This chapter examines the themes of empire and neo-colonialism in the works of Viktor Pelevin.
These themes are very prominent in Pelevin’s oeuvre and are particularly important for his three novels, Omon Ra (1991), Generation “П” (1999), and Empire V: A Story of a Real Superman (Ampir V: povest' o nastoiashchem sverkhcheloveke, 2006).31 All three novels contain dystopian elements; their dystopian vision centers on the intersections of technology, power, and subjectivity. These dystopian elements help to problematize the contradictory tendencies characteristic of contemporary Russia, such as imperial aspirations, peripheral status, and neo-colonial dependency on the West.32
31Generation “П”, translated by Andrew Bromfield, has been published under two different titles. The edition published in Great Britain has the title of Babylon. The U.S edition has been published under the title Homo Zapiens. These two titles reflect the two aspects of the novel.
Whereas the title Homo Zapiens emphasizes Pelevin’s ironic treatment of contemporary media, Babylon draws readers’ attention to Pelevin’s use of Babylonian mythology and its imperial subtext.
32 I have chosen to examine these particular novels because they have a similar structure and thematic focus. Due to these similarities, I propose to view these novels as a symbolic trilogy.
The differences and similarities in these three novels well illustrate both the continuity and
Due to this thematic focus, all three novels include allegorical representations of empire and colonial dependency. They incorporate histories of past empires and suggest a connection between the empire and the occult—represented by a secret or elite knowledge, since each novel presents social hierarchies that are organized according to hidden or even occult forces. This investment in the occult leads to the remystification of imperial power, the tendency that becomes especially prominent in the last novel. Thus, in Empire V, history is collapsed into an imperial center of power that also functions as a museum characterized by the accumulation of human history.33 In the novel’s representation, the entire history becomes subsumed by the centralized and elite knowledge. This ability to turn contemporary reality into an occult and conspiratorial game won Pelevin a devoted audience.
Born in 1962, Pelevin is one of the most popular contemporary Russian writers, whose rise to popularity came right after the dissolution of the Soviet system. Pelevin’s fiction has attracted much critical attention and has caused some controversy. His works are usually topical, reflecting current trends in cultural discourse, as well as the feelings of Pelevin’s generation, whose youth coincided with the period of “developed socialism” and who reached their early
evolution in Pelevin’s fiction. His works are highly self-referential and often reintroduce similar
characters and situations. They are also connected by his preoccupations or even obsessions.
Sofya Khagi perceptively observes that Pelevin’s “subsequent narratives offer seemingly distinctive socio-meta-physical models, which in fact refer back to, and grow out of the preceding paradigms” (“Monstrous” 439).
33 For Foucault, museums and libraries are heterotopias that are characterized by indefinitely accumulating time (“Of Other Spaces” 26).
thirties during the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result of this topicality, as well as the incorporation of many elements of popular literature, he has often been criticized as a writer pandering to popular tastes, whose works lack the refinement of traditional Russian “high literature.”
On one level, the three novels under consideration encode experiences of the author and his generation, well exemplified by the novels’ protagonists—young men who live through the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the familiar way of life. Moreover, the titles of both Generation “П” and Empire V can be read as containing references to Pelevin’s name, and Generation “П” refers to the experiences of Pelevin’s generation, since, among other meanings, the “P” (П) of the title can be read as Generation Pelevin. These novels resemble a Bildungsroman gone awry, where the coming-of-age of a young protagonist results in his gradual incorporation into a totalitarian system.
