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Book Mass Culture in Soviet Russia

Download or read book Mass Culture in Soviet Russia written by James Von Geldern and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers an array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, and folklore to offer a look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. This work focuses on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses.

Book National Bolshevism

    Book Details:
  • Author : David Brandenberger
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2002
  • ISBN : 9780674009066
  • Pages : 404 pages

Download or read book National Bolshevism written by David Brandenberger and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1930s, Stalin and his entourage rehabilitated famous names from the Russian national past in a propaganda campaign designed to mobilize Soviet society for the coming war. In a provocative study, David Brandenberger traces this populist "national Bolshevism" into the 1950s, highlighting the catalytic effect that it had on Russian national identity formation.

Book Closer to the Masses

    Book Details:
  • Author : Matthew Lenoe
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2004-06-30
  • ISBN : 9780674013193
  • Pages : 338 pages

Download or read book Closer to the Masses written by Matthew Lenoe and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lenoe traces the origins of Stalinist mass culture to newspaper journalism in the late 1920s. In examining the transformation of Soviet newspapers during the New Economic Policy and the First Five Year Plan, Lenoe tells a dramatic story of purges, political intrigues, and social upheaval.

Book Soviet and Kosher

    Book Details:
  • Author : Anna Shternshis
  • Publisher : Indiana University Press
  • Release : 2006-05-21
  • ISBN : 9780253112156
  • Pages : 286 pages

Download or read book Soviet and Kosher written by Anna Shternshis and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-21 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kosher pork -- an oxymoron? Anna Shternshis's fascinating study traces the creation of a Soviet Jewish identity that disassociated Jewishness from Judaism. The cultural transformation of Soviet Jews between 1917 and 1941 was one of the most ambitious experiments in social engineering of the past century. During this period, Russian Jews went from relative isolation to being highly integrated into the new Soviet culture and society, while retaining a strong ethnic and cultural identity. This identity took shape during the 1920s and 1930s, when the government attempted to create a new Jewish culture, "national in form" and "socialist in content." Soviet and Kosher is the first study of key Yiddish documents that brought these Soviet messages to Jews, notably the "Red Haggadah," a Soviet parody of the traditional Passover manual; songs about Lenin and Stalin; scripts from regional theaters; Socialist Realist fiction; and magazines for children and adults. More than 200 interviews conducted by the author in Russia, Germany, and the United States testify to the reception of these cultural products and provide a unique portrait of the cultural life of the average Soviet Jew.

Book Pop Culture Russia

    Book Details:
  • Author : Birgit Beumers
  • Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
  • Release : 2005-06-21
  • ISBN : 1851094644
  • Pages : 433 pages

Download or read book Pop Culture Russia written by Birgit Beumers and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-06-21 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing look at contemporary Russian popular culture, exploring the historical and social influences that make it unique. Pop music is only one aspect of contemporary Russian culture that has taken some unexpected turns in the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse. Television and advertising, theater and cinema, athletics and religion, even fashion and food now reflect more exposure to the West, yet remain in essence distinctively Russian. Pop Culture Russia! introduces readers to the fascinating, often surprising, post-Soviet cultural landscape. With chapters on media, the arts, recreation, religion, and consumerism, the book offers an insightful survey of Russian mass culture from the death of Stalin in 1953 to the present, exploring the historical significance of important events and trends, as well as the social and political contexts from which they emerged.

Book Soviet Mass Festivals  1917 1991

Download or read book Soviet Mass Festivals 1917 1991 written by Malte Rolf and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2013 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an English translation of a study of the highly organized public mass celebrations to glorify the state/party/leader of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century, which originated in and enjoyed their longest run in the Soviet Union.

