Polly Jones on Performance and Performativity in the Putin-era Political Trial

This talk analyses Putin-era uses of the ‘last word’ (poslednee slovo), a long-standing provision of the Russian legal system granting trial defendants the right to make a final statement. The first part of the article considers the key modes of last word performance in political trials from 2000 to 2024. It traces continuities with earlier eras’ modes of trial performance and dissent, but also highlights the recent emergence of less optimistic and less antagonistic and binary discourses of subjectivity and citizenship. The second part of the paper traces continuities and changes in Putin-era practices of compilation, circulation and multi-media adaptation of last words beyond the courtroom. It argues that, despite the unprecedented number and generic variety of ‘anthological’ projects in the 21st century, their primary orientation and most tangible impact is on émigré communities emerging and evolving out of the ‘fifth wave’ of emigration after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Polly Jones is Professor of Russian and Fellow of University College, Oxford. Her books include Gulag Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2024), Myth Memory Trauma: the Stalinist past as Soviet Culture (Yale), and Revolution Rekindled. The Writers and Readers of Late Soviet Biography (OUP). She is working on two projects currently, one about contemporary political prisoners, and the other on 'the 101st kilometre' in Soviet history and culture.