This article examines Irina Bogatyreva’s novella Off the Beaten Track (2008) through the prism of postcolonial theory, highlighting the specific ways in which an author can use religious elements, such as pilgrimage, to resist the totalizing ethnic or socioeconomic narratives imposed from the cultural and political centers of the Russian Federation. The incorporation of Orthodox, Soviet and pagan elements into the text allows Bogatyreva to question and critique the established worldview and to postulate an alternative identity model based on an opposition to the metropolis.
