‘Bilbao on the Kama’? The Perm Cultural Project and Its Critics (Part 1)

Abstract

The following text is the first part of the Chapter 8 of Douglas Rogers's book The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, and Culture after Socialism (Cornell University Press, 2015). The second part will be published in the next issue of the journal. The review of the book was published in the journal in 2017, No. 2. It is a prominent study of the 'Perm cultural project', one of the most important events in regional politics over the 2000s. That is why we publish this text with the kind permission of the author and the publisher. Earlier chapters of the book are dedicated to the Soviet-era history of oil in the Perm region, the privatization of the 1990s, and Lukoil's social and cultural projects.