Revolutionary dreams : utopian vision and experimental life in the Russian Revolution / Richard Stites.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stites, Richard.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Utopias.

Soviet Union--Intellectual life.

Soviet Union.

Soviet Union--History--Revolution, 1917-1921.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (340 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1989.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The revolutionary ideals of equality, communal living, proletarian morality, and technology worship, rooted in Russian utopianism, generated a range of social experiments which found expression, in the first decade of the Russian revolution, in festival, symbol, science fiction, city planning, and the arts. In this study, historian Richard Stites offers a vivid portrayal of revolutionary life and the cultural factors--myth, ritual, cult, and symbol--that sustained it, and describes the principal forms of utopian thinking and experimental impulse.Analyzing the inevitable clash between the authoritarian elements in the Bolshevik's vision and the libertarian behavior and aspirations of large segments of the population, Stites interprets the pathos of utopian fantasy as the key to the emotional force of the Bolshevik revolution which gave way in the early 1930s to bureaucratic state centralism and a theology of Stalinism.

Contents:

Contents; List of Illustrations; Introduction; Part I: From Dreaming to Awakening; 1 Social Daydreaming Before the Revolution; Utopian Mentalities; Popular Utopia: Justice, Community, Rebellion; Administrative Utopia: Parade, Facade, Colony; Populism: Vision and Counterculture; Marxism: City and Machine; 2 Revolution: Utopias in the Air and on the Ground; A New World; The Dreamer in the Kremlin; War Communism as Utopia; Beyond the Green Wall; Part II: Living the Revolution; 3 Revolutionary Iconoclasm; Vandalism: War on Luxury; Iconoclasm: War on Signs; Nihilism: War on Culture

Makhaevism: War on IntellectualsAnti-Iconoclasm; 4 Festivals of the People; Days of Revolution; Early Signs of Bolshevism; Moscow: Talking City; Petrograd: Theater City; Ritual and Carnival; 5 Godless Religion; Godkillers and Godbuilders; Storming the Heavens; Rituals of a Counterfaith; Proletarian Morality; The Missing Faith; 6 The Republic of Equals; Equality and Justice; Russian Levellers; Dress, Speech, and Deference; Utopian Miniature: The Conductorless Orchestra; Privilege and Revolution; 7 Man the Machine; The Cult of Ford and Taylor; Utopian Robotry; The Struggle for Time

The Art of ProductionTime, Space, Motion, Order; Part III: We: The Community of the Future; 8 Utopia in Time: Futurology and Science Fiction; Time Forward; Utopia, Science, and Futurology; Maps of Heaven and Hell; Decoding Revolutionary Fantasy; Back to the Future: Nostalgic Utopia; 9 Utopia in Space: City and Building; The Antiurban Impulse; The Greening of Russia: The Disurbanists; Supercity: The Urbanists; Socialism in One Building: The House Commune; 10 Utopia in Life: The Communal Movement; Native Traditions; Communes on the Land; Communes in the Town; The Laboratory of the Revolution

Part IV: Dreams and Nightmares11 War on the Dreamers; The End of Revolutionary Utopia; Iconoclasm, Festival, Godbuilding; Anti-Egalitarianism; Fantasectomy: Utopia, City, Commune; 12 Conclusion; Lunar Economics and Social Revolution; Stalin and the Fantasy State; The Fate of Revolutionary Utopia; A Note on Sources and Abbreviations; Notes; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; U; V; W; Y; Z

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-280-44053-8

0-19-536367-1

1-60129-708-4

OCLC:

191936908