Charms of cynical reason: the trickster's transformations in Soviet and post-Soviet culture

The impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and littleexplored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and fascinating literary and cinematic images of soviet and post-soviet tricksters, including such "cultural idioms" as Ostap Bender, Buratino, Vasilii Tyorkin, Stierlitz, and others. Soviet tricksters present survival in a cynical, contradictory, and inadequate world, not as a necessity, but as a field for creativity, play, and freedom. Through an analysis of the representation of tricksters in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Lipovetsky attempts to draw a virtual map of the soviet and post-Soviet cynical reason: to identify its symbols, discourses, and contradictions, and by these means its historical development from the 1920s to the 2000s.