‘In the Age of Technology, It Is Interesting to Look into the Past and Think about What We Can Take from It’

Polina Tabakova decided to apply for a Philology degree at HSE in Nizhny Novgorod because she grew up in Mari El and did not want to move far away from the Russian forests. In an interview for the Young Scientists of HSE University project, she spoke about the genre of the campus novel, the existential drama of Kolobok, and a blackout version of Eugene Onegin.

Why I Chose a Career in Science

I tend towards mythological thinking and believe in signs, symbols, and coincidences, so my choice of philology was partly a matter of chance.

As a child, I certainly did not want to become a philologist, mainly because I did not know who philologists were or what they did. However, at the age of sixteen, I attended a creative writing programme at the Sirius Educational Centre. When I returned home, I told everyone that I would definitely become a philologist. My family, mostly made up of doctors and lawyers, looked at me with some confusion, but they supported me.

I specifically wanted to study at HSE. In my imagination, there existed a kind of myth associated with it—a place of intellectual freedom and an excellent academic programme, although I did not know any lecturers of philology personally. I clearly felt that this was where I belonged. Now I can say that I made the right choice.

I was admitted not through the Unified State Examination (USE), but via an academic competition, namely an olympiad, because in the middle of my final school year I decided, for personal reasons, not to take English. I knew I was taking a risk, but somehow I felt that everything would work out. And it did.

At the beginning of my first year, one of the lecturers said that the word is the most powerful weapon. At the time, this resonated deeply with my own feelings. Throughout my life, I have believed that it is the word—rather than political concepts or historical events—that determines the development of society.

This is why my academic career is connected with a desire to study language from every possible angle, to understand how people, through their ideas and theories, are capable of achieving both mutual understanding and insight into global trends.

I would like to be not only a scholar, but also, if possible, a writer and a critic. Therefore, I try to write in different formats. For a long time, I worked as a copywriter, and now I have become a regular contributor to the website gorky.media.

What I Study

I study the rather closed and hermetic genre of the Anglo-American campus novel, particularly its contemporary state. Why did I choose this topic?

I enrolled at HSE University–Nizhny Novgorod, moved to an unfamiliar city, and was placed in a student hall of residence. In my view, the Russian dormitory as a phenomenon is quite close to the Anglo-American campus: it is also a closed space where time seems to stand still, and where there exists a strict hierarchy that reproduces itself.

For me, this is a special mode of existence. Only during one’s university years is it possible to find yourself in a situation where you have just three hours left to sleep, yet you are standing in the kitchen discussing the latest film adaptation by Martin McDonagh. And you do not care at all that you will not get enough sleep, because what is happening within this community and on this small patch of land is the most important thing in your life at that moment.

The campus novel turned out to be a remarkable genre: it reflects the whole of social life within a global context—a kind of paper model of the wider world. These are not works written by scholars for scholars, but rather complex, heterogeneous structures in which writers, operating within a particular elite academic environment, use language to both anticipate the future and evaluate the past.

What Makes the Campus Novel Distinctive

Over the past thirty years, campus novels have been written mainly about students. Within the genre, one often encounters what the media have termed ‘dark academia’: students form secret societies and attempt, sometimes in rather unsafe ways, to recreate rituals from antiquity (for example, Bacchanalia), the Middle Ages, or the early modern period.

This is especially interesting to me because, in an age of technology when we are all trying to look only forward, it is fascinating to turn to the past and consider what we can take from it in order to regulate present-day processes. What the campus novel addresses can be applied to many spheres, not only to academia in general or philology in particular.

Everything grows out of the British tradition. However, if one looks at the body of campus novels, in recent years the focus has shifted largely to American colleges and campuses. Why is this the case? Why do these environments so often give rise to forms of antisocial and even extreme behaviour among students? It is not entirely clear. Perhaps it reflects aspects of American society, with its conservative turn and renewed interest in archaic forms, or perhaps it shows how the American academic agenda shapes intellectual trends across the world.

Examples of Campus Novels

Notable examples include The Secret History by Donna Tartt, If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence and Katabasis by Rebecca F. Kuang, among others. Campus novels are often written by young women who have graduated from Oxbridge or Ivy League universities. The barrier to entry is quite high: to fully understand the authors’ references, one often needs to have read dozens of other works, including those by James Joyce, Marcel Proust, René Girard, and Georges Bataille. Despite this, such books frequently become bestsellers.

