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Description
When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they came armed with a commitment to build the world鈥檚 first socialist culture鈥攁 culture that would foster the development of new Soviet men and women, mobilize and inspire them for the heroic work of building communism, and serve as both model and resource for the proletariat worldwide.听 It was to be an anti-鈥渕ass culture鈥� culture for the masses鈥攚ith 鈥渕ass culture鈥� defined and disdained as the culture of the capitalist West鈥攁nd it was听the听road to the radiant future. In this course, we explore the fate of this cultural project and its relationship to key issues in the history of the USSR, such as the nature of power in the Soviet system, the role of the avant-garde and other cultural elites in the Soviet political project, the problem of national and supra-national, or Soviet, identity formations, and the impact of technological and sociological modernization.听 The bulk of our reading will be in secondary sources (articles and excerpts from monographs), much of it recently published, but we will also examine a variety of primary sources, including films, government records, poems, paintings, posters, and songs.听
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.
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