This Bildungsroman structure corresponds to the genre of utopian fiction. Gary Saul Morson describes utopian fiction as a kind of “counter-Bildungsroman,” which usually “tells the story of a hero who discovers that the world is not as complex as he had thought,” and often concludes with the hero's attainment of the simple truth (78). Morson further explains that the climax of traditional dystopias often represent “the Revelation of the Lie—which is simultaneously the initiation into the Mystery” (126). As fiction with dystopian elements, Pelevin’s novels follow this basic narrative structure of dystopia, since the protagonists of Omon Ra, Generation “П”, and Empire V discover that the world is founded on a conspiracy. In all three novels, the protagonists gradually realize the hidden mechanisms of centralized power. However, these novels also illustrate a progression in Pelevin’s conception of dystopia. Thus, the end of Omon Ra allows for the possibility of the protagonist’s escape from the totalizing power of the Soviet system through
growing self-realization.34 In contrast to this early work, in Generation “П” and Empire V, the protagonists simultaneously discover the power’s conspiratorial center and rise to the top of hierarchical social structure. Both novels use devices of popular literature or even comic books, emphasizing the improbable triumph of an underdog protagonist and his overcoming of all the odds. The protagonist of Empire V, for example, acquires magical powers and turns into a super hero. At the end, however, this triumphal hero presides over a dystopian system that combines consumerism, technology, and authoritarian power.35 While the readers identify with the protagonists’ success, they have to realize that both the protagonists and the readers themselves have been co-opted by the desire for power. This ambiguous identification results in an ironic or schizophrenic dystopia where the protagonist succeeds in a clearly dystopian system, becoming gradually identified with this system in the process.
The protagonists’ spectacular ascent also corresponds to the spatial structures of empire, which is one of the central principles of these novels’ organization. Here I will argue that the hyperbolized imperial structures provide the novels’ dystopian context and serve as an allegory of the sociopolitical situation in contemporary Russia. Moreover, the structures and allegories of empire serve as the novels’ organizing principle. Pelevin’s representation of empire combines focus on the extremely centralized spatial structures, usually represented by Moscow, with the
34 This escape seems particularly significant in light of the preoccupation with subjective states in Pelevin’s early works.
35 In “From Homo Sovieticus to Homo Zapiens,” Sofya Khagi classifies Generation “П” as
“contemporary Russian techno-consumer dystopia” presented in the works of many contemporary Russian writers (560).
accumulation of the imperial history and knowledge. These three novels, therefore, tend towards an imperial totality—or the heterotopia of empire. Viewed together, Omon Ra, Generation “П”, and Empire V represent a development of the imperial imagery in Pelevin’s work. Moreover, the imperial themes develop, becoming the most pronounced in Empire V.
In these three novels, Pelevin represents imperial structures through grotesque and fantastic images that can be located between carnival and allegory. 36 The protagonists’ unusual transformations and their improbable triumphs introduce carnivalesque elements into the novels’
plots. Moreover, Empire V features hybrid and monstrous transformations and grotesque bodies that combine human and non-human forms. This novel is characterized by explicit or even over-the-top allegorical signification, where grotesque bodies acquire symbolic meaning.
With their emphasis on the imperial center, these novels are united by their location: the action of all three takes place in Moscow—the center of an empire that struggles with its peripheral status and the anxiety of a neocolonial relationship to the West. Moreover, in these three novels, empire structures both the progression of the plot and the experiences of their protagonists. Drawing on the work of such scholars as Michael Doyle and Anthony Pagden, Nancy Condee describes empire as “a composite structure marked by inequality, subordination, and difference, with hierarchically distinct units, such that the metropole is the center through which the peripheries largely negotiate their relations to each other” (Imperial Trace 13). The world of Pelevin’s novels reflects this kind of imperial structure, presenting the ever-narrowing centers that
36 Here I mean “allegory” as both political satire, such as the representation of the current political situation, as well as allegory in Benjamin’s sense—allegory connected to a world-view in its grotesque and melancholic aspect.
govern the hierarchical distribution of power. The plots of these novels contain a striking consistency in their spatial organization: set in Moscow, they develop centripetally; at the end of each novel, the protagonist finds himself at the “exact” center—or even the epicenter—of the hierarchical power structure, which is located in a subterranean space under the capital.37
Social and spatial structures of empire also inform the novels’ dystopian subplots, as they contrast the dystopian world to the ideal of the protagonists’ self-realization and agency, which cannot be attained due to his gradual ensnarement in the totalized systems. These novels show the progression of Pelevin’s dystopian thinking in its connection to empire, with each subsequent novel becoming more dystopian in its emphasis on centralized and totalized power. At the same time, each subsequent novel is more persistent in its attention to Russia’s peripheral and dependant status, where the last novel, Empire V, gestures towards the possibility of Russia’s future colonization.