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Olga Breininger

Ph.D. candidate in Slavic and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University

Olga Breininger’s debut novel There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union, published by AST publishing house in 2017, was a noteworthy event in Russian literary life. The book made it onto the longlist of several key literary prizes, as well as the shortlist of the NOS Annual Literature Prize 2017. Critics are already calling calling her “Russia’s new literary hope.”

At the same time, Olga Breininger is successfully managing to juggle her fiction writing and her academic work. After graduating from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow, Olga earned a Master’s Degree at Oxford University and now is now studying for a Ph.D. at Harvard University, where she also teaches. Her professional interests include cultural anthropological research in the post-Soviet space and the spread of Islam in the Caucasus. As part of her internship at RIAC, Olga published a series of essays on the media policy of the so-called Islamic State and the energy policy of the countries in the South Caucasus.

RIAC’s Media and Government Relations Manager Nikolay Markotkin talked to Olga about her novel, her research interests and how compatible the academic and literary worlds are.


Olga Breininger’s debut novel There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union, published by AST publishing house in 2017, was a noteworthy event in Russian literary life. The book made it onto the longlist of several key literary prizes, as well as the shortlist of the NOS Annual Literature Prize 2017. Critics are already calling calling her “Russia’s new literary hope.”

At the same time, Olga Breininger is successfully managing to juggle her fiction writing and her academic work. After graduating from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow, Olga earned a Master’s Degree at Oxford University and now is now studying for a Ph.D. at Harvard University, where she also teaches. Her professional interests include cultural anthropological research in the post-Soviet space and the spread of Islam in the Caucasus. As part of her internship at RIAC, Olga published a series of essays on the media policy of the so-called Islamic State and the energy policy of the countries in the South Caucasus.

RIAC’s Media and Government Relations Manager Nikolay Markotkin talked to Olga about her novel, her research interests and how compatible the academic and literary worlds are.

Olga, your publisher and the critics are calling your book “a generation-defining novel.” How justified is this statement, in your opinion? And how would you describe your generation?

“Generation-defining novel” is the name of the series that Elena Shubina’s Editorial Board started in its search for new authors — authors whose voices reflect and represent the generation of 30-somethings and who talk about issues that were not raised in literature before. As part of that series, my novel raises issues that my generation is interested in, with our unique historical experience of the collapse of the Soviet Union and entering the global world.

You have described yourself in other interviews as a “cosmopolitan.” Is this a conscious decision that you have made? Do you think it is something universal, representing the interests of a large group of young people?

“Cosmopolitan” is one of the words that can describe the identity of a person whose roots are still in the Soviet world, but who at the same time is a full-fledged member of the global community. I believe the “Snob” project suggested the term “Global Russians,” and I don’t have anything against that. The main thing here, however, is not the wording, but rather the attitude of the person who remembers a world in which people had a sense of belonging, and who realizes that it was possible at one time to exist in such a way, although he or she never could. The tragedy of my heroine lies in the fact that she is constantly searching for this sense of belonging, even though she knows that the necessary conditions for achieving it are out of her reach and that she does not have the internal strength to make it happen. This is why she chooses to uproot herself constantly – in order to replace and somehow suppress this yearning for a sense of belonging.

In the case of your heroine, it would seem that this sense of belonging refers not so much to Kazakhstani identity as it does to Soviet identity?

I would say that it is very abstract, as her understanding of what that world – the Soviet Union – actually was is extremely vague. For her, it is more of a nostalgic desire to return to a utopian world that she doesn’t really know. It is a kind of unfulfilled longing.

In your opinion, is this longing a product of historical context? Or is it just a peculiarity of emigration?

