2. INTRODUCTION TO SOVIET HISTORY PART 1, 1917-1941

CLASS PRESENTATIONS 10 minutes on a subject relating to the week’s theme OR 5-10 minutes on a specialist subject of the presenter’s choice Presentations can be individual or joint Contact me for advice or to look over your presentation Everybody should try to give one presentation over the course of the year

LECTURES AND SEMINARS: TERM 1 # Date SUBJECT 1 29 Sept Introduction 2 6 Oct Soviet History I 3 13 Oct Soviet History II 4 20 Oct Pre-revolutionary Precedents 5 27 Oct Avant-Gardes in Poetry and Prose 6 3 Nov READING WEEK 7 10 Nov Avant-Gardes in Visual Culture 8 17 Nov Avant-Gardes in Film and Music 9 24 Nov From Avant-Garde to Socialist Realism 10 1 Dec Socialist Realism 11 8 Dec Case Study: The Stalin Cult

LECTURES AND SEMINARS: TERM 2 Date SUBJECT 12 12 Jan The Thaw 13 19 Jan Khrushchev-era Film 14 26 Jan ‘Developed Socialism’ or Stagnation 15 2 Feb Underground Literature 16 9 Feb Underground Art: Sotsart, Moscow Conceptualism 17 16 Feb READING WEEK 18 23 Feb Underground Music 19 2 Mar Perestroika 20 9 Mar Perestroika Film 21 16 Mar Post-Socialism 22 23 Mar Conclusions

SOVIET HISTORY TIMELINE 1914-1918 WORLD WAR I Feb 1917 FEBRUARY REVOLUTION Oct 1917 OCTOBER REVOLUTION 1918-1921 CIVIL WAR (WAR COMMUNISM) 1921-1927 NEW ECONOMIC POLICY (NEP) 1924 LENIN’S DEATH: BATTLE FOR SUCCESSION c. 1927 STALIN’S DICTATORSHIP 1928-1932 THE ‘GREAT BREAK 1935 PURGE OF ‘LEFT OPPOSITION’ 1936 NEW ‘STALIN’ CONSTITUTION 1937-38 GREAT TERROR 1939 MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT June 1941 GERMANY INVADES RUSSIA

A PERIOD OF DILEMMAS, 1921-29 The State How to consolidate state power? Who is fit to lead? Foreign Policy World revolution or ‘socialism in one country’? Economics Private trade or centralization? Society How to mould a new individual and a new society?

How did Soviet authorities attempt to mould a new individual and a new society after the Civil War? Education Mass literacy campaigns The ‘Complex Method’ Public Health Improvements in childcare Anti alcohol campaigns Redefinition of the Family Legalisation of abortion Liberalisation of divorce laws Attacks on religion New forms of propaganda and indoctrination

TENSIONS IN SOVIET CULTURE Initiative v Control Entertainment v Education Utopia v Reality Revolution v Consolidation Experiment v Tradition Highbrow v Popular

KEY DILEMMAS OF NEP Power: institutions or individuals? Party: Ideological purity or strength in numbers? Economy: capitalism or socialism? Society: Stability or radicalism? Geography: Centre or periphery?

CONSTRUCTING STALINISM, 1929-1941 Five Year Plan and Collectivization What were they? Why were they carried out? What were the effects? Why might this be called a period of flux? Population movements ‘Cultural revolution’ The Great Terror Rhetoric of the enemy (whether ethnic or class-based) What were the mechanisms of social cohesion in this period? Cult of the hero Hierarchy Mass participation and mass culture

MASS CONSTRUCTION CAMPAIGNS

CULT OF THE HERO

MASS PARTICIPATION RITUALS

CULTURAL REVOLUTION Attack on ‘bourgeois specialists’ Battle within institutions over correct interpretation of Marxism Promotion of proletarian workers [vydvizhentsy] to white-collar positions

THE SHAKHTY TRIAL (1928)

GREAT TERROR Multiple interpretations: An event staged by Stalin (beginning with murder of Kirov) to consolidate his rule The result of the failure to ‘renovate’ the Party Ezhov’s own agenda? Tension between two models of rule, autocratic v bureaucratic Key questions: What was Stalin’s role? How involved was he? How much social support was there for the Terror? What were the broader structural/cultural factors that allowed it to take place?

HOW WAS THIS CHAOS REFLECTED IN THE ARTS? Tradition or experiment (revolution)? Proletarian or bourgeois? Russian or western? Agitation or ‘spiritualism’ (or art for art’s sake)? Control or creativity?

Agitation v spiritualism

TRADITION VS REVOLUTION [W]hy, out of nowhere, did the persecution of the opera and ballet suddenly coalesce? Is this type of art really incompatible with the Soviet order? Or are the auditoriums ever empty? … If it is a matter of closing the theatre for purposes of economy, then this consideration … does not hold up under criticism either. For who would ever think, for example, to shut down or destroy the Rumiantsev Museum or the public library for the purposes of economy merely on the grounds that few workers go there? The Bolshoi Theatre without a doubt plays no less of an educative role for its visitors than the public library does. Mikhail Kalinin to the Central Committee, 12 January 1923

TRADITION V EXPERIMENT The danger of this trend to Soviet music is clear. Leftist distortion in opera stems from the same source as Leftist distortion in painting, poetry, teaching, and science. Petty- bourgeois "innovations" lead to a break with real art, real science and real literature. […] The composer apparently never considered the problem of what the Soviet audience looks for and expects in music. As though deliberately, he scribbles down his music, confusing all the sounds in such a way that his music would reach only the effete "formalists" who had lost all their wholesome taste. He ignored the demand of Soviet culture that all coarseness and savagery be abolished from every corner of Soviet life. ‘Muddle Instead of Music’, Pravda 28 January 1936

NEXT WEEK Freeze (ed.), Ch. 12, pp. 319-346. If you get a chance, please look at the website ‘Seventeen Moments in Soviet History’, and go to the sections on 1956 and read ‘Khrushchev’s Secret Speech’, the ‘Hungarian Crisis’ and the ‘International Youth Festival’ and, under 1985, read ‘Perestroika and Glasnost’, ‘Female Sexuality’ and ‘Meltdown in Chernobyl’. http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1956-2/ http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1985-2/