Serguei Alex. Oushakine
The collapse of the USSR brought down the political system of socialism, but it also imploded its cultural industry. Gorski's book shows what happened next—during the rapid advance of capitalism in the 1990s-2010s. Using new Russophone literature as its main field of study, Cultural Capitalism shows how the market-driven cultural production emerged out of a stage of chaos and crises. Within a very short period, the field of literature organized itself with the help of new literary hierarchies, systems of awards, criteria of success, and practices of recognition. Gorski offers a historically rich and conceptually novel view of post-Soviet literary field, networks, and artefacts by successfully merging sociology of literature with literary analysis. Effortless and convincing, Cultural Capitalism is a major contribution to the cultural history of postsocialism and a valuable intervention to the global studies of contemporary literature.
Serguei Alex
The collapse of the USSR brought down the political system of socialism, but it also imploded its cultural industry. Gorski's book shows what happened next—during the rapid advance of capitalism in the 1990s-2010s. Using new Russophone literature as its main field of study, Cultural Capitalism shows how the market-driven cultural production emerged out of a stage of chaos and crises. Within a very short period, the field of literature organized itself with the help of new literary hierarchies, systems of awards, criteria of success, and practices of recognition. Gorski offers a historically rich and conceptually novel view of post-Soviet literary field, networks, and artefacts by successfully merging sociology of literature with literary analysis. Effortless and convincing, Cultural Capitalism is a major contribution to the cultural history of postsocialism and a valuable intervention to the global studies of contemporary literature.
Jacob Emery
In this timely, persuasive, and impeccably organized study of Russian literature's transition from the Soviet period to market capitalism, Gorski profiles a logical sequence of developments that shaped post-Soviet literature.
Jenny Kaminer
Gorski expertly guides the reader through the varying stages of cultural capitalism's emergence, rise to preeminence, and ultimate failure to achieve its liberatory aims. The close readings of literary texts are invariably original and insightful, and Gorski beautifully weaves together a multiplicity of sources—literary, theoretical, historical, sociological.
Helena Goscilo
Deftly combining panache and precision, Cultural Capitalism illuminates how the socioeconomic forces unleashed by Russia's transition to market during the volatile 1990s transformed the country's institution of literature. It does so with impressive acuity and rigor in five chapters that analyze, in turn, the bestseller, success, prizes, circulation, and readership—bookended by a finely contextualizing introduction and an epilogue that expands the volume's purview to consider the profound ethical and sociopolitical issues inseparable from "imitative capitalism." An informative appendix of charts and graphs provides invaluable statistics about the decade's most popular authors, mapping their distribution and that of their publishers. Incisiveness and impeccable research render Cultural Capitalism the single most revelatory investigation of a multi-faceted, often contradictory phenomenon that has taxed scholars for three decades. That the monograph is written in lucid and supple prose constitutes a welcome bonus.