Techno-Utopian Visions of Soviet Intellectuals after Stalin

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-40
Author(s):  
Alexey Golubev
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Industrial Production ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Human History ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Material World ◽  
Textual Representations ◽  
Late Socialism

This chapter explores the link between material objects and the different temporalities of post-Stalinist Soviet society. The chapter looks at the productivist language of late socialism as a discursive framework that inspired and produced Soviet elemental materialism and was itself inspired and reproduced by it. Productivist language linked a vision of the grand Soviet future with technological objects and sought a rational social organization along industrial production and scientific progress. It abducted the imagery of Soviet factories, machines, vehicles, and space rockets, immersed it into the hermetic space of visual and textual representations, and used it to define, for the Soviet symbolic order, the position of the USSR at the cutting edge of technological progress. In this discourse, technologies and technological objects secured the possession of the present and future of human history for Soviet society, as well as ensured the superiority of the USSR in its competition with the Western bloc. The perceived might and transformative agency of Soviet technological objects made them affective for the Soviet public, and they became translated into distinctive discursive practices — vernaculars of the Soviet Techno-Utopianism — that sought to transform the Soviet material world but instead represented rigorous forms of self-making. In addition to affect and its politics, the chapter introduces several other key themes that are discussed in the following chapters, including the idea of making oneself by making things, which Soviet educators and ideologists understood in terms of the development of creativity, and the performativity of objects.

scholarly journals Human social organization during the Late Pleistocene: Beyond the nomadic-egalitarian model

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manvir Singh ◽  
Luke Glowacki
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Human History ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Social Variation

Many researchers assume that until 10-12,000 years ago, humans lived in small, mobile, relatively egalitarian bands composed mostly of kin. This “nomadic-egalitarian model” informs evolutionary explanations of behavior and our understanding of how contemporary societies differ from those of our evolutionary past. Here, we synthesize research challenging this model and propose an alternative, the diverse histories model, to replace it. We outline the limitations of using recent foragers as models of Late Pleistocene societies and the considerable social variation among foragers commonly considered small-scale, mobile, and egalitarian. We review ethnographic and archaeological findings covering 34 world regions showing that non-agricultural peoples often live in groups that are more sedentary, unequal, large, politically stratified, and capable of large-scale cooperation and resource management than is normally assumed. These characteristics are not restricted to extant Holocene hunter-gatherers but, as suggested by archaeological findings from 27 Middle Stone Age sites, likely characterized societies throughout the Late Pleistocene (until c. 130 ka), if not earlier. These findings have implications for how we understand human psychological adaptations and the broad trajectory of human history.

Conclusions

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-168
Author(s):  
Alexey Golubev
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Society ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Landscape ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
Historical Agency

This chapter summarizes the observations pointed out in the book about the materiality of Soviet objects such as stairwells, weightlifting equipment, and television sets. It concludes that these were created by hybrid social creatures whose practices were influenced not only by ideology and language but also by things around them, and as a result, Soviet artifacts have their politics. The chapter describes elemental materialism as a part of the cultural logic of late socialism. It supplied officials and intellectuals with persistent and routinely reproduced metaphors that assessed people through their mastery of professional equipment, consumption practices, and hobbies. It also influenced the social topography of late socialism. The chapter talks about soviet objects and spaces, and how they interfered in the processes of subjectivation by suggesting forms of selfhood that fell out of the civilizing frameworks of the Soviet enlightenment project. It discusses soviet materiality and how it acquired its historical agency through the bodies of people who were fascinated with various material objects of late socialism and for whom these objects were instrumental in suggesting and objectifying their individual and collective selves. Material objects of late socialism encapsulated different and often conflicting visions of the past, present, and future, structured the social landscape, and suggested various forms of navigating through it. Examining the ways they did so makes it possible to better understand Soviet society as a complex historical phenomenon.

scholarly journals Revolutions in energy input and material cycling in Earth history and human history

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Lenton ◽  
Peter-Paul Pichler ◽  
Helga Weisz
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Energy Input ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Oxygenic Photosynthesis ◽  
Human History ◽  
Unequal Distribution ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Material Cycling

