Seditious Experiments and Traditional Desires: V. P. Aksenov's 'Ostrov Krym'

• In Event: Russian Masculinities II: Othering Late Imperial and Soviet Masculinities

Abstract

Vasilii Aksenov's alternative historical novel, "Ostrov Krym," offered readers an exaggerated imagination of a Russian capitalist haven marked by access to and imitation of Western style goods and pleasures. The novel's depiction of casual sex, centered on the male experience, piqued young readers' interest in the 1980s and embodied an alternative to the exaggerated Soviet hygienic athletic model of masculinity. Often dismissed in the 1990s as a Cold War satire, interest in the novel returned in 2014 with the start of Russia's war in Ukraine and its Soviet-style excuses in its illegal efforts to annex Crimea .

Author

• Kathryn Anne Duda, Mercyhurst U