It’s probably not a peculiarity of emigration, as the issue of emigration, diasporas and the émigré consciousness do not really interest me very much. It seems to me that this is quickly becoming an obsolete concept. The world is open, and while we still have local, regional and national identities, we are becoming more and more a part of this open space. It is another matter entirely that each generation and each individual at the personal level needs some kind of inner conflict as a drive to action. And the essence of this inner drama is often formed by historical context. In the case of my generation it is the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Your manner of writing in the first person is reminiscent of Eduard Limonov, who also achieved fame as an emigrant. However, your experience living in the United States differs markedly from his. How, in your opinion, has emigration changed in recent years? And what is “Russian America” today?

OB: I absolutely adore Limonov’s It’s Me, Eddie. It has the tone of a complete, self-destructive confession. As for emigration, I think it is becoming less and less relevant as a concept. Of course, for many people, moving to a new place is still a life-changing event. Or, for example, when I go to Brighton Beach in the States, I realize that it is not the same America as the one that can be found just a few miles away. There is a kind of local context-building here. Brighton Beach is like Kazakhstan in the 1990s in that it is nothing like Russia today, nor does it resemble modern America. It is a kind of amazing world whose identity has been preserved in space and time. This is interesting to me as an anthropologist, but not as a writer. The sphere in which I live and work as a writer is the global space – a world in which borders do not exist.

Does the current deterioration of U.S.–Russia relations influence your research or professional activities in any way? Or do people not identify you as Russian?

Most often people emphasize the features that make a person interesting to them. For some people, it is interesting to see me as a Russian; for others, I am a cosmopolitan; still others primarily see me as an ethnic German. It is another matter that the question of how I see myself and how I position myself in relation to the souring of relations between the United States and Russia naturally comes up. For me it is important to remain neutral and adopt an analytical approach to all the circumstances and geopolitical twists and turns, and not let my emotions, the controversial discourse, or media pressure get the better of me.

In a recent article, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council Andrey Kortunov suggested that we stop pinning our hopes on the Russian and U.S. leadership and start resolving the issues in our bilateral relations from below, building a dialogue among experts, researchers and representatives of the business community and establishing cultural ties. Do you think it is possible to swing public opinion in the United States and Russia this way? After all, changes in bilateral relations have historically gone “top to bottom.”

I believe in public diplomacy and fully support such an approach.

With the recent political changes, both in terms of the relations between Russia and the United States and in the internal political agendas of the two countries, it seems to me that there is a feeling that political discourse often differs markedly from the spectrum of individual opinions. A question I am asked very often in various situations is: is what they (the Russians or the Americans) are showing in the media true? Or is it in fact different? There is a high level of distrust of official discourse in both countries, and public diplomacy is a reasonably effective method of answering these kinds of questions. The thing is, without support from above, the prospects of the method and the resources available to it are extremely limited. This why any movement should probably be both top to bottom and bottom to top. But there must be movement. A decision from the top cannot change certain things at the public level, but local initiatives, even ones that take a long time to gain momentum, can serve as a good support for attempts to effect changes at the global level.

Tell us about your research interests. What are you writing your doctoral dissertation about? Was the choice of topic a natural result of the general trajectory of your education thus far? Or was it influenced by other factors? Has your fiction writing played a part in your academic work?

Right now, I am working primarily as a literary anthropologist. My research interests are modern Russian literature and politics and anything connected with the Northern Caucasus. I arrived at this subject by way of contemporary literature and postcolonial theory, with which I was deeply involved at one point in my career. What attracted me to the Northern Caucasus as a subject of academic study is its complexity – the existence of large, often unresolvable contradictions – as well as the fact that sufficiently flexible approaches to discussion of the regional and cultural material have yet to be developed, at least in terms of cultural studies and literary criticism. So that is what I am trying to do now. The Northern Caucasus in the 19th century is occupying much of my time right now. I’m studying the history of the Ghazavat and the spread of Islam in the Caucasus, particularly during the period of Imam Shamil. For my dissertation, I am rereading the Russian classics outside the framework of existing interpretations, attempting to compare the vision of the Caucasian War as presented in the works of Marlinsky, Lermontov and Tolstoy, for example, with texts written in the Caucasus during that time in Arabic. While this was primarily an imperial war for Russia, driven by the desire for territorial expansion, in the Caucasus the conflict was viewed as a religious struggle.

