The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia

The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Studies in Soviet History and Society)
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When Lenin asked, "Who will beat whom?" (Kto kogo?), he had no plan to wage revolutionary class war in culture. Many young Communists thought differently, however. Seeking in the name of the proletariat to wrest "cultural hegemony" from the intelligentsia, they turned culture into a battlefield in the 1920s. But was this, as Communist militants thought, a genuine class struggle between "proletarian" Communists and the "bourgeois" intelligentsia? Or was it, as the intelligentsia believed, an onslaught by the ruling Communist Party on the eternal principles of cultural autonomy and intellectual freedom?In this volume, one of the foremost historians of the Soviet Union chronicles the fierce battle on "the cultural front" from the October Revolution through the Stalinist 1930s. Sheila Fitzpatrick brings together ten of her essaysâ€•two previously unpublished and all revised for inclusion hereâ€•which illuminate key arenas of the prolonged struggle over cultural values and institutional control. Individual essays deal with such major issues as the Cultural Revolution, the formation of the new Stalinist elite, and socialist realism, as well as recounting colorful episodes including the uproar over Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, arguments over sexual mores, and the new consumerism of the 1930s. Closely examining the cultural elites and orthodoxies that developed under Stalin, Fitzpatrick offers a provocative reinterpretation of the struggle's final outcome in which the intelligentsia, despite its loss of autonomy and the debasement of its culture, emerged as a partial victor.The Cultural Front is essential reading for anyone interested in the formative history of the Soviet Union and the dynamic relationship between culture and politics.
Country USA
Brand Cornell University Press
Manufacturer Cornell University Press
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber black & white illustrations
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780801495168
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Brand	Cornell University Press
Manufacturer	Cornell University Press
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	black & white illustrations
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780801495168
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Studies in Soviet History and Society)

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