Road as a Social Space: An Attempt at Reconstruction Through Twentieth-Century Soviet and Post-Soviet Travel Prose

Abstract

In this essay, I attempt to examine travel prose of Russian-language authors of the 20th century – fictional and documentary descriptions of travels across the territory of the European part of Russia – as sources for reconstructing the social space of the road. The structure of the positions of those interacting in this space is defined as dependent on the process of movement, as well as the means of transportation or their absence. I further consider the social space of the road in the perspective of intersections with external segments of social space through the simultaneous definition of communicants in the road and external systems of statuses.