포스트소비에트 리미널리티와 불가능의 코뮤니타스: 바실리 시가례프의 희곡 <플라스틸린>을 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze Vasily Sigarev's play, which exposes the growing anxiety and impossible communitas in post-Soviet society, based on an understanding of liminality, a cultural anthropological concept. Vasily Sigarev's Play <Plasticine> stands as a representative work in post-Soviet drama since the 2000s, focusing on a unique generation thrust into the collapse of the Soviet Union, portraying the apocalypse of post-Soviet society. The protagonist Maxim represents the transitional generation that is abruptly excluded from new laws, conventions, and consciousness, without prior notice, and is thrust into a liminal state without preparation. This study centers on Sigarev's works, highlighting the post-Soviet generation trapped in perpetual liminality, separated from existing order and structure but unable to transition into a communitas state. The research aims to investigate how drama, particularly Sigarev's works, addresses the uncertainties and disruptions of the era. To accomplish this, Victor Turner's concept of "liminality" is employed as a theoretical framework, reading the turmoil and anxiety in the transitional Soviet society as a manifestation of perpetual liminality. Russian cultural historian Sergei Ushakin views the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet society as a liminal state, focusing on the "syndrome of transition" among post-Soviet youth as liminal personas. As Ushakin suggests, the period surrounding perestroika marked an abrupt and unexpected social transition, making Turner's liminality crucial for understanding the unstable and uncertain post-Soviet liminality. Sigarev's <Plasticine> draws attention to societal issues within the liminality of "new drama," embedding universal problems such as massive social inequality, false- hoods, hypocrisy, ontological uncertainty, and complete alienation from the community. In the con- text of post-Soviet liminality, Maxim's untimely demise, occurring without a transition into communi- tas, serves as a perennial starting point that must always be traversed when viewing the complexities of life and the uncertainties of reality addressed in post-Soviet drama.