Abstract
The social history of the Soviet Union is increasingly concerned with the relevance of a cultural approach to the study of Soviet society in the 1930s. Scholars such as M. Lewin,1 R.C. Tucker2 and Sh. Fitzpatrick3 have recently stressed the necessity of a cultural approach to the social sphere. In their eyes, we are victims of conceptual categories with which the Bolsheviks tried, without great success, to examine their economy, their social relationships, the dynamics of their society and its contradictions. Or, on the contrary, we are victims of ad hoc categories, such as the notion of totalitarianism, imposed on the entire field of Soviet studies in the West at the time of the Cold War. We must abandon this double trap and attempt to examine the enigma of Stalinism in its true complexity. In this chapter I want to deal with the question of Stalinism by focussing upon a thorny issue, its relation to popular culture.
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Notes
M. Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System (New York, 1985).
R. Tucker, ‘Stalinism as Revolution from Above’, in Stalinism R. Tucker (ed.) (New York, 1977) pp. 77–108.
Sh. Fitzpatrick, ‘New perspectives on Stalinism: The View from Social History’, paper presented at the panel on ‘Stalinism’ at the 3rd World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Washington, DC, 2 November 1985; ‘NEP Society and Culture: Introductory Remarks’, paper prepared for the Conference on NEP Society, Bloomington, In., 2–4 October 1986.
J. Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton University Press, 1985).
R. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (England, 1957).
N.A. Dobrolyubov, ‘O stepeni uchastiya narodnosti v razvitii russkoi literatury’, in Sobr. soch. (Moscow, 1961–64) II, pp. 218–72.
V. Terras, Handbook of Russian Literature (Yale University Press, 1985) p. 293.
B. Brecht, Brecht on Theatre trans. J. Willett (London, 1964), p. 108.
M. Bakhtine, L’Oeuvre de François Rabelais et la culture populaire au Moyen-Age et sous la Renaissance (Paris, 1970).
K. Clark and M. Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Harvard University Press, 1984).
P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978).
M. Vovelle, Idéologies et ntentalités (Paris, 1982).
C. Ginzburg, Il fromaggio e i vermi (Turin, 1976).
N.S. Timasheff, The Great Retreat (New York, 1946).
D. Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston, 1976).
M. Cherniavsky, Tsar and People; Studies in Russian Myth (New York, 1961).
Quoted in G. Vernadsky, A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917 (Yale University Press, 1972) 2 vols.
J.L. Heizer, The Cult of Stalin, 1929–1939 PhD thesis (University of Kentucky, Microfilms International, 1981).
J. Stalin, ‘The Dizziness of Success’, in Pravda 2 March 1930.
N. Tumarkin, Lenin Lives: The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Harvard University Press, 1983).
W.Z. Goldman, ‘Working-Class Women and the “Withering Away” of the Family: Popular Responses to Family Policy’, paper presented at the Conference on NEP Society, Bloomington, IN., 2–4 October 1986.
J. Evans, ‘The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Women’s Question: The Case of the 1936 Decree In Defense of Mother and Child’, in Journal of Contemporary History 16 (1981).
Quoted in J.L. Passek, Le Cinéma russe et soviétique (Paris, 1981) pp. 199–200.
Sh. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Indiana University Press, 1978)
Sh. Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934 (Cambridge, 1979); ’stalin and the Making of a New Elite, 1928–1939’, in Slavic Review XXXVIII, 3 (1979). See also Note 3.
J. Arch. Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered. 1933–1938 (Cambridge University Press. 1985).
R. Manning, ‘Peasants after Collectivization’, paper presented at the IInd Workshop on Social History of the Stalin Period, Columbia University, April 1985; ‘The Collective Farm Peasantry and the Local Administration: Peasant Letters of Complaint in Belyi Raion in 1937’, paper presented at the National Seminar for the Study of Russian Society in the XXth Century, 1983; ‘Government in the Soviet Countryside in the Stalinist Thirties: The Case in Belyi Raion in 1937’, in The Carl Beck Papers in Soviet and East European Studies (Pittsburgh, 1984)
G. Rittersporn, ‘L’Etat en lutte contre lui-même: tensions sociales et conflits politiques en URSS, 1936–1938’, in Libre 4 (1978), pp. 9–38; ’Staline en 1938: apogée du verbe et défaite politique. Eléments pour une étude du stalinisme réel’, in Libre 6 (1979), pp. 99–164.
L. Viola, The Campaign of the 25000ers: A Study of the Collectivization of Soviet Agriculture, 1929–1931 PhD thesis (Princeton University, 1984).
E. Tolstaya-Segal, ‘K literaturnomu fonu knigi Kak zakalyalas’ “stal”, in Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique XXII, 4 (1981) pp. 375–99.
M. Gorky in Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd sovetskikh pisatelei (Moscow, 1934) p. 10.
F.J. Oinas, ‘The Political Uses and Themes of Folklore in the Soviet Union’, in Folklore, Nationalism and Politics F.J. Oinas (ed.) (Slavica Publishers. 1972) pp. 84–5.
See R. Robin, Le Réalisme socialiste: une esthétique impossible (Paris, 1986)
R. Robin (ed.), Soviet Culture in the Thirties: A Reappraisal, Sociocriticism 3 (Pittsburgh, 1986).
K. Andreev, ‘Fol’klor i literatura’, in Literaturnaya uchëba 5 (1936).
T.G. Winner, The Oral Art and Literature of the Kazakhs of Russian Central Asia (Duke University Press, 1958), p. 165.
Quoted in J.P.A. Bernard, Le Parti communiste francais et la question littéraire, 1921–1929 (Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1972) p. 48.
N. Werth, Etre communiste en URSS sous Staline (Paris, 1981) p. 16.
See L. Marcou, Une Enfance stalinienne (Paris, 1982).
V. Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middle-Class Values in Soviet Fiction (Cambridge University Press, 1976).
M. Ferro, Des soviets au communisme bureaucratique (Paris, 1980).
S. Schmemann, ‘Winds of Change Stir Soviet Film’, in the New York Times 12 October 1986, p. 19.
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Robin, R. (1990). Stalinism and Popular Culture. In: Günther, H. (eds) The Culture of the Stalin Period. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20651-3_2
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