Katabasis tells the story of two doctoral students whose academic supervisor dies, forcing them to descend into the underworld in search of him to obtain a letter of recommendation. Without it, they cannot defend their dissertations, graduate, or begin teaching. This underworld, with its circles, is structured like a university environment—grotesque and at the same time humorous.

Today, people often speak about a crisis of universities as institutions and of those who work within them. Criticising this environment through literature is an effective strategy, because books provoke a vivid response. The campus novel reacts sharply and quickly to problems within academia. For this reason, it is interesting to read not only for aesthetic pleasure, but also as a form of field observation of contemporary academic life.

What I Am Proud of

My main achievement is very personal. I have managed to prove to myself and to others that working on a very narrow genre or a single author matters not only for philology, but for many other academic fields as well. Twentieth-century public intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Toni Morrison, and Susan Sontag presented scholarship not as a closed domain that requires great effort to understand, but also as a space for engagement with a broad audience. I try to follow the same path and communicate ideas that are important to me as ideas that matter to many people. Because if literature speaks about something, other fields should not remain silent about it.

What I Dream About

For me, a PhD dissertation, and the academic path in general, is a way of achieving symbolic value and giving weight to my words. I would like to combine different forms of expression, writing not only academic texts but also fiction. An example would be my essays and reviews published on the website gorky.media.

In general, I am very quick to become inspired by ideas and can devote a great deal of time and energy to them. Last year, I took part in publishing a playful, unconventional version of Kolobok. Translators provided a linguo-cultural commentary, while I wrote a philological one. I tried to explain how Kolobok can be reinterpreted through images that resonate with contemporary readers.

Kolobok is, in essence, an existential drama. In a global context, it is a story about an eternal search and a constant desire to move away from the familiar, the logical, and the organised towards something entirely different. This ‘Kolobok-like’ quality of the modern world seemed to me an original and unusual phenomenon. I interviewed folklorists, who told me that there are already established studies on the reception of Kolobok. But I was interested in what Kolobok means to them today. Many responded with confusion, as they were not used to thinking about something familiar in a new context. This requires a profound process of defamiliarisation—transforming something well-known into something new.

I would like to continue working on such projects. At the moment, at HSE we are trying to create an institution focused on foreign drama. It remains little known in the field of research, yet it is a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon that deserves to be studied—not only by philologists, but by a wider audience as well. That is why we want to develop performative forms of expression, inviting people to stage plays with us or take part in readings.

Literary Criticism

I appreciate it when literary criticism is written by philologists. When I read a commentary by Lev Oborin on gorky.media, I am absolutely delighted. It is one thing to use academic terminology and communicate ideas to colleagues, but quite another to convey the same ideas to a broad readership. I admire it when philologists enter the public sphere.

Another observation: it seems to me that speaking about literature in the format of a podcast or a video review is somewhat easier than writing. Writing in the modern world is a considerable risk, because it is completely unpredictable. You might be read by only a handful of people, or by a vast audience.

The profession of the book critic has not disappeared, but it has transformed. Today, critics are often not only critics, but also philologists and philosophers—people like Dmitry Khaustov. These are individuals who approach texts critically, but who also have a strong background in the humanities. I would like to reach that level as well.

If I Hadn’t Decided to Work with Words

I remember that as a child I wanted to become a mermaid. In general, I was always drawn to vast spaces—the sea or forests. I come from the Republic of Mari El, where there are many lakes. I think I might have studied flora and fauna—perhaps become a marine biologist, or spent my time measuring the height of trees, or studying butterflies. Something very romantic. I even chose the campus in Nizhny Novgorod rather than Moscow, because in Moscow the city seems to consume nature. I, on the contrary, love touching birch trees, walking, and breathing in the forest air. In Nizhny Novgorod, two important things for me come together: it is the university I had always wanted to attend, and if such a thing as a ‘Russian soul’ exists, then for me it certainly exists there.

About Mari El

Mari El is the only place in Russia where elements of paganism have been preserved—sacred birch groves and remnants of a worldview that the Soviet authorities once tried to eradicate.

We would very much like to write a book about how, at three in the morning, my friends and I once saw a glowing duck in a lake. There is a legend connected with this lake: a brother, for the sake of his sister, killed everyone in their native village, and the village sank beneath the water. At certain times, people claim to see a cross in the middle of the lake—although no divers have ever found any such cross.

If you grow up in a region like this, it shapes your entire life. Wherever you go, you cannot remove this way of thinking, this way of perceiving the world—not only rationally, but also through folklore.

