Emily Wang

In 2015, the Russian Federation celebrated the “Year of Russian Literature.” The official logo for this celebration featured three famous writers in profile: Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, and Anna Akhmatova. Significantly, even though they are often employed as symbols of Russian national greatness, none of these figures was exclusively Russian: Pushkin was descended from an African general on his mother’s side, Gogol was Ukrainian, and Akhmatova was a Ukrainian who wrote under a penname borrowed from a presumed Tatar ancestor. Indeed, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation have always been multiethnic states, even as the Russian (russkii) majority has been culturally and politically dominant since the Middle Ages, after the Golden Horde ruled Russia for two centuries. In fact, because of this imperial diversity, even “European” Russians have historically expressed anxiety as well as pride in their “Asiatic” heritage. Russian culture has always been preoccupied with its own ethnic ambiguity. Wang's project helps us understand the “limits of whiteness” as it pertains to Russia, to borrow a term from sociologist Neda Maghbouleh, by examining how those claiming the mantle of a Russian national poet alternately assumed European, African, and Asian identities. Racial Ambiguity and the Russian National Poet: Identity in the Shadow of Pushkin argues that racial ambiguity, or the quality of not fitting into established racial or ethnic categories, defines Russian culture.