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In Soviet times, anthropologists in the Soviet Union were
closely involved in the state s work of nation building. They
helped define official nationalities, and gathered material about
traditional customs and suitably heroic folklore, whilst at the
same time refraining from work on the reality of contemporary
Soviet life. Since the end of the Soviet Union anthropology in
Russia has been transformed. International research standards have
been adopted, and the focus of research has shifted to include
urban culture and difficult subjects, such as xenophobia. However,
this transformation has been, and continues to be, controversial,
with, for example, strongly contested debates about the relevance
of Western anthropology and cultural theory to post-Soviet reality.
This book presents an overview of how anthropology in Russia has
changed since Soviet times, and showcases examples of important
Russian anthropological work. As such, the book will be of great
interest not just to Russian specialists, but also to
anthropologists more widely, and to all those interested in the way
academic study is related to prevailing political and social
conditions."
In Soviet times, anthropologists in the Soviet Union were closely
involved in the state's work of nation building. They helped define
official nationalities, and gathered material about traditional
customs and suitably heroic folklore, whilst at the same time
refraining from work on the reality of contemporary Soviet life.
Since the end of the Soviet Union anthropology in Russia has been
transformed. International research standards have been adopted,
and the focus of research has shifted to include urban culture and
difficult subjects, such as xenophobia. However, this
transformation has been, and continues to be, controversial, with,
for example, strongly contested debates about the relevance of
Western anthropology and cultural theory to post-Soviet reality.
This book presents an overview of how anthropology in Russia has
changed since Soviet times, and showcases examples of important
Russian anthropological work. As such, the book will be of great
interest not just to Russian specialists, but also to
anthropologists more widely, and to all those interested in the way
academic study is related to prevailing political and social
conditions.
Fragile, gritty, and vital to an extraordinary degree, St.
Petersburg is one of the world's most alluring cities-a place in
which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial.
Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city's pre-1917 and
Second World War history than with its recent past. In this
beautifully illustrated and highly original book, Catriona Kelly
shows how creative engagement with the past has always been
fundamental to St. Petersburg's residents. Weaving together oral
history, personal observation, literary and artistic texts,
journalism, and archival materials, she traces the at times
paradoxical feelings of anxiety and pride that were inspired by
living in the city, both when it was socialist Leningrad, and now.
Ranging from rubbish dumps to promenades, from the city's glamorous
center to its grimy outskirts, this ambitious book offers a
compelling and always unexpected panorama of an extraordinary and
elusive place.
An intensely philosophical and religious poet, Olga Sedakova writes
of nature, music, and the inner, spiritual life. As one of the
preservers of traditional Russian culture, she stands in stark
contrast to the rampant commercialization in contemporary Russian
life, instead tracing her poetic roots back to the early
avant-garde movements of pre-revolutionary Russia. For that stance
she endured years of censorship and silencing during the Soviet
regime, her poems distributed by hand in mimeographed copies or by
word of mouth. This volume introduces to an English-speaking
audience an extensive selection of poems by one of Russia's most
distinguished lyric poets writing today.
Elena Shvarts was the most outstanding Russian poet of her
generation. 'Paradise' presents a dual language selection of her
earlier poetry, and was a Poetry Book Society Recommended
Translation. Each new generation has to reinterpret St Petersburg,
the place, the culture and its significance for Russia. Shvarts's
haunted and demonic city is nearer Dostoyevsky's than Akhmatova's
or Brodsky's. Her poetry draws backwoods Russian folklore with its
cruelty, its religiosity and its quaint humour, into stone,
cosmopolitan Petropolis. She brings out both the truth and the
irony of Peter the Great's 'Paradise', celebrating and reviling her
native city as a crossroads of dimensions, a reality riddled with
mythical monuments and religious symbols. Despite the blood beneath
its pavements, her St Petersburg also reveals traces of an angelic
origin: 'Black rats nest over the shining river, in undergrowth, /
They're permitted, welcome, nothing can ruin paradise on earth.'
Elena Shvarts stood outside all schools and movements in
contemporary Russian poetry. She once famously described poetry as
a 'dance without legs'. Her own poetry fits this description
perfectly, a combination of deeply rhythmic and lyrical dance with
the eccentric, perpetual movement of flight. The world of her poems
is strange and grotesque; often the setting is urban, but
unrecognisable - towns emptied of the everyday and peopled only by
animals, spirits and strange elemental forces. A peculiar religious
fervour illuminates these scenes, but her religion is unorthodox
and highly individual. Shvarts's poetry is visionary. Her vision
takes her to the edge of language and rhythm, and she was one of
the few contemporary poets brave enough to trust her vision
absolutely.
Fragile, gritty, and vital to an extraordinary degree, St.
Petersburg is one of the world's most alluring cities-a place in
which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial.
Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city's pre-1917 and
Second World War history than with its recent past. In this
beautifully illustrated and highly original book, Catriona Kelly
shows how creative engagement with the past has always been
fundamental to St. Petersburg's residents. Weaving together oral
history, personal observation, literary and artistic texts,
journalism, and archival materials, she traces the at times
paradoxical feelings of anxiety and pride that were inspired by
living in the city, both when it was socialist Leningrad, and now.
Ranging from rubbish dumps to promenades, from the city's glamorous
center to its grimy outskirts, this ambitious book offers a
compelling and always unexpected panorama of an extraordinary and
elusive place.
