Decolonizing from Within: Hybridization in Varvara Nedeoglo's Translingual Poetry

This article examines modes of hybridization in Varvara Nedeoglo's poetry written after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Her work conveys a tension between identification with the Russian language, culture and the Orthodox Church and a persistent sense of otherness. Marked by discursive hybridity, intertextuality and the use of multiple scripts and codes, Nedeoglo's poetry deforms and estranges the Russian language. Drawing on postcolonial theory, I propose an expanded definition of translingual poetry that encompasses works written in an author's first language, provided they are shaped by translingual aesthetics. Nedeoglo's poetics reflect broader shifts in contemporary Russian language and media, including omissions, intersemiotic hybridization and script mixing. I argue that her radical formal experiments blur the distinction between majority and minority languages and demand an active translingual reading. In the second part of the article, I analyse Nedeoglo's hybridization strategies through close readings of poems from her 2023 collection Russkiie devochki konchaiut svobodnoi zemlei (Russian Girls Come (with/onto) Free Soil). The article concludes by addressing the challenges of translating such work and considers translingual estrangement as both an aesthetic principle and a form of political intervention.