This Land Is Your Land: Andrei Bitov Travels Through the Caucasus

The present article examines Andrei Bitov’s Lessons of Armenia (Uroki Аrmenii) and A Georgian Album (Gruzinskii al’bom) as examples subversive late-Soviet travel writing. While some scholars have noted imperialist tendencies in the two travelogues, I argue that Bitov effectively challenges colonial perspective. Besides considering Soviet state’s push for writing tourism while was his texts, uses Mary Louise Pratt’s deconstruction colonialist a theoretical framework. Adapting extending her work, examine how consistently deploys subverts three key devices: mastery seen/scene, cultural-translational ability, narratorial agency. Written under guise komandirovka reveal artifice their construction. First, they run counter to primary objective travelogues era, when authors were tasked with documenting satellite republics fortifying hold over them through narratives propaganda. By exposing own insecurities about wielding agency story, suggests systemic problem attitude. Second, yielding hosts literary predecessors Caucasus, acknowledges bounds efforts assert control foreign or space.