Work Flows investigates the emergence of "flow" as a crucial metaphor within Russian labor culture since 1870. Maya Vinokour frames concern with fluid channeling as immanent to vertical power structures—whether that verticality derives from the state, as in Stalin's Soviet Union and present-day Russia, or from the proliferation of corporate monopolies, as in the contemporary Anglo-American West. Originating in pre-revolutionary bio-utopianism, the Russian rhetoric of liquids and flow reached an apotheosis during Stalin's First Five-Year Plan and re-emerged in post-Soviet "managed democracy" and Western neoliberalism.The literary, philosophical, and official texts that Work Flows examines give voice to the Stalinist ambition of reforging not merely individual bodies, but space and time themselves. By mobilizing the understudied thematic of fluidity, Vinokour offers insight into the nexus of philosophy, literature, and science that underpinned Stalinism and remains influential today. Work Flows demonstrates that Stalinism is not a historical phenomenon restricted to the period 1922-1953, but a symptom of modernity as it emerged in the twentieth century. Stalinism's legacy extends far beyond the bounds of the former Soviet Union, emerging in seemingly disparate settings like post-Soviet Russia and Silicon Valley
Two decades before the war against Ukraine, a "special operation" was launched against Russian historical memory, aggressively reshaping the nation's understanding of its history and identity. The Kremlin's militarization of Russia through World War II propaganda is well documented, but the glorification of Russian medieval society and its warlords as a source of support for Putinism has yet to be explored. This book offers the first comparison of Putin's political neomedievalism and re-Stalinization and introduces the concept of mobmemory to the study of right-wing populism. It argues that the celebration of the oprichnina, Ivan the Terrible's regime of state terror (1565–1572), has been fused with the rehabilitation of Stalinism to reconstruct the Russian Empire. The post-Soviet case suggests that the global obsession with the Middle Ages is not purely an aesthetic movement but a potential weapon against democracy.
The book is intended for students, scholars, and non-specialists interested in understanding Russia's anti-modern politics and the Russians' support for the terror unleashed against Ukraine.
Abstract The Soviet campaign in support of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the Vietnam War saturated Soviet public culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was the longest solidarity action in Soviet history and the first to reach mass television audiences. This article examines the production and reception of a televised documentary film about the Vietnam War made by Konstantin Simonov – a celebrity writer who played a crucial role in Soviet culture during World War II, and then, in the post-war period, in the struggle to come to terms with terrible truths about Stalinism and the chaos and trauma that war had rendered. Simonov's film presented the Vietnam War in lyrical rather than analytical terms, calling upon viewers to draw connections between the suffering of the Vietnamese and the Soviet wartime experience and to enact their solidarity with the Vietnamese in terms of feeling. The film proposes a solidarity of pain and an understanding of war and wartime suffering as elemental and overwhelming. In dozens of letters to Simonov, we find an understanding and appreciation of this vision, which decentres Vietnam and instead sends viewers on a journey back to Soviet history and trauma.
"This first in-depth comparison of Putin's neomedieval memory politics and re-Stalinization proposes new approaches to the study of the right-wing populist memory in Russia and beyond. Two decades before the war against Ukraine, a "special operation" was launched against the Russians' historical memory, to aggressively reshape the nation's understanding of its history and identity. The Kremlin's propaganda of World War II for the militarization of Russia is well documented, but the role of political neomedievalism - the glorification of Russian medieval society and its warlords - in rallying Russians to support Putinism had yet to be explored. The celebration of Ivan the Terrible, the sixteenth-century tsar, and the originator of large-scale state terror has become fused with the rehabilitation of Stalinism in the quest to reconstruct an empire. The post-Soviet case suggests that the worldwide obsession with "everything medieval" is not a purely aesthetic movement but may readily be weaponized against democracy. The book is intended for students, scholars, and non-specialists interested in understanding Russia's anti-modern politics and the ease with which post-Soviet society has accepted the terror that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine"--
"It is pertinent to ask to what extent certain cultural phenomena and intellectual currents from the Stalin era really were such unique features that can be branded as Stalinist…". This is the question that motivated the anthology Stalin Era Intellectuals: Culture and Stalinism under review here. »Det är relevant att fråga sig i vilken utsträckning vissa kulturella fenomen och intellektuella strömningar från Stalintiden verkligen var sådana unika särdrag som kan stämplas som stalinistiska... ». Detta är frågan som motiverade antologin Stalin Era Intellectuals: Culture and Stalinism som granskas här.
