Utopian reality : reconstructing culture in revolutionary Russia and beyond

Format:

Book

Language:

English

Imprint:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2013

Subject:

Soviet Union - Intellectual life - 1917-1970
Utopias - Soviet Union - History
Utopias in literature
Utopias in art
Arts, Soviet - History
Avant-garde (Aesthetics) - Soviet Union - History
Cultural pluralism - Soviet Union - History
Visual communication - Soviet Union - History
Politics and culture - Soviet Union - History
Soviet Union - Politics and government - 1917-1936

Contributor:

Lodder, Christina, editor
Kokkori, Maria, editor
Mileeva, Maria, editor

ISBN:

9789004263208, 9004263209, 9789004263222, and 9004263225

Series:

Russian history and culture (Leiden, Netherlands)

Description:

xxii, 271 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Bibliographic Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Contents:

Introduction: Utopia and dystopia : the impulse of history / Christina Lodder, Maria Kokkori and Maria Mileeva -- Dreaming of the city : Mikhail Larionov's Provincial dandy, 1907 / John Milner -- Utopian sex : the metamorphosis of androgynous imagery in Russian art of the pre- and post-revolutionary period / Natalia Budanova -- The Soviet Icarus : from the dream of free flight to the nightmare of free fall / Maria Tsantsanoglou -- Theo van Doesburg and Russia : utopia thwarted / Nicholas Bueno de Mesquita -- Fighting for a utopian childhood : militarism in children's periodicals of the early Soviet Union / Maria Starkova-Vindman -- Spectral geographies in Russian emigre prose : the cases of Petr Krasnov and Georgii Peskov / Muireann Maguire -- Twice removed : Pavel Filonov and Nikolai Glebov-Putilovskii / Nicoletta Misler -- Exhibiting Malevich under Stalin / Maria Kokkori -- Solomon Nikritin : the old and the new / John E. Bowlt -- The ghost in the machine : the modernist architectural utopia under Stalin / Christina Lodder -- Socialist realism and stasis / Evgeny Dobrenko -- Utopia in retreat : the closure of the State Museum of New Western Art in 1948 / Maria Mileeva -- The art of cybernetic communism / David Crowley -- Geometry after utopia / Brandon Taylor

Summary:

This collection of essays deals broadly with the visual and cultural manifestation of utopian aspirations in Russia of the 1920s and 1930s, while examining the before- and after-life of such ideas both geographically and chronologically. The studies document the pluralism of Russian and Soviet culture at this time as well as illuminating various cultural strategies adopted by officialdom. The result serves to complicate the excessively simplistic narrative that avant-garde dreams were suddenly and brutally crushed by Soviet repression and to contest the notion of the avant-garde's complicity in Stalinism. Naturally, some essays document episodes in the defeat and dismantling of utopian projects, but others trace the persistence of avant-garde ideas and the astonishing tenacity of creative individuals who managed to retain their personal integrity while continuing to serve the cause of Soviet power -- Provided by Publisher

Access Restrictions:

Restricted to subscribing institutions

Collection:

BGC Monograph Stacks

Call Number:

DK266.4 .U86 2013

Available

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