Authors

Discussion

In the case of Russia, the post-socialist precarity associated with the withdrawal of the state from providing free housing, affordable childcare, and guaranteed jobs coincides with the aspiration of the ruling elites to re-establish the country’s status as a superpower. The Putin era is characterised by the centralisation of economic power in the hands of a corrupt bureaucracy, alongside the emergence of a middle class. Contemporary Russia has experienced a gradual erosion of political freedoms and increasing state control over cultural institutions. These trends have evolved into neoconservatism, neo-imperialism, revanchism, isolationist tendencies, and xenophobia directed both domestically and internationally.

This paper discusses the representations of ‘monstrous’ grandmothers in films and novels. By focusing on the trope of ‘bad’ grandmothers, it explores how certain practices of grandmothering are portrayed in Russian culture as a violation of social norms. It shows how  the ostracisation of older women who defy age- and gender-specific social expectations reflects the frustrations experienced by many working-age people in relation to Russia’s political environment and their limited prospects for social mobility within the merit-based post-socialist economic system.