Abstract This article analyzes the cultural transformation in the self-proclaimed "people's republics" in the Donbas, characterized by a violent rejection of global postmodernist art and the return to a Soviet, often Stalinist, cultural message and visual language. The author, an art critic and curator, born and previously active in the Donbas, begins by discussing the destruction of unconventional art, even when created by the miners themselves, and the projects associated with the IZOLYATSIA art platform. The second part of the article deals with public art in the early years of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), in particular, political posters and art exhibits, which employ Soviet or Soviet-like themes and visual imagery. In a notable departure from the Russian model, the "mobilized art" in the separatist-controlled Donbas features positive references to the Bolshevik Revolution. Throughout the article, the concept of violence is used to analyze the mediatized destruction of nonrealist art and the construction of the DNR's self-image.
Owing to various reasons, Stalinism still represents, according to this essay, a fertile intellectual topic. Therefore, my aim here is to offer a reading of Pavel Campeanu's works on Stalinism – a relatively unknown Romanian Marxist – through the social history of the Soviet Union in general and of Stalinism in particular advanced by Moshe Lewin. The argumentation advances by taking into account the overall historical frame of the debate (Eastern and Western Marxism during the Cold War) and by stressing some key issues like primitive accumulation, legitimacy, a certain overstretching of the concept of Stalinism and, finally, the issue of totalitarianism. The stake of the essay resides in claiming that Campeanu's analyses of Stalinism, original and convincing as they are, may favor, in the above-mentioned issues, and regardless the author's intentions, interpretations belonging to or deriving from the totalitarian school of Cold War and Soviet Studies.
The article deals with Afinogenov's play "Weirdo" in the context of the emerging Stalinism, which at the moment of its formation demanded not revolutionary enthusiasm, which was much spoken and written about, but direct submission to the orders of the party apparatus – that is how the conflict appears in the play, and in the Soviet society. Afinogenov himself experienced the difficult moods of a transitional time, when the liberal era of the NEP was gone and the era of civil war was returning. The playwright portrayed the enthusiastic Boris Volgin, whom he saw as his friend Boris Igritsky, and simultaneously wrote to him about the state of complete political uncertainty, in which perspective and faith in the future are lost. As a playwright of the "general line" Afinogenov suppressed his critical mood in an attempt to correspond to the new times, which, in turn, demanded not a romantic hero, but a class struggle with any "exit" beyond the full and unconditional subordination to the decisions of the Party
This chapter analyses Konstantin Simonov's thought from the largely understudied point of view of de-Stalinization. Simonov showed already in 1956 how the representation of the Great Patriotic war was tightly intertwined with the personality cult of Stalin, and how this entanglement had caused literature and art either to portray Soviet reality in a distorted manner or to keep silent about social difficulties. By criticizing key authoritative documents of the early post-war years, Simonov revealed how Stalin's wish to forge the image of the Great Patriotic war resulted in the widespread tendency of embellishing reality in Soviet literature and art. The chapter also tracks how the Party rebuked Simonov's claims without mentioning him as the initiator of the ideas. The chapter thus testifies to some of the problems of 'de-Stalinization' and how some of its key issues could not be openly discussed in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s. The chapter is based on previously untapped archival material, and it contributes to the scholarly discussion of the thaw-era de-Stalinization, Simonov's roles within the Soviet literary establishment, and questions of the representation of reality in Soviet art in general and the representation of the Great Patriotic war in particular.