Russia and Soul: An Exploration

This ethnography of everyday life in contemporary Russia is also an examination of discourses & practices of "soul" or dusha. Russian soul has historically appeared as a myth, a consoling fiction & a trope of national & individual self-definition that drew romantic foreigners to Russia. Pesmen shows that in the 1990s this "soul" was scorned, worshipped & used to create, manipulate & exploit cultural capital. She focuses on "soul" in part as what people chose to do & how they did it, especially practices considered "definitive" of Russians, such as hospitality, alcoholic beverage use, steam baths, the language, music & suffering. Attempting to avoid narrow definitions of soul as a thing, she develops a new way of structuring ethnographic interviews. During a stay in a formerly closed military industrial city & surrounding villages, she spent time on public transportation & in kitchens, steam baths, vegetable gardens, shops & workplaces. She uses stories from her fieldwork along with examples from the media & literature to introduce a phenomenology of russkaia dusha & of related American & other non-Russian metaphysical notions, exploring diverse elements in their makeup, examining & questioning the world created when people believe in such "deep", "vast", "enigmatic", "internal" centers. Among theoretical issues addressed are those of power, community, self, exchange, coherence & morality. Her attention to dusha gives her a multifaceted perspective on Russian culture & society & informs her portrayal of life in a Russian city at a historically critical moment.