Defining Patriotism, Citizenship, and Betrayal: Excerpt from “Don’t Be a Stranger” and a personal introduction from Jason Galie
April 27, 2022
We are pleased to present here an excerpt of Don’t Be a Stranger: Russian Literature and the Perils of Not Fitting In, accompanied by a short personal introduction in which the author, Jason Galie, situates the volume’s analysis of the svoj/chuzhoj dichotomy in Russian society and literature within the larger context of the current war in Ukraine. Don’t Be a Stranger explores the consequences of being marked an outsider in the Russian-speaking world through a close study of several seminal works of Russian literature. The author combines the fields of literary studies, linguistics, and sociology to illuminate what prompted Christof Ruhl, an economist at the World Bank, to comment, about Russia, “On a very broad scale, it’s a country where people care about their family and friends. Their clan. But not their society.”