(Post)colonial Nationalism or National (Post)Colonialism: 20th Anniversary of Brother 2

The article focuses on Alexey Balabanov’s flagship film Brother 2 (2000), which is devoted to the Russian neo-imperial ambitions and traditionally perceived as a “popular” manifesto of Russian nationalism. The author proposes an approach based on the concepts of postcolonial theory and decolonial thinking (in the Tlostanian sense). Firstly, the creation of a unique author’s style by the “provincial” Balabanov (a native of Sverdlovsk) can be viewed as a contradiction to the postcolonial theory, which says that the “subaltern” (Gayatri Spivak) cannot speak in the face of the metropolis. Of course, this only takes place if we recognize the legitimacy of Alexander Etkind’s concept of a specific “internal colonization” in the Russian statehood. Secondly, the evolution of Balabanov’s hero does not imply any preferences for the Russians and constructs a single paradigm to unite Danila Bagrov - “the first real hero of the post-Soviet cinema” (Vasily Koretsky), the Englishman John Boyle from the film War, the Yakut woman Mergen from the short film River, Major Scriabin nicknamed Yakut (Fireman) ... Thus, Balavanov’s mythology of “brotherhood” is not international, yet it cannot be reduced to Russianness (Andrey Plakhov). Thirdly, the metropolis in Balabanov’s dilogy, be it “not Leningrad, but Petersburg”, the capital Moscow or the gangster Chicago, is losing its status as a stronghold of modernity. Its inviability can be seen in the empty streets of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Danila arrives in St. Petersburg from the provincial Priozersk, where life is marked by the patriarchal humanity (images of his mother, his father’s classmate). The hero epitomizes the power of the national soil. He is an epic Bogatyr who goes back to the idea of heroism. In the finale, Danila leaves his brother in Chicago, having gone through an existential experience and realized that war is not a national clash. Having killed many people, he fails to avenge the death of a friend. He longs for abstract justice, but helps a man who is unworthy of the sacrifice. Danila acquires a real friend - an American named Ben and a brother in arms - a prostitute Dasha, who unexpectedly complements the gallery of seemingly schematic female characters epitomizing all the hypostases of a woman in the logic of imperial / colonial modernity (mother / lover / reborn harlot). All this radically destroys traditional national / gender definitions. Thus, these contaminations form the original paradigm of the author’s view, which critically “explodes” the seemingly self-evident nationalist discourse of the film Brother 2 with its inherent racism, sexism, and other xenophobic features.

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