Modelling Counterfactual History in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia

这个项目的目标是检查的语用学的反事实，即场景，采取的问题“会发生什么，如果.“作为一个起点，在文化进程的宏观层面上。本研究将探讨过去反事实叙事的文化条件、功能以及结构特征。该项目将同样侧重于历史，特别是其历史学的组成部分，并在文学虚构的替代历史。我们将研究苏联和后苏联文化的典型案例：它的历史文化特征，在苏联时代拒绝反事实思维，随后在后苏联俄罗斯大力宣传历史，使我们能够研究促进历史反事实模型出现的文化机制。此外，在俄罗斯，反事实情景与文化记忆密切相关，其社会和历史政治功能变得清晰可见。通过回答以下问题，本项目将为反事实的思维和写作模式及其迄今未被探索的文化维度提供一个新的视角：（i）哪些历史哲学和文学条件使文化能够创造反事实情景？决定论和偶然性的关系是什么？历史中的具体方法和规则方法的关系是什么？这些方面与反事实文学的出现有什么关系？(ii)反事实情景的文化功能是什么？该项目从工作假设开始，即历史和虚构的未实现的可能性的制定同时是文化记忆的构成和动态元素。(iii)上述关于反事实推测的文化功能的问题与关于其叙事结构的问题密切相关：在思想实验中，选择、分割、安排和呈现未实现事件等手段是如何影响文化记忆元素的重组的？具体的小说技巧，如叙事传达、聚焦或时间和空间的语义化，又是如何在文学的超时空中起作用的？(iv)为什么世纪的俄罗斯文化在处理未实现的过去的概念时表现出特殊的困难？对这些迄今为止未被注意的俄罗斯文化细节的考察，是为了让我们对俄罗斯处理历史的方式得出新的结论。

The goal of this project is to examine the pragmatics of counterfactuals, i.e. of scenarios that take the question "What would have happened, if..." as a starting point, on the macro level of cultural processes. In this project, cultural conditions and functions as well as structural characteristics of counterfactual narration of the past will be explored. The project will equally focus on history, especially on its historiosophical component, and on fictional alternate histories in literature. We will examine the exemplary case of Soviet and post-Soviet culture: Its historical-cultural characteristics with the rejection of counterfactual thinking in the Soviet era followed by a strong propagation of conjectural history in post-Soviet Russia allow us to study the cultural mechanisms that foster the emergence of counterfactual models of history. Furthermore, in Russia, counterfactual scenarios are closely connected to cultural memory, whereby their social and historical-political function becomes clearly visible. Furthermore, with a part of the project comprising a comparative perspective, more general literary and cultural theoretical conclusions can be drawn.By answering the following questions, the project will provide a new view of counterfactual models of thinking and writing and their to date unexplored cultural dimension: (i) Which historical-philosophical and literary conditions enable a culture to create counter-factual scenarios? Which is the relation of determinism and contingency, of idiographic and nomothetic approaches in and towards history and how are these aspects relevant for the emergence of counterfactual literature? (ii) Which are the cultural functions performed by counterfactual scenarios? The project starts from the working hypothesis that historic and fictional enactments of unrealized possi-bilities are at the same time constitutive and dynamic elements of a cultural memory. (iii) The aforementioned question regarding the cultural function of counterfactual speculations is closely connected to the question regarding their narrative structures: In what way are devices such as selection, segmentation, arrangement and presentation of unrealized events influencing the restructuring of elements of the cultural memory in thought experiments? And how do specifically fictional techniques like narrative conveyance, focalization or semantization of time and space in turn matter in literary uchronia? (iv) Why does Russian culture of the 20th and 21st century show peculiar difficulties in dealing with the concepts of unrealized past? The examination of these to date unnoticed specifics of Russian culture is to allow for new conclusions regarding its handling of history.