Abstract. Major revolutions in energy capture have occurred in both Earth and human history, with each transition resulting in higher energy input, altered material cycles and major consequences for the internal organization of the respective systems. In Earth history, we identify the origin of anoxygenic photosynthesis, the origin of oxygenic photosynthesis, and land colonization by eukaryotic photosynthesizers as step changes in free energy input to the biosphere. In human history we focus on the Palaeolithic use of fire, the Neolithic revolution to farming, and the Industrial revolution as step changes in free energy input to human societies. In each case we try to quantify the resulting increase in energy input, and discuss the consequences for material cycling and for biological and social organization. For most of human history, energy use by humans was but a tiny fraction of the overall energy input to the biosphere, as would be expected for any heterotrophic species. However, the industrial revolution gave humans the capacity to push energy inputs towards planetary scales and by the end of the 20th century human energy use had reached a magnitude comparable to the biosphere. By distinguishing world regions and income brackets we show the unequal distribution in energy and material use among contemporary humans. Looking ahead, a prospective sustainability revolution will require scaling up new renewable and decarbonized energy technologies and the development of much more efficient material recycling systems – thus creating a more autotrophic social metabolism. Such a transition must also anticipate a level of social organization that can implement the changes in energy input and material cycling without losing the large achievements in standard of living and individual liberation associated with industrial societies.

scholarly journals RITUAL PARTISIPATIVE FUNCTIONS OF THE INDUSTRIAL HOLIDAY OF LATE SOCIALISM (ON MATERIALS "ACHPOLIMETALL" COMBINE)

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Т.Т. Dalayeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Labor Productivity ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Working People ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
Quality Of Products ◽  
Object Of Study

The article, based on archival materials of the Kentau Regional State Archive (KRSA) and documents of the South Kazakhstan regional committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RSASPH), explores the organization and use of the industrial holiday in the identification processes of workers at the Achpolimetal combine in the early 1970s. The growing processes of alienation in Soviet society during the period of late socialism were reflected in labor productivity at the plant. The practice of preparing republican and all-union records and the subsequent honoring of production teams led to a "divided consciousness" among the working people, which influenced their attitude to work. The level of labor productivity and the cost of production have tended to decrease due to the unreliable quality of new self-propelled equipment and the actual lack of a proper repair base at the enterprise. Significant downtime and breakdown of equipment, violation of technological discipline, over-planned metal losses, and a decrease in the quality of products gradually increased. One of the ways to increase labor productivity was the holding of industrial holidays. The organization of industrial holidays, the analysis of the forms and methods of the holiday ritual for constructing a common social space that creates the conditions for a collective identity in the Soviet era were the object of study in this article, its subject is the actual ritual-participatory functions of the holiday and their influence on the construction of the professional identity of work teams of “Achpolimetal” combine.

O ograniczeniach teorii semiotycznej w badaniach późnego PRL-u na przykładzie Semiotyki Solidarności Pawła Rojka

2021 ◽  
pp. 36-55
Author(s):  
Emilia Sieczka
Keyword(s):  
Binary System ◽  
Ternary System ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Semiotic Systems ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
Ancien Régime

The article analyses the limitations of the semiotic approach to the studies of late socialism in Poland through the critique of Semiotic of solidarity: an analysis of the discourses of the Polish Unites Workers' Party and the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarność in 1981 written by Paweł Rojek in 2009. This paper questions the assumption made by Rojek about the historical continuity of the Russian ancien régime and Soviet modernisation project as supposedly constituting the same system of intelligibility. There is an alternative approach of reading the discursive relationship between Eastern and Western bloc through the genealogy of discursive practices instead of the duality of two semiotic systems as described by the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. Finally, the article assesses the applicability of Rojek’s interpretation of Solidarity as belonging to the ternary system and the Party as belonging to the binary system.

The Moment That Changed Everything

2021 ◽  
pp. 92-158
Author(s):  
Braxton D. Shelley
Keyword(s):  
Linear Time ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human History ◽  
Material World ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
Contemporary Performance ◽  
The Moment ◽  
A Performance

