Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Women's Roles ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Women’S Roles ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The introduction lays the foundation for the book. First, the introduction examines culture as a revolutionary weapon, including a comparison of socialist realism in the Soviet Union and social realism Mexico. Second, the chapter considers the relationship between culture and the construction of a Mexican postrevolutionary identity. And lastly, the introduction analyzes the making of the cultural revolution in Mexico, including a consideration of women’s roles, and Mexico City as the destination for radical transnational artists.

scholarly journals The Silent Revolution: Decollectivization from Below during the Cultural Revolution

2016 ◽  
Vol 227 ◽  
pp. 796-811 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Dikötter
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Deng Xiaoping ◽  
Planned Economy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
Silent Revolution ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

AbstractThis article uses fresh archival evidence to point at a rarely noticed phenomenon, namely the undermining of the planned economy by a myriad of dispersed acts of resistance during the last years of the Cultural Revolution. Villagers reconnected with the market in some of the poorest places in the hinterland as well as in better-off regions along the coast. This silent, structural revolution often involved the quiet acquiescence, if not active cooperation, of local cadres. In conclusion, the article suggests that if there was an architect of economic reforms, it was the people and not Deng Xiaoping: as with his counterparts in Central Europe and the Soviet Union, Deng had little choice but to go along with the flow.

scholarly journals Bending the Arc of Chinese History: The Cultural Revolution's Paradoxical Legacy

2016 ◽  
Vol 227 ◽  
pp. 613-631
Author(s):  
Andrew G. Walder
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Foundations ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

AbstractContrary to its initiators’ intentions, the Cultural Revolution laid political foundations for a transition to a market-oriented economy whilst also creating circumstances that helped to ensure the cohesion and survival of China's Soviet-style party-state. The Cultural Revolution left the Chinese Communist Party and civilian state structures weak and in flux, and drastically weakened entrenched bureaucratic interests that might have blocked market reform. The weakening of central government structures created a decentralized planned economy, the regional and local leaders of which were receptive to initial market-oriented opportunities. The economic and technological backwardness fostered by the Cultural Revolution left little support for maintaining the status quo. Mao put Deng Xiaoping in charge of rebuilding the Party and economy briefly in the mid-1970s before purging him a second time, inadvertently making him the standard-bearer for post-Mao rebuilding and recovery. Mutual animosities with the Soviet Union provoked by Maoist polemics led to a surprising strategic turn to the United States and other Western countries in the early 1970s. The resulting economic and political ties subsequently advanced the agenda of reform and opening. China's first post-Mao decade was therefore one of rebuilding and renewal under a pre-eminent leader who was able to overcome opposition to a new course. The impact of this legacy becomes especially clear when contrasted with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, where political circumstances were starkly different, and where Gorbachev's attempts to implement similar changes in the face of entrenched bureaucratic opposition led to the collapse and dismemberment of the Soviet state.

scholarly journals Voice and Frames in the Soviet Nenets’ Auto/Biographies

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 70-92
Author(s):  
Karina Lukin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores the narrative and metalinguistic devices used by two Nenets writers, Nikolaj Vylka and Anton Pyrerka, in the auto/ biographical novels they wrote in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Focusing on narrator roles and voices, the article argues that despite the overarching programme of socialist realism, the writers creatively used available linguistic resources to build Socialist plots and frames in their novels. However, their choices differ considerably, reflecting their divergent ideas about the relationship between pre- and post-Soviet Nenets culture.

Subjugation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Baberowski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Total Power ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Rapid Industrialization ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

This chapter describes Stalinism as a dictatorship of subjugation. It argues that Stalinism was a war against its own people that respected no boundaries, whose violence arose not from ideas but from situations and their possibilities. It shows how the atmosphere of total arbitrariness and uncertainty ruling the Soviet Union at this time allowed Joseph Stalin to live out his fantasies of total power and sate his lust for violence. The Bolsheviks' crusade against old Russia opened the floodgates of unabated violence. In the chaos created by the campaigns of the Cultural Revolution, by the collectivization of agriculture, and by the rapid industrialization every violent act could be justified by invoking higher purposes and ideals. This chapter examines Stalin's war against religion and the peasants as well as the birth of the Gulag.

Translation and Transformation: English-Language Children's Literature in (Soviet) Russian Guise

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Inggs
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
English Language ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Free Translation ◽  
Soviet Russia

This article investigates the perceived image of English-language children's literature in Soviet Russia. Framed by Even-Zohar's polysystem theory and Bourdieu's philosophy of action, the discussion takes into account the ideological constraints of the practice of translation and the manipulation of texts. Several factors involved in creating the perceived character of a body of literature are identified, such as the requirements of socialist realism, publishing practices in the Soviet Union, the tradition of free translation and accessibility in the translation of children's literature. This study explores these factors and, with reference to selected examples, illustrates how the political and sociological climate of translation in the Soviet Union influenced the translation practices and the field of translated children's literature, creating a particular image of English-language children's literature in (Soviet) Russia.

Restating Classicist Monumentalism in Soviet Architecture, 1930s–early 1950s

2019 ◽  
pp. 64-88
Author(s):  
William C. Brumfield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Architectural Styles ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines the development of retrospective styles in Soviet architecture during the Stalin era, from the 1930s to the early 1950s. This highly visible manifestation of communist visual culture is usually interpreted as a reaction to the austere modernism of 1920s Soviet avant-garde architecture represented by the constructivist movement. The project locates the origins of Stalin-era proclamatory, retrospective style in prerevolutionary neoclassical revival architecture. Although functioning in a capitalist market, that neoclassical reaction was supported by prominent critics who were suspicious of Russia’s nascent bourgeoisie and felt that neoclassical or neo-Renaissance architecture could echo the glory of imperial Russia. These critics left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, but prominent architects of the neoclassicist revival remained in the Soviet Union. Together with the Academy of Architecture (founded 1933), these architects played a critical role in reviving classicist monumentalism—designated “socialist realism”—as the proclamatory style for the centralized, neoimperial statist system of the Stalin era. Despite different ideological contexts (prerevolutionary and Stalinist), retrospective styles were promulgated as models for significant architectural projects. The article concludes with comments on the post-Stalinist—and post-Soviet—alternation of modernist and retrospective architectural styles.

Exporting Soviet Culture: The Case of Agitprop Theater

Slavic Review ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Mally
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
New Methods ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Global Influence

In this article Lynn Mally examines the efforts of a Comintern affiliate called MORT (Mezhdunarodnoe ob“edinenie revoliutsionnykh teatrov) to export models of Soviet theatrical performance outside the Soviet Union. Beginning with the first Five-Year Plan, MORT was initially very successful in promoting Soviet agitprop techniques abroad. But once agitprop methods fell into disgrace in the Soviet Union, MORT abruptly changed its tactics. It suddenly encouraged leftist theater groups to move toward the new methods of socialist realism. Nonetheless, many leftist theater circles continued to produce agitprop works, as shown by performances at the Moscow Olympiad for Revolutionary Theater in 1933. The unusual tenacity of this theatrical form offers an opportunity to question the global influence of the Soviet cultural policies promoted by the Comintern. From 1932 until 1935, many foreign theater groups ignored MORT's cultural directives. Once the Popular Front began, national communist parties saw artistic work as an important tool for building alliances outside the working class. This decisive shift in political strategy finally undermined the ethos and methods of agitprop theater.

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