Overview

As the West liberalized its stance on sexuality and gender between 2000 and 2020, Vladimir Putin’s Russia moved in the opposite direction, remolding the performance of Russian citizenship according to a neoconservative agenda characterized by increasingly exaggerated gender roles. By connecting gendered and sexualized citizenship to developments in Russian popular culture, Julie A. Cassiday argues that heteronormativity and homophobia became a kind of politicized style under Putin’s leadership. However, the multiple modes of gender performativity simultaneously helped citizens resist and protest the state’s mandate of heteronormativity. Examining everything from memes to the Eurovision Song Contest and self-help literature, Cassiday untangles the discourse of gender to argue that drag, or travesti, became the performative trope par excellence in Putin’s Russia. Provocatively, Cassiday further argues that the exaggerated expressions of gender demanded by Putin’s regime are best understood as a form of cisgender drag. This smart and lively study provides critical, nuanced analysis of the relationship between popular culture and politics in Russia during Putin’s first two decades in power.

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Reviews

""A brilliant, entertaining work of scholarship that sheds light on some of the most important phenomena in contemporary Russian politics and mass culture. Using style as her central concept, Cassiday brings together many seemingly disparate examples from mass media, pop culture, and politics in a way that is truly enlightening.""--Eliot Borenstein, New York University ""Provocative. . . . Cassiday provides a fresh and insightful lens. . . . [A] valuable study.""-- ""The Russian Review"" ""Incisive. . . . What Cassiday proposes is nothing less than a new political and cultural theory that shows how a militaristic ideology is created through a participatory internet culture, winking irony and an emphasis on entertainment and performance. . . . Russian Style is an important book.""--The Times Literary Supplement ""Well conceived, researched, and executed, Russian Style makes an invaluable contribution to the field and to broader discussions of gender, sexuality, and the body in contemporary popular culture. Bringing to the forefront questions of citizenship and national identity, Cassiday thinks through the changes (political, ideological, sexual) that have taken place over the past two decades in Putin's Russia. ""--Lilya Kaganovsky, UCLA

“A brilliant, entertaining work of scholarship that sheds light on some of the most important phenomena in contemporary Russian politics and mass culture. Using style as her central concept, Cassiday brings together many seemingly disparate examples from mass media, pop culture, and politics in a way that is truly enlightening.” - Eliot Borenstein, New York University “Well conceived, researched, and executed, Russian Style makes an invaluable contribution to the field and to broader discussions of gender, sexuality, and the body in contemporary popular culture. Bringing to the forefront questions of citizenship and national identity, Cassiday thinks through the changes (political, ideological, sexual) that have taken place over the past two decades in Putin’s Russia. ” - Lilya Kaganovsky, UCLA “Incisive. . . . What Cassiday proposes is nothing less than a new political and cultural theory that shows how a militaristic ideology is created through a participatory internet culture, winking irony and an emphasis on entertainment and performance. . . . Russian Style is an important book.” - The Times Literary Supplement “Provocative. . . . Cassiday provides a fresh and insightful lens. . . . [A] valuable study.” - The Russian Review

Author Information

Julie A. Cassiday is the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian at Williams College. She is the author of The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen and the coeditor of Russian Performances: Word, Object, Action.

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