In search of the lost enemy: Mythology of the civil war as a factor of the regional identity in Transbaikalia .

Abstract

The center orientation and closed character of the Soviet space turned borderline areas into half-empty places remaining in absolute readiness for confrontation. According to the Soviet outlook on the world borders were viewed as a source of danger and an area of confrontation with the enemies. The paper analyses late Soviet discursive practices concerning the danger of fictional Cossack communities in Mongolia, China, and Transbaikalia with their old-fashioned life style and strong anti-Soviet attitudes and their influence for modern process of reconciliation (after Civil War) in Eastern Siberia. Originating form J. Scott’s and G. Agamben’s ideas concerning the performative power of state description using categories of exclusion the author will attempt to avoid straightforward early-socialist martyrization to show symbolic aspects of exclusion and the specificity of political demonology of the post-Stalinist USSR.J. Scott’s attitude towards the key role of state description in the development of borderline political banditry and the possibility to usurp the field of official ideology and adapt it for a group’s own needs described by G.-E. Debord will constitute the theoretical basis for the paper.