Abstract

This article examines Yan Satunovsky’s creative strategies in the context of so-called “barracks poetry”, which in turn represents one of the aesthetic dominants of the Lianozovo school, one of the central phenomena of Soviet unofficial literature. “Barracks poetry” itself is not so much a homogenous practice as a set of artistic positions articulated in different ways by the core authors associated with the group (Evgeny Kropivnitsky, Igor Kholin, Genrikh Sapgir); the term also serves to mythologize this tendency in underground poetics (in publications by Olga Andreeva-Carlisle, Konstantin Kuzminsky, Eduard Limonov). The article analyzes the mutual reception of the “barracks” poets and Satunovsky and demonstrates Satunovsky’s engagement with the “barracks” aesthetic. Satunovsky understands this aesthetic more broadly than that of the orthodox representatives of “barracks poetry”, and offers a reinterpretation of and meta-reflection on this aesthetic.