptions that fostered the production of diverse textual and visual representations. The myriad texts that emerged during the siege were varied and exciting, engendered by sometimes sharply conflicting ideological urges and aesthetic sensibilities. In this first study of the cultural and literary representations of spatiality in besieged Leningrad, Barskova examines a wide range of authors with competing views of their difficult relationship with the city, filling a gap in Western knowledge of the culture of the siege. It will appeal to Russian studies specialists as well as those interested in war testimonies and the representation of trauma
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed
Subject World War, 1939-1945 -- Campaigns -- Russia (Federation)
Collective memory -- Russia (Federation) -- Saint Petersburg
World War, 1939-1945 -- Influence.
HISTORY / Russia & the Former Soviet Union.
Civilization
Collective memory
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
Military campaigns
SUBJECT Saint Petersburg (Russia) -- History -- Siege, 1941-1944. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh93001009
Saint Petersburg (Russia) -- Civilization
Subject Russia (Federation)
Russia (Federation) -- Saint Petersburg
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2017049300
ISBN 9781609092306
1609092309
9781501756818
1501756818