Book Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia

Download or read book Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia written by Richard Stites and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995-05-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This lively and often moving collection of essays is an important contribution to Western scholarship on Soviet society and culture during the Second World War. . . . [a] straightforward but lively description of cultural life, unhampered by excessive interpretation or cultural theory. For all those who love Russia's cultural heritage, these essays cast a welcome spotlight on some of the people and pockets of life from that tragic but compelling time." —Canadian Slavonic Papers "Enjoyable to read and accessible to the nonspecialist, Culture and Entertainment is not only an indispensable addition to any Soviet studies library but will prove valuable to anyone interested in or teaching courses on World War II, propaganda and popular culture, homefront politics, or the interacation between cultural creation and governmental power." —Journal of Modern History "This comprehensive recollection of articles goes beyond cultural history, and provides an original approach to the study of war. War, we learn, is fought on many fronts, and the cultural one should not be underestimated." —SAIS Review " . . . takes the reader to the heart of the patriotic struggle, to the cultural and spiritual imperatives that roused Russian resistance." —Canadian Military History "This collection . . . furthers knowledge of Soviet high and popular culture, and also demonstrates the extremely important role that cultural productions played in helping to maintain Soviet spirits in the midst of the Nazi onslaught." —Choice "This anthology of scholarly articles provides surprising insights into Soviet cultural propaganda during the Great Patriotic War." —War, Literature and the Arts ". . . the essays here provide much food for thought and constitute a valuable addition to a relatively neglected area of study." —The Slavonic Review World War II (The Great Patriotic War) had a pronounced cultural and emotional impact on the Russian people. The subjects of these essays range from the Moscow press to frontline correspondents, from entertainment brigades to amateur songs by fighting men and women, from symphonic compositions to revivals of literary classics, and from Moscow stages to folk ensembles on the battlefield—the cultural outpourings in the hearts and souls of ordinary Russians at war.

Book Mass Culture and Perestroika in the Soviet Union

Download or read book Mass Culture and Perestroika in the Soviet Union written by Marsha Siefert and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays originally published in the Journal of Communication, examines the far-reaching changes that have occurred in the realm of information, communications media, and public debate in the Soviet Union since Gorbachev began implementing his policies of Glasnost. The fifteen articles address these changes with an eye toward their historical precedent, conflicting responses, and chance for survival. Topics covered include: mass culture and the market; youth culture; glasnost, journalism, and the media; and television and perestroika. The book will interest all students of mass communications as well as Sovietologists and historians specializing in modern European history.

Book Consuming Russia

    Book Details:
  • Author : Adele Marie Barker
  • Publisher : Duke University Press
  • Release : 1999
  • ISBN : 9780822323136
  • Pages : 492 pages

Download or read book Consuming Russia written by Adele Marie Barker and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely study of the "new Russia" at the end of the twentieth century.

Book Socialist Fun

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gleb Tsipursky
  • Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
  • Release : 2016-04-08
  • ISBN : 0822981254
  • Pages : 360 pages

Download or read book Socialist Fun written by Gleb Tsipursky and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most narratives depict Soviet Cold War cultural activities and youth groups as drab and dreary, militant and politicized. In this study Gleb Tsipursky challenges these stereotypes in a revealing portrayal of Soviet youth and state-sponsored popular culture. The primary local venues for Soviet culture were the tens of thousands of klubs where young people found entertainment, leisure, social life, and romance. Here sports, dance, film, theater, music, lectures, and political meetings became vehicles to disseminate a socialist version of modernity. The Soviet way of life was dutifully presented and perceived as the most progressive and advanced, in an attempt to stave off Western influences. In effect, socialist fun became very serious business. As Tsipursky shows, however, Western culture did infiltrate these activities, particularly at local levels, where participants and organizers deceptively cloaked their offerings to appeal to their own audiences. Thus, Soviet modernity evolved as a complex and multivalent ideological device. Tsipursky provides a fresh and original examination of the Kremlin’s paramount effort to shape young lives, consumption, popular culture, and to build an emotional community—all against the backdrop of Cold War struggles to win hearts and minds both at home and abroad.

Book Overkill

    Book Details:
  • Author : Eliot Borenstein
  • Publisher : Cornell University Press
  • Release : 2011-05-02
  • ISBN : 0801463459
  • Pages : 286 pages

Download or read book Overkill written by Eliot Borenstein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perestroika and the end of the Soviet Union transformed every aspect of life in Russia, and as hope began to give way to pessimism, popular culture came to reflect the anxiety and despair felt by more and more Russians. Free from censorship for the first time in Russia's history, the popular culture industry (publishing, film, and television) began to disseminate works that featured increasingly explicit images and descriptions of sex and violence. In Overkill, Eliot Borenstein explores this lurid and often-disturbing cultural landscape in close, imaginative readings of such works as You're Just a Slut, My Dear! (Ty prosto shliukha, dorogaia!), a novel about sexual slavery and illegal organ harvesting; the Nympho trilogy of books featuring a Chechen-fighting sex addict; and the Mad Dog and Antikiller series of books and films recounting, respectively, the exploits of the Russian Rambo and an assassin killing in the cause of justice. Borenstein argues that the popular cultural products consumed in the post-perestroika era were more than just diversions; they allowed Russians to indulge their despair over economic woes and everyday threats. At the same time, they built a notion of nationalism or heroism that could be maintained even under the most miserable of social conditions, when consumers felt most powerless. For Borenstein, the myriad depictions of deviance in pornographic and also detectiv fiction, with their patently excessive and appalling details of social and moral decay, represented the popular culture industry's response to the otherwise unimaginable scale of Russia's national collapse. "The full sense of collapse," he writes, "required a panoptic view that only the media and culture industry were eager to provide, amalgamating national collapse into one master narrative that would then be readily available to most individuals as a framework for understanding their own suffering and their own fears."

