Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia

Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia PDF Author: Richard Stites
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Surveys Russia's wartime culture as expressed in film, theater, music, propaganda, the press, and national myth.

Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia

Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia PDF Author: Richard Stites
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Surveys Russia's wartime culture as expressed in film, theater, music, propaganda, the press, and national myth.

Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia

Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia PDF Author: Richard Stites
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253209498
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
"This lively and often moving collection of essays is an important contribution to Western scholarship on Soviet society and culture during the Second World War. . . . [a] straightforward but lively description of cultural life, unhampered by excessive interpretation or cultural theory. For all those who love Russia's cultural heritage, these essays cast a welcome spotlight on some of the people and pockets of life from that tragic but compelling time." —Canadian Slavonic Papers "Enjoyable to read and accessible to the nonspecialist, Culture and Entertainment is not only an indispensable addition to any Soviet studies library but will prove valuable to anyone interested in or teaching courses on World War II, propaganda and popular culture, homefront politics, or the interacation between cultural creation and governmental power." —Journal of Modern History "This comprehensive recollection of articles goes beyond cultural history, and provides an original approach to the study of war. War, we learn, is fought on many fronts, and the cultural one should not be underestimated." —SAIS Review " . . . takes the reader to the heart of the patriotic struggle, to the cultural and spiritual imperatives that roused Russian resistance." —Canadian Military History "This collection . . . furthers knowledge of Soviet high and popular culture, and also demonstrates the extremely important role that cultural productions played in helping to maintain Soviet spirits in the midst of the Nazi onslaught." —Choice "This anthology of scholarly articles provides surprising insights into Soviet cultural propaganda during the Great Patriotic War." —War, Literature and the Arts ". . . the essays here provide much food for thought and constitute a valuable addition to a relatively neglected area of study." —The Slavonic Review World War II (The Great Patriotic War) had a pronounced cultural and emotional impact on the Russian people. The subjects of these essays range from the Moscow press to frontline correspondents, from entertainment brigades to amateur songs by fighting men and women, from symphonic compositions to revivals of literary classics, and from Moscow stages to folk ensembles on the battlefield—the cultural outpourings in the hearts and souls of ordinary Russians at war.

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia PDF Author: James Von Geldern
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253209696
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
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.

European Culture in the Great War

European Culture in the Great War PDF Author: Aviel Roshwald
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521013246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
It is commonplace to refer to the First World War as an historical watershed, but the nature of that great cataclysm's impact upon European society and culture remains a hotly debated topic. Many recent works have dealt with the Great War's role in shaping artistic and intellectual modernism and with the social history of the war. Yet the English-language literature remains dominated by a disproportionate emphasis on the western European experience. This book redresses the balance by giving equal attention to the countries of eastern and central Europe, and distinguishes itself by focusing specifically on cultural change during the course of the war, as distinct from the after-effects and memories of the conflict.

Russian Popular Culture

Russian Popular Culture PDF Author: Richard Stites
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521369862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This book presents a side of Russian life that is largely unknown to the West - the world of popular culture. By surveying detective and science fiction, popular songs, jokes, box office movie hits, stage, radio and television, Professor Richard Stites introduces the people and cultural products that are household words to Russian people. Spanning the entire twentieth century, the author examines the subcultures that draw upon and enrich Russian popular culture. He explores the relationship between popular culture and the national and social values of the masses, including their heroes and myths, and assesses the phenomenon of the celebrity from the silent screen star to the latest rock music idol. Richard Stites pays particular attention to the dramatic battle between elite and popular culture and to the intervention of revolutions, wars, and the state in the production and control of this culture.

Socialist Fun

Socialist Fun PDF Author: Gleb Tsipursky
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822981254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Most narratives depict Soviet Cold War cultural activities and youth groups as drab and dreary, militant and politicized. In this study Gleb Tsipursky challenges these stereotypes in a revealing portrayal of Soviet youth and state-sponsored popular culture. The primary local venues for Soviet culture were the tens of thousands of clubs where young people found entertainment, leisure, social life, and romance. Here sports, dance, film, theater, music, lectures, and political meetings became vehicles to disseminate a socialist version of modernity. The Soviet way of life was dutifully presented and perceived as the most progressive and advanced, in an attempt to stave off Western influences. In effect, socialist fun became very serious business. As Tsipursky shows, however, Western culture did infiltrate these activities, particularly at local levels, where participants and organizers deceptively cloaked their offerings to appeal to their own audiences. Thus, Soviet modernity evolved as a complex and multivalent ideological device. Tsipursky provides a fresh and original examination of the Kremlin's paramount effort to shape young lives, consumption, popular culture, and to build an emotional community—all against the backdrop of Cold War struggles to win hearts and minds both at home and abroad.

The Red Flag

The Red Flag PDF Author: David Priestland
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802189792
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
“The best and the most accessible one-volume history of communism now available . . . A far-reaching, vividly written account.” —Foreign Affairs In The Red Flag, Oxford professor David Priestland tells the epic story of a movement that has taken root in dozens of countries across two hundred years, from its birth after the French Revolution to its ideological maturity in nineteenth-century Germany to its rise to dominance (and subsequent fall) in the twentieth century. Beginning with the first modern Communists in the age of Robespierre, Priestland examines the motives of thinkers and leaders including Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Che Guevara, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Gorbachev, and many others. Priestland also shows how Communism, in all its varieties, appealed to different societies for different reasons, in some as a response to inequalities and in others more out of a desire to catch up with the West. But paradoxically, while destroying one web of inequality, Communist leaders were simultaneously weaving another. It was this dynamic, together with widespread economic failure and an escalating loss of faith in the system, that ultimately destroyed Soviet Communism itself. At a time when global capitalism is in crisis and powerful new political forces have arisen to confront Western democracy, The Red Flag is essential reading if we are to apply the lessons of the past to navigating the future. “Detailed and scholarly but written in lively prose, this is a rich, satisfying account of the most successful utopian political movement in history.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Embracing Arms

Embracing Arms PDF Author: Helena Goscilo
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155225095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Discursive practices during war polarize and politicize gender: they normally require men to fulfill a single, overriding task destroy the enemy but impose a series of often contradictory expectations on women. The essays in the book establish links between political ideology, history, psychology, cultural studies, cinema, literature, and gender studies and addresses questions such as what is the role of women in war or military conflicts beyond the well-studied victimization? Can the often contradictory expectations of women and their traditional roles be (re)thought and (re)constructed? How do cultural representations of women during war times reveal conflicting desires and poke holes in the ideological apparatus of the state and society? Geographically, focuses on the USSR / Russia, Central Europe, and the Balkans; historically, on WWII; the secessionist war(s) in Chechnya (1994 96, 1999 ); and the Bosnia / Croatia / Serbia war (1992 95).

The Soviet Myth of World War II

The Soviet Myth of World War II PDF Author: Jonathan Brunstedt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108498752
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Provides a bold new interpretation of the origins and development of World War II's remembrance in the USSR.

Russian War Films

Russian War Films PDF Author: Denise Jeanne Youngblood
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
A panoramic survey of nearly a century of Russian films on wars and wartime from World War I to more recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya, with heavy emphasis on films pertaining to World War II.