Do you see yourself primarily as a writer or an academic? Does this duality help or hinder you?

OB: It definitely helps. Although for a long time it probably did hinder me. I spent a long time trying to work out for myself who I was first and foremost, an academic or a writer. Should I choose one over the other? And how was I supposed to live if I couldn’t decide what my main sphere of activity was? At some point, probably when I was working on There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union, I found a compromise and came to the realization that I can do both. Not only can I do both, I want to and plan to do both. This is my principled position: I have no intention of giving up either of these spheres of activity, both of which interest me greatly. The topics that interest me as an academic often migrate from my research work to my literary activities and vice versa. Sometimes it is a little more difficult to switch from one to the other, but, on the other hand, I find that going outside my comfort zone kind of triggers creativity. That’s actually how Adderall came about, from that inner conflict.

In your novel, the protagonist takes part in a mysterious experiment that is supposed to lead to a qualitative leap in the individual’s inner resources. We can thus draw the conclusion that you are interested in new technologies. As a visionary, which areas of technology do you see as the most promising right now? What could impact our lives to the same degree that, say, computer science impacted our lives in the latter half of the 20th century?

You are one hundred per cent correct about technology. I am completely fascinated by it. More than that, right now I’m studying the anthropology of technology as a minor. But my interest is from the perspective of a person engaged in the humanities, a person of culture, of the word. That is first and foremost. As for areas that I see as being especially relevant and possessing the potential to change our world, I would point to neurobiology and artificial intelligence. And renewable energy sources. By the way, I’ve got a kind of scientific hobby – the cultural study of oil, the connection between oil and national identity in Russia.

Thank you so much! In the “Viewpoint” section, we usually ask experts to recommend books that they have particularly enjoyed recently. What could you recommend for our readers?

As part of my “oil” project, I’m writing about Aleksandr Snegirev’s Oil Venus. I would also recommend his book Faith. I was very impressed by Anna Tugareva’s Inshallah. A Chechen Diary, which was serialized in the “Friendship of Peoples” journal last year and made the shortlist for the NOS prize. It’s a very interesting read. Usually, everything that is written about modern Chechnya focuses on the topic of war, and very rarely is anyone able to effectively convey two points of view – the Chechen and the Russian. I think Tugareva managed to do just that in a very interesting way. I really like Vladimir Medvedev’s Zahhok, which is set in post-Soviet Tajikistan. It is a very powerful novel with many violent and scary scenes, but it deals with an experience of recent decades that has not yet been reflected in contemporary literature. For fans of counterculture literature, I would recommend Ilya Danishevsky’s Tenderness for the Dead, which is a very powerful and unexpected read. And, of course, one of the most important books of last year, Alexei Salnikov’s The Petrovs In and Around the Flu. It is a wonderfully written book and really unique in that it is equally popular among people with very different literary preferences. As a rule, every book in today’s literary scene has a very clearly outlined circle of readers. Salnikov managed to break these notional boundaries and divisions, winning everyone over.

As for nonfiction, I can recommend two books that are currently sitting on my bookshelf. The first is Rebecca Gould’s Writers and Rebels, which is unique, as Gould is one of the few researchers who works at the junction of Slavonic and Oriental studies. The book is devoted to Abrek culture and is the first to compare Georgian, Chechen and Dagestani sources of different periods. It is in fact the first book in English that uses original North Caucasian sources.

And I’d also like to mention Pavel Basinksy’s most recent book Look at Me. The Secret History of Liza Dyakonova, which I believe the publishers described perfectly when they said it was the story of the first Russian feminist. It is the diary of a young woman who died in mysterious circumstances and, as such, it gives us an unprecedented idea of the thought processes of a young Russian girl at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a very bold, provocative and entirely enthralling work.


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