This chapter argues that tuning up reorganizes the experience of time, enacting a transcendent interruption of musical temporality. In so doing, this irruptive practice reproduces the incarnation of Christ, sonifying the divine’s appearance in the material world. Smallwood’s paraphrase of the spiritual “Calvary” anchors this chapter, doing for its argument what the crucifixion does for the Gospel Imagination. The chapter’s first section examines the song’s 2001 live recording, a performance whose particularly urgent interpenetration of musical, liturgical, and historical temporalities summons one of tuning up’s most common manifestations—a trope colloquially referred to as “the Baptist close.” Then the chapter turns to three of the gospel tradition’s most canonical renderings of Christ’s Passion, Margaret Douroux’s “He Decided to Die,” David Allen’s “No Greater Love,” and Andraé Crouch’s “The Blood.” These performances reveal an incarnational approach to time: a belief that Jesus’s interruption of human history can be rearticulated through song. As these songs move back and forth between their site of contemporary performance and various scriptural narratives, between conception and crucifixion, and between crucifixion and resurrection, what they offer is no mere retelling: they assert a critique of linear temporality, producing kairos, a transcendent instant that links time and eternity. Kairos is especially evident in the holy dance, a performance of physical ecstasy that is formalized in the gospel vamp. As they tune up, vamps pursue kairos through concurrent movements away from linear time, toward the collective, into the body.

scholarly journals Revolutions in energy input and material cycling in Earth history and human history

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. M. Lenton ◽  
P. P. Pichler ◽  
H. Weisz
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Energy Input ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Oxygenic Photosynthesis ◽  
Human History ◽  
Unequal Distribution ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Material Cycling

Abstract. Major revolutions in energy capture have occurred in both Earth and human history, with each transition resulting in higher energy input, altered material cycles and major consequences for the internal organization of the respective systems. In Earth history, we identify the origin of anoxygenic photosynthesis, the origin of oxygenic photosynthesis, and land colonization by eukaryotic photosynthesisers as step changes in free energy input to the biosphere. In human history we focus on the Paleolithic use of fire, the Neolithic revolution to farming, and the Industrial revolution as step changes in free energy input to human societies. In each case we try to quantify the resulting increase in energy input, and discuss the consequences for material cycling and for biological and social organization. For most of human history, energy use by humans was but a tiny fraction of the overall energy input to the biosphere, as would be expected for any heterotrophic species. However, the industrial revolution gave humans the capacity to push energy inputs towards planetary scales and by the end of the 20th century human energy use had reached a magnitude comparable to the biosphere. By distinguishing world regions and income brackets we show the unequal distribution in energy and material use among contemporary humans. Looking ahead, a prospective sustainability revolution will require scaling up new solar energy technologies and the development of much more efficient material recycling systems – thus creating a more autotrophic social metabolism. Such a transition must also anticipate a level of social organization that can implement the changes in energy input and material cycling without losing the large achievements in standard of living and individual liberation associated with industrial societies.

Popular Religiosity in the “Closed City” of Soviet Ukraine: Cultural Consumption and Religion during Late Socialism, 1959-1984

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
Sergei I. Zhuk
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Cultural Consumption ◽  
State Security ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
Popular Religiosity

Part of a larger research project about Soviet cultural consumption and identity formation, this article explores the connection between rock music and religiosity in the industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, in the late socialist period. The Committee of State Security [Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, KGB] closed Dnepropetrovsk to foreigners in 1959 when one of the Soviet Union’s biggest missile factories opened there. Because of its “closed” nature, Dnepropetrovsk became a unique Soviet social and cultural laboratory where various patterns of late socialism collided with new Western cultural influences. The closed city of Dnepropetrovsk can be seen as a microcosm of Soviet society as a whole. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, including archival documents, periodicals, personal diaries and interviews, this article demonstrates how popular fascination for Western rock music, such as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, spurred interest in Christianity. Local Protestant and Orthodox church leaders skillfully promoted such interest, even as the Party bosses tried to quash it. This study stands as a reminder of the continued draw of Christianity in Orthodoxy’s heartland—even through alternative, modernizing media—despite the official promotion of atheism.

scholarly journals Retrato de Occidente visto desde el Kremlin: el viaje de César Vallejo a la URSS

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Arias Careaga
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Cesar Vallejo ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Positive Perspective

The book that César Vallejo wrote after his travels to URSS is a review of different aspects in soviet society. This book, far from appear as a panegyric of socialist social organization, brings several topics to the reader, who must rethink his own culture from another perspective. So, Vallejo exposed several mechanisms of the capitalist system while he supported an inevitable change. Soviet Union appears under a very positive perspective in Rusia en 1931, but it is not due to a naïve attitude of the poet. Instead, he shows a clear conscience about the mistakes of occidental societies to achieve a fairer world, especially to the most disadvantaged segments of the population.

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