Which Scholars I Would Like to Meet

From an academic point of view, I would like to meet one of the French post-structuralists—Gilles Deleuze or Jean Baudrillard. On a more personal level, I would like to meet one of the great female intellectuals of the twentieth century—Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt, or Simone de Beauvoir. I would want to understand where they found the courage to speak about very difficult or deeply personal matters without fear. Perhaps this is something we lack today.

I am very interested in women and women’s thought. I believe that women are often truly powerful figures in the literary and intellectual field. At the same time, the female voice is very important to me, because in recent years it has not been particularly audible in Russian literature. Women may not speak about themselves as often, and when they do, it is not always well received. I hope that in the twenty-first century a voice will emerge that will finally speak openly about what women have long remained silent about.

A Typical Day for Me

My day is structured around essential tasks—those I will definitely complete. Everything else is arranged more chaotically. I am not someone who follows a strict plan. If I have time and feel a strong desire today to listen to a course on translating the Old Testament into Ancient Greek, then that is what I will do.

Do I Ever Experience Burnout?

I would describe it rather as crisis points. They are mostly connected with doubts about my personal achievements—or the lack of them—with evaluating what I have done and not done, and, more generally, with questioning whether my path is the right one.

My Interests Besides Science

For a long time, I dreamed of becoming a film scholar—travelling to Cannes, drinking Aperol, and watching the latest film by Lars von Trier. But I am not a film critic—and perhaps I never will be. Still, I love cinema and watch it without any strict schedule or clear idea of where exactly I want to arrive.

I also enjoy activities connected with nature. I often travel to my ‘second homeland,’ the Ryazan region, a place of ‘mushrooms with eyes’ and other local beliefs. It is my place of strength. I come from a rather old-fashioned, Tolstoy-like type of Russian family that loves hunting and fishing, and this too is familiar to me.

What I Have Rewatched Recently

I enjoy the films of Roman Polanski, Martin McDonagh, Lars von Trier, and Ingmar Bergman. For me, they are almost like artistic provocateurs: they always speak about what is hidden, and their films feel like performances on the edge. These directors address themes that society would prefer to leave unspoken.

Recently, I rewatched all of Polanski’s films. The one that stayed with me most was Venus in Fur. Lately, I have been particularly interested in the relationship between a creator and their muse, and in how a work of art speaks not only to the audience, but also to its creator.

What I Have Enjoyed Reading

I was struck by a blackout edition of Eugene Onegin, in which the artist ‘Blue Pencil’ crossed out most of the text while reconstructing, from drafts and different versions, a structure closer to the original intention.

This work reaches the level of a palimpsest, where one text shows through another. If the artist wanted to create a new meaning, they sometimes crossed out not just phrases, but even parts of words, until a new whole emerged. This is fascinating both visually and in terms of textual semantics.

I am not a specialist in Alexander Pushkin or nineteenth-century literature, but I am deeply interested in the idea of what remains in memory. What, in fact, can survive after many years? In this version, Onegin appears in a kind of vacuum—a space separated by these black deletions. For me, this is not a violation of literature, but rather a metaphor for what is happening today with publishing and with the literary world in general.

Advice for Aspiring Scientists

If you are not ready to fight for something, then you simply do not love it. If you are not prepared to defend what you do in front of a person of any status or authority—if you are willing to say you are wrong while believing the opposite—then you should ask yourself whether this is truly your path. For me, it is always a struggle, because there is no other way. You must stand for what you love to the very end.

My Favourite Place in Nizhny Novgorod

My favourite place is the Shchelokovsky Khutor Museum-Reserve, located about half an hour from the city centre. There, the forest borders on a park area, and there are always many people around. It feels like a small miracle that you can encounter a real Russian forest just a short distance from your home. I also adore the city’s embankments, especially the Fedorovsky Embankment, which was renovated for the 800th anniversary of Nizhny Novgorod.

My Favourite Places in Mari El

Our wonderful lakes are very important to me. They are well maintained, with lots of tourist accommodation built around them. You can book a stay in small, old Soviet cottages that were once constructed by factories that no longer exist. There are no modern comforts, but people spend two weeks there and feel completely happy.

Another important place is Yoshkar-Ola—the city that always comes to mind in word games after Johannesburg. Its artificially created ‘European’ style combines with a cosy sense of home. From an art-historical point of view, it is certainly ambiguous, but for an ordinary resident it is beautiful. The city has managed to synthesise many influences—Bruges-style embankments, Neuschwanstein Castle, and the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio. It is also significant that everything is red: in the Mari language, Yoshkar-Ola means ‘red city’.