Novyj orientalizm v sovremennoj russkoj literature

This article traces down the origins and sheds some light on a specific way of representing Central Asia in contemporary Russian literature; in this paper I’m putting forward the designation of “New Orientalism” to denote this vision of Central Asian reality. The idea of a specific Soviet nation, which was served by a multicultural Soviet literature, opened the path for New Orientalism. Scholarly studies of New Orientalism have to face the hallenges of the applicability of Western Postcolonial Theory to the Post-Soviet space, although this new way of thinking is obvious in some novels by Andrey Volos, Evgeny Chizhov, Vladimir Medvedev and other Russian authors. These literary works apply the traditional image of the Western Other (in this case Russian) to the Oriental (Asian) realities but, compared to the Orientalism as described by E.W. Said, in New Orientalism the hierarchical model won’t work, thus the Orient rejects its inferior status and defies Western (Russian) seemingly progressive ideas and social models. In contemporary Russian literature New Orientalism is connected to Post-Soviet Trauma and Nostalgia for the Soviet past.