SUMMARY:

This article is a response to the concept of Russophonia, which has gained currency in contemporary Russian studies scholarship through the work of Naomi Caffee, Nina Freiss, and others, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The authors of this article, based in the field of modern languages, recognize that Russophonia provides a welcome return to a critical emphasis on language, while also offering a framework that is keenly attuned to the nexus of language, culture, and politics, and the power relations therein. The authors compare Russophonia with other critical models that take Russian Studies beyond the boundaries of the Russian Federation, including their own volume Transnational Russian Studies and Kevin Platt’s Global Russian Cultures. While the authors highlight that Russophonia has been posited as a framework to decenter Russia and decolonize Russian Studies, they observe that such attempts can paradoxically end up reinforcing the centrality of Russia in its most negative aspects. The authors examine how these paradoxes play out in contemporary Russophone poetry, analyzing the way certain Russophone writers have charted their changing relationship to their own language and culture since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The authors reflect on questions of scholarly positionality, suggesting an approach inspired by quantum theory that recognizes the dynamic relationship between subject and object of study. They offer “language commons” and the “planetary” as concepts that might allow us to build on the tools offered by Russophonia.