Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside

by Christina Kiaer, Eric Naiman

Overview

What did it mean to live as a subject of early Soviet modernity? In the 1920s and 1930s, in an environment where every element of daily life was supposed to be transformed by Soviet ideology, routine activities became ideologically significant, subject to debate and change. Drawing on original archival materials and theoretically informed, the essays in this volume examine ways in which Soviet citizens sought to align their private lives with the public nature of Soviet experience by taking the Revolution "inside." Topics discussed include the new sexuality, family loyalty during the Terror, the advertisement of Soviet commodities, the employment of domestic servants, children's toys and Pioneer camps, and narratives of self, ranging from diaries to secret police statements to monologues on the Soviet screen and stage. Bringing into dialogue essays by scholars in history, literature, sociology, art history, and film studies, this interdisciplinary volume contributes to the growing understanding of the Soviet Union as part of the history of modernity, rather than its totalitarian "other."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253217929
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	12/14/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Christina Kiaer is Associate Professor of Art History at Columbia University and author of Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism.

Eric Naiman is Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
IntroductionChristina Kiaer and Eric Naiman
1. The Two Faces of Anastasia: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of Identity in Stalinist Everyday LifeSheila Fitzpatrick
2. Visual Pleasure in Stalinist Cinema: Ivan Pyr'ev's The Party CardLilya Kaganovsky
3. Terror of Intimacy: Family Politics in the 1930s Soviet UnionCynthia Hooper
4. Fear on Stage: Afinogenov, Stanislavsky, and the Making of Stalinist TheaterBoris Wolfson
5. "NEP Without Nepmen!" Soviet Advertising and the Transition to SocialismRandi Cox
6. Panic, Potency, and the Crisis of Nervousness in the 1920sFrances L. Bernstein
7. Delivered from Capitalism: Nostalgia, Alienation, and the Future of Reproduction in Tret'iakov's I Want a Child!Christina Kiaer
8. "The Withering of Private Life": Walter Benjamin in MoscowEvgenii Bershtein
9. When Private Home Meets Public Workplace: Service, Space, and the Urban Domestic in 1920s RussiaRebecca Spagnolo
10. Shaping the "Future Race": Regulating the Daily Life of Children in Early Soviet RussiaCatriona Kelly
11. The Diary as Initiation and Rebirth: Reading Everyday Documents of the Early Soviet EraNatalia Kozlova
Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Oct 2008"—Slavonic & East European Review

From the Publisher

Oct 2008

Slavonic & East European Review