Book Russian Popular Culture

    Book Details:
  • Author : Richard Stites
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 1992-08-20
  • ISBN : 9780521369862
  • Pages : 308 pages

Download or read book Russian Popular Culture written by Richard Stites and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-08-20 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a side of Russian life that is largely unknown to the West - the world of popular culture. By surveying detective and science fiction, popular songs, jokes, box office movie hits, stage, radio and television, Professor Richard Stites introduces the people and cultural products that are household words to Russian people. Spanning the entire twentieth century, the author examines the subcultures that draw upon and enrich Russian popular culture. He explores the relationship between popular culture and the national and social values of the masses, including their heroes and myths, and assesses the phenomenon of the celebrity from the silent screen star to the latest rock music idol. Richard Stites pays particular attention to the dramatic battle between elite and popular culture and to the intervention of revolutions, wars, and the state in the production and control of this culture.

Book The Culture of the Stalin Period

Download or read book The Culture of the Stalin Period written by Hans Gunther and published by Springer. This book was released on 1990-04-09 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Up to now the culture of the Stalin period has been studied mainly from a political or ideological point of view. In this book renowned specialists from many countries approach the problem rather 'from inside'. The authors deal with numerous aspects of Stalinist culture such as art, literature, architecture, film and popular culture. Yet the volume is more than a mere collection of studies on special issues. It is an inquiry into the very nature of a certain type of culture, its symbols, rites and myths. The book will be useful not only for students of Soviet culture but also for a wider audience.

Book A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End

Download or read book A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End written by Peter Kenez and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of political, social and cultural developments in the Soviet Union. The book identifies the social tensions and political inconsistencies that spurred radical change in the government of Russia, from the turn of the century to the revolution of 1917. Kenez envisions that revolution as a crisis of authority that posed the question, 'Who shall govern Russia?' This question was resolved with the creation of the Soviet Union. Kenez traces the development of the Soviet Union from the Revolution, through the 1920s, the years of the New Economic Policies and into the Stalinist order. He shows how post-Stalin Soviet leaders struggled to find ways to rule the country without using Stalin's methods but also without openly repudiating the past, and to negotiate a peaceful but antipathetic coexistence with the capitalist West. In this second edition, he also examines the post-Soviet period, tracing Russia's development up to the time of publication.

Book Soviet Culture and Power

    Book Details:
  • Author : Katerina Clark
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2007-01-01
  • ISBN : 0300106467
  • Pages : 576 pages

Download or read book Soviet Culture and Power written by Katerina Clark and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leaders of the Soviet Union, Stalin chief among them, well understood the power of art, and their response was to attempt to control and direct it in every way possible. This book examines Soviet cultural politics from the Revolution to Stalin’s death in 1953. Drawing on a wealth of newly released documents from the archives of the former Soviet Union, the book provides remarkable insight on relations between Gorky, Pasternak, Babel, Meyerhold, Shostakovich, Eisenstein, and many other intellectuals, and the Soviet leadership. Stalin’s role in directing these relations, and his literary judgments and personal biases, will astonish many. The documents presented in this volume reflect the progression of Party control in the arts. They include decisions of the Politburo, Stalin’s correspondence with individual intellectuals, his responses to particular plays, novels, and movie scripts, petitions to leaders from intellectuals, and secret police reports on intellectuals under surveillance. Introductions, explanatory materials, and a biographical index accompany the documents.

