Category: Blogpost Guidelines

Until it was no more.….Our last weekly digest takes up the culture of the collapse of Soviet communism, a way of being that seemed extraordinarily stable, at the same time it displayed perplexing contradictions. For this last post, please use a cultural artifact or phenomenon of the late eighties to examine the end of the Soviet Union. Good inspiration is […]

While the long Soviet seventies are sometimes remembered as a time of “stagnation,” they are among the most interesting and under-appreciated periods of the Soviet experience. This week’s post should address the contradictions and unique dynamics of soviet culture and cultural expression in the Brezhnev era. Your post should draw on at least one of the selections in RR pp. […]

The years after Stalin’s death in 1953 brought broad and often contradictory changes to Soviet culture and society. The emptying of the gulag, liberalization of cultural expression, dawn of the space age, and the coming of age of a new generation all contributed to vibrant creativity and heated debate about the future and past. You have a wealth of choices […]

Reconstructing Soviet society after the war involved a complex re-articulation of what communism meant in light of Soviet victory. The regime also needed to finesse the hopes of democratization raised by the war and avert potential conflict over postwar rewards. Vera Dunham has called the resulting social contract “the Big Deal.” For this post please explore a cultural aspect of […]

Courage, resilience and sacrifice defined the Soviet effort to win in World War II. “The Great Patriotic War” became an all-consuming struggle, mobilizing the hopes and fears of the civilian population in equal measure to the military efforts on the battlefield. Indeed the border between battlefield and home front shifted constantly and was often impossible to discern. This week, please […]

This week our focus in class shifted from the more positive visions of building socialism to the darkness of the purges and preparations for the coming war. For your next post, please choose a primary cultural artifact from MC pp. 287-329 and explore it’s connection to the broader context of the development of Socialist Realism or popular mass culture. You […]

After the tremendous upheavals of the First Five Year Plan and the cultural revolution, the early thirties marked a distinct shift in the tone of Soviet culture. While dictatorship and coercion became more entrenched in these years, the “new normal” also celebrated new brands of heroes, scientific and technological triumphs, and the country’s triumph over “backwardness.” This was particularly evident […]

This week we address the cultural upheaval that accompanied the economic transformation of the First Five Year Plan. Please choose a cultural artifact, artistic movement, or individual that shaped or characterized this period (1928-32) and write about it. Keep in mind the political and social implications of Stalin’s “Revolution From Above” as you tell your readers about what you’ve learned […]

Reading Sheila Fitzpatrick’s study has given us insight about the scope of political, economic, and social change the Russian Revolution inspired.  Of necessity, the Bolsheviks’ overarching concern was political — they needed to secure and maintain political authority. Yet they also believed that the revolution must be secured by profound changes in economic relationships, and assumed that those changes must […]

This week we take up the spectacular and diverse cultural transformation that preceded and accompanied the Revolution of 1917.  The connections between artistic and political radicalism were powerful and contradictory, and we will continue to explore them throughout the course. Please choose a cultural artifact that interests you — it could be an avant-garde painting, an example of commercial culture […]