Spaces as means of resistance: Bulgakov and Dostoevsky

This thesis attempts to illustrate how Mikhail Bulgakov uses Fyodor Dostoevsky's example of spatial practice to resist Soviet Materialism. It illuminates how the constructed environment, space, and ideology are inherently integrated. Materialism is resisted partly through creating liminal space. Liminal spaces are often associated with evil, possibly because they are inherently uncontrollable. Both authors use the Devil as a positive figure who reinforces divine order by expressing the process of liminalization, which allows the individual to take responsibility for moral action.Chapter two demonstrates the principles described in chapter one, using specific examples of spatial construction. The example of Patriarch's Ponds in Moscow is used to demonstrate reconstructed sacred space over the profane space created by the Soviet government. Bulgakov excavates layers of ideology---corresponding to layers of physical features---that the Soviet government built over the ecclesiastical landscape of Patriarch's Ponds.Chapter three elaborates upon the mechanics and functioning of space, specifically unified and contradictory space. The abstraction of space is at the root of this phenomenon. Space is made abstract when it becomes a concept that interferes with the lived reality of the users of that space.Chapter four examines how Bulgakov effects the actual subversion of materialist space following Dostoevsky's example: affliction. Through the application of affliction rites, the individual is able to delineate himself from surrounding communal space.Chapter one investigates how space is constructed and how Bulgakov appropriates Dostoevsky's spatial practice. Dostoevsky's spatial practice is shown to be essentially medieval, in which space is conceptualized as a unified and objective whole, in which there is inherent order. I use Henri Lefebvre's concepts of space, specifically unified and contradictory space, in order to qualify the nature of Bulgakov's and Dostoevsky's representation of space. Contradictory space is created when the usage of space is contrary to or separated from that space's intended usage.