Critics have frequently accused Russian Formalism of supporting an apolitical separation of art from life. As a central Formalist term, estrangement (ostranenie) often bore the brunt of this accusation. Taking issue with this critique, this essay focuses on the entangled relationship between the aesthetics and politics of estrangement and argues that an attentive look at the history of estrangement reveals its deep involvement with revolutionary

Taking advantage of the partial opening of the secret police archives in Russia and Romania, this article focuses on their most infamous holdings—the personal files and traces the characteristics and development of the personal file from the 1920s to the 1980s. I argue that whereas a classic criminal record is limited to the investigation of one crime, the Soviet personal file was explicitly concerned with the extensive biography of the suspect.