Book Anguish  Anger  and Folkways in Soviet Russia

Download or read book Anguish Anger and Folkways in Soviet Russia written by Gábor Rittersporn and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2014-11-07 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anguish, Anger, and Folkways in Soviet Russia offers original perspectives on the politics of everyday life in the Soviet Union by closely examining the coping mechanisms individuals and leaders alike developed as they grappled with the political, social, and intellectual challenges the system presented before and after World War II. As Gábor T. Rittersporn shows, the “little tactics” people employed in their daily lives not only helped them endure the rigors of life during the Stalin and post-Stalin periods but also strongly influenced the system’s development into the Gorbachev and post-Soviet eras. For Rittersporn, citizens’ conscious and unreflected actions at all levels of society defined a distinct Soviet universe. Terror, faith, disillusionment, evasion, folk customs, revolt, and confusion about regime goals and the individual’s relation to them were all integral to the development of that universe and the culture it engendered. Through a meticulous reading of primary documents and materials uncovered in numerous archives located in Russia and Germany, Rittersporn identifies three related responses—anguish, anger, and folkways—to the pressures people in all walks of life encountered, and shows how these responses in turn altered the way the system operated. Rittersporn finds that the leadership generated widespread anguish by its inability to understand and correct the reasons for the system’s persistent political and economic dysfunctions. Rather than locate the sources of these problems in their own presuppositions and administrative methods, leaders attributed them to omnipresent conspiracy and wrecking, which they tried to extirpate through terror. He shows how the unrelenting pursuit of enemies exacerbated systemic failures and contributed to administrative breakdowns and social dissatisfaction. Anger resulted as the populace reacted to the notable gap between the promise of a self-governing egalitarian society and the actual experience of daily existence under the heavy hand of the party-state. Those who had interiorized systemic values demanded a return to what they took for the original Bolshevik project, while others sought an outlet for their frustrations in destructive or self-destructive behavior. In reaction to the system's pressure, citizens instinctively developed strategies of noncompliance and accommodation. A detailed examination of these folkways enables Rittersporn to identify and describe the mechanisms and spaces intuitively created by officials and ordinary citizens to evade the regime's dictates or to find a modus vivendi with them. Citizens and officials alike employed folkways to facilitate work, avoid tasks, advance careers, augment their incomes, display loyalty, enjoy life’s pleasures, and simply to survive. Through his research, Rittersporn uncovers a fascinating world consisting of peasant stratagems and subterfuges, underground financial institutions, falsified Supreme Court documents, and associations devoted to peculiar sexual practices. As Rittersporn shows, popular and elite responses and tactics deepened the regime’s ineffectiveness and set its modernization project off down unintended paths. Trapped in a web of behavioral patterns and social representations that eluded the understanding of both conservatives and reformers, the Soviet system entered a cycle of self-defeat where leaders and led exercised less and less control over the course of events. In the end, a new system emerged that neither the establishment nor the rest of society could foresee.

Book Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc

Download or read book Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc written by William Jay Risch and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-12-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc explores the rise of youth as consumers of popular culture and the globalization of popular music in Russia and Eastern Europe. This collection of essays challenges assumptions that Communist leaders and Western-influenced youth cultures were inimically hostile to one another. While initially banning Western cultural trends like jazz and rock-and-roll, Communist leaders accommodated elements of rock and pop music to develop their own socialist popular music. They promoted organized forms of leisure to turn young people away from excesses of style perceived to be Western. Popular song and officially sponsored rock and pop bands formed a socialist beat that young people listened and danced to. Young people attracted to the music and subcultures of the capitalist West still shared the values and behaviors of their peers in Communist youth organizations. Despite problems providing youth with consumer goods, leaders of Soviet bloc states fostered a socialist alternative to the modernity the capitalist West promised. Underground rock musicians thus shared assumptions about culture that Communist leaders had instilled. Still, competing with influences from the capitalist West had its limits. State-sponsored rock festivals and rock bands encouraged a spirit of rebellion among young people. Official perceptions of what constituted culture limited options for accommodating rock and pop music and Western youth cultures. Youth countercultures that originated in the capitalist West, like hippies and punks, challenged the legitimacy of Communist youth organizations and their sponsors. Government media and police organs wound up creating oppositional identities among youth gangs. Failing to provide enough Western cultural goods to provincial cities helped fuel resentment over the Soviet Union’s capital, Moscow, and encourage support for breakaway nationalist movements that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Despite the Cold War, in both the Soviet bloc and in the capitalist West, political elites responded to perceived threats posed by youth cultures and music in similar manners. Young people participated in a global youth culture while expressing their own local views of the world.