Rodologia: Genealogy as Therapy in Post‐Soviet Russia

Abstract

The article examines how people in post‐Soviet Russia learn to interpret Soviet political genealogies as implicated in their own family histories. Based on long‐term fieldwork in a large provincial city in Russia, it focuses on a particular form of amateur genealogy called Rodologia (rodstvo = kinship). Informed by a burgeoning self‐help culture, Rodologia's followers argue that psychological “self‐realization” can be achieved by identifying the effects of state violence on family histories. Using a Lamarckian‐like idea of heredity, Rodologia argues that social and political upheavals, such as gulags, collectivization, and wars, “scar” people's genes and shape the behavior, self, and history of their descendants. The article demonstrates how popular attempts to attribute meanings to Soviet state violence are mediated by a surprising alliance of two cultural logics for articulating the self emerging in post‐Soviet Russia—a thriving therapeutic “self‐help” culture and a form of recollection inspired by genealogical imagination. A flourishing therapeutic culture and amateur genealogy, I show, emerge as a means to both organize one's relation to the Soviet past and to make sense of fundamental changes occurring in meanings of political order in post‐Soviet Russia.

Postsocialism, the psy-ences and mental health

“…Indeed, over the past two decades there has been a remarkable growth in various forms of psychotherapy in East Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, and China (Matza, 2012;Sirotkina & Smith, 2010;Yang, 2013;Zhang, 2014). In Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, a range of therapeutic forms has flourished, from various modalities of formal psychotherapy, coaching and counseling, to self-help movements, radio call-in shows, and therapeutically informed television programs (Honey, 2014;Lerner, 2011;Lerner & Zbenovich, 2013;Leykin, 2015;Matza, 2009Matza, , 2012Raikhel, 2016;Salmenniemi & Vorona, 2014;Zigon, 2010), while in China a similar phenomenon has been described as a "psy fever" or "psycho-boom" (Zhang, 2014(Zhang, , 2015. It is precisely because psychotherapy is never simply a matter of "alleviat[ing] psychological distress," but "always involves subtler normative questions of how to live the good life," (Kirmayer, 2007, p. 248) that it has become so significant in these settings where norms, roles, and social expectations have changed rapidly in a short period of time.…”

Genealogical Relatedness: Geographies of Shared Descent and Difference

“…The nature, meaning, and effects of how genealogy is used to make sense of individual or collective identity depend on its context. Genealogy ranges from personally meaningful but largely un-contentious projects to explore a family tree [31], to genealogical practices that are ways of making sense of deeply political contexts and recovering genealogical knowledge in response to historical violence [32,33]. Recent efforts to consider how genealogy can be used in progressive and critical ways offer important practical as well as conceptual tools for doing so [9,[15][16][17].…”

On emotionalisation of public domains

“…In the Russian and post-Soviet context, where capitalism is relatively young and psychologised cultural knowledge is still in its infancy, therapeutic culture is developing on top of historical strata of emotional practices, which Lerner has called 'emotional socialism' (Lerner, 2015). research is already showing how new therapeutic forms in Russia are shaping knowledge production, transforming relationships between the individual and the state, and being translated into religious and nationalist forms of morality (Leykin, 2015;Matza, 2018).…”