Birgit Beumers is professor of film studies at Aberystwyth University. Her publications include Directory of World Cinema: Russia, A History of Russian Cinema, and, with Mark Lipovetsky, Performing Violence: Literary and Theatrical Experiments of New Russian Drama. She is also the editor of Intellect's journal Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.

• Introduction: Russia’s New fin de siècle: Contemporary Culture between Past and Present  PART I: Written Discourse Chapter 1: The Function of the Soviet Experience in Post-Soviet Discourse – Maria Litovskaya Chapter 2: Cycles, Continuity and Change in Contemporary Russian Culture – Mark Lipovetsky Chapter 3: Victor Pelevin and the Void – Meghan Vicks Chapter 4: From Homo Zapiens to Media Sapiens: Post-Soviet Television in Russian Fiction – Andrei Rogatchevski PART II: Visual and Popular Culture  Chapter 5: Afrika and Monroe – Post-Soviet Appropriation, East and West – Amy Bryzgel Chapter 6: Military Dandyism, Cosmism and Eurasian Imper-Art – Maria Engström Chapter 7: Sweet Dreams: Retro Imagery on Chocolate Packaging in Post-Soviet Russia – Bettina Jungen Chapter 8: Victory Day: Rituals and Practices of War Commemoration in Russia – Nataliya Danilova PART III: Cinematic Culture  Chapter 9: A Kiss for the KGB: Putin as Cinematic Hero – Stephen M. Norris Chapter 10: ‘Address Your Questions to Dostoevsky’: Privatizing Punishment in Russian Cinema – Serguei Alex. Oushakine Chapter 11: Freedom and Uncertainty: The Cinema of Slava Tsukerman – Peter Rollberg Chapter 12: Muratova’s Cinema before and after Perestroika: Deconstructing and Rebuilding Film Aesthetics – Eugénie Zvonkine Chapter 13: The Place of Action Must Not be Changed: Aleksei Balabanov’s St Petersburg – Birgit Beumers

'Writers and filmmakers attempt not to revive the past but instead to open up new spaces for interpreting the past through the present. Summing Up: Recommended.'