Meanwhile, in Russia...
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The Russian internet is a hotbed for memes and viral videos: the political, satirical and simply absurd compete for attention in Russia while the West turns to it for an endless reserve of humorous content. But how did this powerful cyber community grow out of the repressive media environment of the Soviet Union? What does this viral content reveal about the country, its politics and its culture? And why are the memes and videos of today’s Russia so popular, spreading so rapidly across the globe?
Award-winning author Eliot Borenstein explores the explosive online movement and unpicks, for the first time, the role of mimetic content and digital activism in modern Russian history up to the present day.
Eliot Borenstein is Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies, Collegiate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Senior Academic Convenor for the Global Network at New York University, USA. His first book, Men Without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1919, won the AATSEEL award for best work in literary scholarship in 2000. In 2007, he published Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture, which received the AWSS award for best book in Slavic Gender Studies in 2008. His is also the author of Plots Against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism (2009) and Pussy Riot (Bloomsbury, 2020). Borenstein was also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009.