"Mally's book moves the study of an important revolutionary cultural experiment from the realm of selective textual analysis to wide-ranging social and institutional history. It reveals vividly the social-cultural tensions and values inherent in the Russian revolutionary period, and adds authoritatively to the rapidly emerging literature on cultural revolution in Russia and in the modern world at large."--Richard Stites, Georgetown University "Mally's book moves the study of an important revolutionary cultural experiment from the realm of selective textual analysis to wide-ranging social and institutional history. It reveals vividly the social-cultural tensions and values inherent in the Russian revolutionary period, and adds authoritatively to the rapidly emerging literature on cultural revolution in Russia and in the modern world at large."--Richard Stites, Georgetown University

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Art for the workers explores the mythology and reality of post-revolutionary proletarian art in Russia as well as its expression in the festive decorations of Petrograd between 1917 and 1920. It covers this brief period chronologically, and so permits a close inspection of the development of artistic policies in Russia under the Provisional Government followed by the Bolsheviks. Specifically, this book focuses on the pre-and post-revolutionary debate about the nature of proletarian art and its role in the new Socialist society, particularly focusing on festive decorations, parades and mass performances as expressions of proletarian art and forms of propaganda.

Proletcult by Cedar Paul, first published in 1921, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

A compendium of original essays and contemporary viewpoints on the 1917 Revolution The Russian revolution of 1917 reverberated throughout an empire that covered one-sixth of the world. It altered the geo-political landscape of not only Eurasia, but of the entire globe. The impact of this immense event is still felt in the present day. The historiography of the last two decades has challenged conceptions of the 1917 revolution as a monolithic entity— the causes and meanings of revolution are many, as is reflected in contemporary scholarship on the subject. A Companion to the Russian Revolution offers more than thirty original essays, written by a team of respected scholars and historians of 20th century Russian history. Presenting a wide range of contemporary perspectives, the Companion discusses topics including the dynamics of violence in war and revolution, Russian political parties, the transformation of the Orthodox church, Bolshevism, Liberalism, and more. Although primarily focused on 1917 itself, and the singular Revolutionary experience in that year, this book also explores time-periods such as the First Russian Revolution, early Soviet government, the Civil War period, and even into the 1920’s. Presents a wide range of original essays that discuss Brings together in-depth coverage of political history, party history, cultural history, and new social approaches Explores the long-range causes, influence on early Soviet culture, and global after-life of the Russian Revolution Offers broadly-conceived, contemporary views of the revolution largely based on the author’s original research Links Russian revolutions to Russian Civil Wars as concepts A Companion to the Russian Revolution is an important addition to modern scholarship on the subject, and a valuable resource for those interested in Russian, Late Imperial, or Soviet history as well as anyone interested in Revolution as a global phenomenon.

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 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 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.

Empiriomonism is Alexander Bogdanov’s scientific-philosophical substantiation of Marxism. In Books One and Two, he combines Ernst Mach’s and Richard Avenarius’s neutral monist philosophy with the theory of psychophysical parallelism and systematically demonstrates that human psyches are thoroughly natural and are subject to nature’s laws. In Book Three, Bogdanov argues that empiriomonism is superior to G. V. Plekhanov’s outdated materialism and shows how the principles of empiriomonism solve the basic problem of historical materialism: how a society’s material base causally determines its ways of thinking. Bogdanov concludes that empiriomonism is of the same order as materialist systems, and, since it is the ideology of the productive forces of society, it is a Marxist philosophy.

This anthology offers a rich array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, comic routines, and folklore to offer a close look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. Both state-sponsored cultural forms and the unofficial culture that flourished beneath the surface are represented. The focus is on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses. The period covered encompasses the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the mixed economy and culture of the 1920s, the tightly controlled Stalinist 1930s, the looser atmosphere of the Great Patriotic War, and the postwar era ending with the death of Stalin. Much of the material appears here in English for the first time. A companion 45-minute audio tape (ISBN 0-253-32911-6) features contemporaneous performances of fifteen popular songs of the time, with such favorites as "Bublichki," "The Blue Kerchief," and "Katyusha." Russian texts of the songs are included in the book.

A century of Russian artistic genius, including literature, art, music and dance, within the dynamic cultural ecosystem that shaped it.

A study of Lunacharsky's commissariat which ran both education and the arts in Bolshevik Russia.