CHARLOTTENGRAD

Charlottengrad examines the Russian émigré and exile community that found itself in Berlin during the first wave of emigration after the 1917 Revolution brought the tsarist government of Russia crashing down. Roman Utkin shows that the idea of a community aligned with Imperial Russia and hostile to the new Soviet government is far too simplistic. By closely studying the intellectual output of some of the hundreds of thousands of Russian émigrés ensconced in Berlin's Charlottenburg neighborhood, Utkin reveals a picture of some of the world's first "stateless" peoples struggling to understand their new identity as emigrants and exiles, balancing their sense of Russianness with their position in a modern, bustling Western city, and navigating their political and personal positionality toward a homeland that was no longer home.