1. Utopian Visions: The Soviet Experience through the Arts
Jan Plamper, Simon Huxtable

2. Week 3 Outline

3. Week 3
Russian History Part 2 (1917-present)

4. October Revolution of 1917

5. …recapitulating…

6. Vladimir Lenin in 1917

7. Lenin’s April Theses, 1917

8. Russian Civil War

9. War Communism…

10. (1) nationalisation of enterprises

11. (1) nationalisation of enterprises (2) class warfare in village

12. Bolshevik victory…

13. …USSR founded in 1922

14. NEP 1921-1927: Retreat from War Communism

15. Stalin’s dictatorship established by 1927

16. Joseph Stalin ( )

18. Stalin speech, 7 Nov. 1941

20. Great Break, 1928-32 First Five-Year Plan (in four years)

21. (1) collectivisation of agriculture

22. Kolkhoz (collective farm) and tractor

23. Famine of

24. (1) collectivisation of agriculture (2) industrialisation

25. Magnitogorsk

26. Socialist Realism, 1932

27. (1) unification of cultural workers

28. (1) unification of cultural workers (2) change in aesthetics

29. From avantgarde…
Kazimir Malevich, Mower (1930)

30. …to realism
Aleksandr Gerasimov, Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin (1938)

31. Great Terror/Purge or ‘1937’

32. Great Terror, 1936-38: (1) show trials

33. Great Terror, 1936-38: (1) show trials (2) at least 700,000 shot

34. NKVD mugshot of poet Osip Mandelstam, 1891-1938

35. Great Terror, 1936-38: Four explanations

36. Great Terror, 1936-38: Explanations
Totalitarian (e.g. Robert Conquest), 1950s-80s:
strong dictator, centrally organised terror
society atomised, no resistance
commonalities between Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and USSR

37. Great Terror, 1936-38: Explanations
Revisionist (e.g. Arch Getty, Sheila Fitzpatrick), 1980s:
weak dictator, terror from below: people participate in terror for instrumental reasons
self-radicalising dynamics of terror

38. Great Terror, 1936-38: Explanations
War Scare (e.g. Oleg Khlevniuk), 1990s:
strong dictator, centrally organised terror
fear of 5th Column ( Spanish Civil War)

39. Great Terror, 1936-38: Explanations
Discursive (e.g. Igal Halfin), 1990s:
logic of Bolshevik language leads to terror once utopia is proclaimed achieved (in 1936 Stalin Constitution)
agency rests in language itself

40. Second World War:

41. ‘Great Patriotic War’: 22 June 1941 - 9 May 1945

42. Postwar Stalinism,

43. Zhdanovism,

44. Zhdanovism, 1946-53: (1) nationalism

45. Zhdanovism, 1946-53: (1) nationalism, anti-Semitism (2) against ‘formalism’

46. Soviet atomic bomb, 1949  USSR and USA = superpowers

47. Khrushchev period,

48. De-Stalinisation, 1956-

49.  idea: return to Leninist beginnings

50. Nikita Khrushchev in USA, 1959

51. ‘Thaw’ in culture

52. Brezhnev’s ‘Golden Age’ or ‘Stagnation’? 1964-82

53. Brezhnev and Nixon in Washington, 1973
Détente,
Brezhnev and Nixon in Washington, 1973

54. Senile Leonid Brezhnev, New Year’s Address in 1979

55. Mikhail Gorbachev,

56. Youthful Gorbachev with wife Raisa and Ronald and Nancy Reagan, 1987

57. (1) Glasnost (openness)

58. (1) Glasnost (openness) (2) Perestroika (restructuring)

59.  idea: return to Leninist beginnings

60. Postsoviet era, 1992-

61. Dissolution of USSR

62. President Boris Yeltsin, 1992-99
On 19 Aug during Coup

63. President Vladimir Putin, 2000-