The Cultural Front : Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia / Sheila Fitzpatrick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fitzpatrick, Sheila, author.

Contributor:

American Council of Learned Societies.

Series:

Studies in Soviet history and society (Ithaca, N.Y.)

Studies in Soviet history and society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Soviet Union--Politics and government--1936-1953.

Soviet Union.

Soviet Union--Politics and government--1917-1936.

Soviet Union--Intellectual life--1917-1970.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xx, 264 p. )

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 1920's. 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October Revolution through the Stalinist 1930's. Sheila Fitzpatrick brings together ten of her essays-two previously unpublished and all revised for inclusion here-which illuminate key arenas of the prolonged struggle over cultural values and institutional control.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 1930's. 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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

A Note on Spelling

Glossary

CHAPTER 1. Introduction: On Power and Culture

CHAPTER 2. The Bolsheviks' Dilemma: The Class Issue in Party Politics and Culture

CHAPTER 3. Professors and Soviet Power

CHAPTER 4. Sex and Revolution

CHAPTER 5. The Soft Line on Culture and Its Enemies

CHAPTER 6. Cultural Revolution as Class War

CHAPTER 7. Stalin and the Making of a New Elite

CHAPTER 8. The Lady Macbeth Affair: Shostakovich and the Soviet Puritans

CHAPTER 9. Becoming Cultured: Socialist Realism and the Representation of Privilege and Taste

CHAPTER 10. Cultural Orthodoxies under Stalin

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Mrz 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501724084

1501724088

9780801495168

0801495164

OCLC:

1080549427