The early 20th century was the period of both social and cultural upheavals and pursuits.

Realistic
portrayal of life did not satisfy authors any longer, and their argument with the classics of the 19th
century generated a bundle of new literary movements.
Although the Silver Age was dominated by the artistic movements of Russian Symbolism, Acmeism,
and Russian Futurism, many poetic schools flourished, including the Mystical Anarchism tendency
within the Symbolist movement. There were also such poets as Ivan Bunin and Marina
Tsvetayeva who refused to align themselves with any of these movements. Alexander Blok emerged
as the leading poet, respected by virtually everyone. The poetic careers of Anna Akhmatova, Boris
Pasternak, and Osip Mandelshtam, all of them spanning many decades, were also launched during
that period.
The Silver Age ended after the Russian Civil War. Blok's death and Nikolai Gumilev's execution in
1921, as well as the appearance of the highly influential Pasternak collection, My Sister is
Life (1922), marked the end of the era. The Silver Age was nostalgically looked back to by émigré
poets, led by Georgy Ivanov in Paris and Vladislav Khodasevich in Berlin. The work by poets of the
Silver Age was largely neglected or forbidden during the Soviet period, but it was revived by Russian
singer-songwriters, such as Elena Frolova and Larisa Novoseltseva.
POSTMODERNISM

61

is intended as a parody of Utopian literature. Similarly, parody is a cen-tral technique of postmodernist art. He
then distinguishes “postmodernist dystopian fiction” that “often takes a parodic ap-proach not only to
Utopian literature but to dystopian literature as well” (117). While Booker applies his definition to the fiction
of the 1980s and the 1990s, the works of Sorokin, Slavnikova, and Pelevin also present features of dystopia
that are simultaneously parodically undermined and can be consequently classified as postmodernist dys-
topias.3 Here, I agree with Mark Lipovetsky, who, in his book Parologii (Paralogs, 2008), argues that
postmodernism does not disappear at the beginning of the twenty first century. Instead, it undergoes a
transfor-mation, becoming more responsive to popular culture and social con-cerns.4
With its investigation of the interaction between virtual space and totalitarian regime, “Akiko” continues and
contributes to the cen-tral preoccupations of Russian postmodernism: its emphasis on con-structed reality
and its close connection to the totalitarian systems. While the notion of simulated or constructed reality first
developed in the West, there it is primarily connected to consumerism. In contrast to this Western
development, Russian postmodernist writers and the-orists emphasize the central role of the state, which
becomes the prin-cipal simulator of reality. Soviet history, culminating in the dramatic collapse of the Soviet
Union, demonstrates the constructed nature of any discourse. Even though, in the period of developed
socialism, Soviet elites already experienced Soviet reality as constructed—as demonstrated by the
conceptualist art, the collapse of the Soviet Un-ion was still a dramatic and traumatic experience. The
disappearance of the Soviet Union was followed by disappointment in the ideals of Western democracy,
which also appeared as an illusion. As a result, both post-Soviet scholars and writers constantly return to the
notion of reality as an artificial construct.5
Though the protagonist of Pelevin’s story believes that he can freely enjoy the pleasures of consumption, his
consumerist activities trap him in the systems of economic and political domination. Consumption is then
controlled by totalitarian systems that appear even more totaliz-ing than that of the Soviet past. Pelevin’s
“Akiko” takes the dystopian theme to its logical conclusion. The story appears even more pessi-mistic than
other Russian postmodernist dystopian fiction due to the absolute disappearance of the protagonist’s
subjectivity: consumption leads to the loss of agency; and the virtual space turns into a perf