Russo-Soviet imperialist hauntings : Neo-Gothic geographies in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989

Russo-Soviet imperialist hauntings conceptualizes neo-Gothic texts from the former Eastern Bloc countries and Soviet republics in postcolonial terms. It maps virtually untouched aspects of cultural decolonization, focusing on the uncanny return of repressed and unsettling “hauntings” of unresolved memory traces of Russo-Soviet domination. -- .

Russo-Soviet Imperialist Hauntings explores the ghosts of colonial and totalitarian pasts that have resurfaced across international political and cultural landscapes since the collapse of the USSR. Merging postcolonial, post-totalitarian, postcommunist and Gothic frameworks, the volume examines largely overlooked dimensions of cultural decolonisation, focusing on the unsettling “hauntings” of unresolved memory traces of Russo-Soviet domination in former Eastern Bloc countries and Soviet republics. Working within a wide intertextual field of social, cultural and ideological discourses, it fosters productive exchange across disciplinary boundaries and brings together voices from Europe and North America. Contributors draw on transmedia approaches—literature, visual art, film—as well as transnational and translingual perspectives, illuminating the diverse forms the Gothic has taken in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries and its persistent engagement with history, ideology and politics. -- .