cannabis (2230) literature (1694) soviet union (36) drug policy (13) tatyana tolstaya (1)
Following the material prosperity that occurred under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, improvements in living standards and the loss of Communist Party moral authority saw the communist system begin to erode as ideology became less relevant (Keep 2002).
Tatyana Tolstaya’s short stories began to be published in this period; Tolstaya started writing On the Golden Porch (OGP) in 1983. Against the absolutism of the earlier totalitarian periods, Perestroika was a more ambiguous era and its literature affords a more delicate reflection on everyday Soviet life. Tolstaya’s contribution is to refine our understanding of ‘alienation’, a concept that is prominent within OGP.
Tolstaya’s various vignettes point towards alienation being an integral part of the everyday within the late Soviet era as the Soviet Union began to lose its ideological and cultural relevancy.