Rather than a conventional chronology of Russian literature, the book will explore the place and importance of literature of all sorts in Russian culture. How and when did a Russian national literature come into being? What shaped its creation? How have the Russians regarded their literary language? The book will uses the figure of Pushkin, 'the Russian Shakespeare', as a recurring example as his work influenced every Russian writer who came after hime, whether poets or novelists.
Its unique ability to sway the masses has led many observers to
consider cinema the artform with the greatest political force. The
images it produces can bolster leaders or contribute to their
undoing. Soviet filmmakers often had to face great obstacles as
they struggled to make art in an authoritarian society that put
them not only under ideological pressure but also imposed rigid
economic constraints on the industry. But while the Brezhnev era of
Soviet filmmaking is often depicted as a period of great
repression, Soviet Art House reveals that the films made at the
prestigious Lenfilm studio in this period were far more imaginative
than is usually suspected. In this pioneering study of a Soviet
film studio, author Catriona Kelly delves into previously
unpublished archival documents and interviews, memoirs, and the
films themselves to illuminate the ideological, economic, and
aesthetic dimensions of filmmaking in the Brezhnev era. She argues
that especially the young filmmakers who joined the studio after
its restructuring in 1961 revitalized its output and helped
establish Leningrad as a leading center of oppositional art. This
unique insight into Soviet film production shows not only the inner
workings of Soviet institutions before the system collapsed but
also traces how filmmakers tirelessly dodged and negotiated
contradictory demands to create sophisticated and highly original
movies.
Stalinism in Kazakhstan: History, Memory, and Representation is a
multi-disciplinary collection of essays from Central Asian authors.
The volume is devoted to violence and socio-economic transformation
during the Stalinist repressions in Kazakhstan and explores
collective trauma, selective memory, and representations in
contemporary art and literature.
Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, questions of identity
have dominated the culture not only of Russia, but of all the
countries of the former Soviet bloc. This timely collection
examines the ways in which cultural activities such as fiction, TV,
cinema, architecture and exhibitions have addressed these questions
and also describes other cultural flashpoints, from attitudes to
language to the use of passports. It discusses definitions of
political and cultural nationalism, as well as the myths,
institutions and practices that moulded and expressed national
identity. From post-Soviet recollections of food shortages to the
attempts by officials to control popular religion, it analyses a
variety of unexpected and compelling topics to offer fresh insights
about this key area of world culture. Illustrated with numerous
photographs, it presents the results of recent research in an
accessible and lively way.
In Russia, legislation on the separation of church and state in
early 1918 marginalized religious faith and raised pressing
questions about what was to be done with church buildings. While
associated with suspect beliefs, they were also regarded as
structures with potential practical uses, and some were considered
works of art. This engaging study draws on religious anthropology,
sociology, cultural studies, and history to explore the fate of
these "socialist churches," showing how attitudes and practices
related to them were shaped both by laws on the preservation of
monuments and anti-religious measures. Advocates of preservation,
while sincere in their desire to save the buildings, were
indifferent, if not hostile, to their religious purpose. Believers,
on the other hand, regarded preservation laws as irritants, except
when they provided leverage for use of the buildings by church
communities. The situation was eased by the growing rapprochement
of the Orthodox Church and Soviet state organizations after 1943,
but not fully resolved until the Soviet Union fell apart. Based on
abundant archival documentation, Catriona Kelly's powerful
narrative portrays the human tragedies and compromises, but also
the remarkable achievements, of those who fought to preserve these
important buildings over the course of seven decades of state
atheism. Socialist Churches will appeal to specialists, students,
and general readers interested in church history, the history of
architecture, and Russian art, history, and cultural studies.
Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, questions of identity
have dominated the culture not only of Russia, but of all the
countries of the former Soviet bloc. This timely collection
examines the ways in which cultural activities such as fiction, TV,
cinema, architecture and exhibitions have addressed these questions
and also describes other cultural flashpoints, from attitudes to
language to the use of passports. It discusses definitions of
political and cultural nationalism, as well as the myths,
institutions and practices that moulded and expressed national
identity. From post-Soviet recollections of food shortages to the
attempts by officials to control popular religion, it analyses a
variety of unexpected and compelling topics to offer fresh insights
about this key area of world culture. Illustrated with numerous
photographs, it presents the results of recent research in an
accessible and lively way.
Petrushka, the Russian equivalent of Punch and Judy, was one of the
most popular spectacles at fairgrounds and in city courtyards for
over a century. Catriona Kelly"s study, the first to appear in
English, traces the history of Petrushka, illustrating how it
reflected the tensions of Russian urban life both before and after
the Revolution. Written from a standpoint informed by literary
theory, her book at the same time breaks open the categories
traditionally applied, both in the Soviet Union and in the West, to
the study of Russian literature and popular culture. Contemporary
interpretations of Petrushka on the street, high-cultural
appropriations of it for a bourgeois and intellectual readership
(notably the famous ballet by Benois and Stravinsky), and
adaptations made for agit-prop purposes are all analysed. Based on
a wide range of unusual materials, this lively and very readable
account will appeal not only to literary specialists, but also to
those interested in cultural politics, folklore, women's studies
and popular theatre.
In the Russian modernist era, literature threw itself open to
influences from other art forms, most particularly the visual arts.
Collaborations between writers, artists, designers, and theatre and
cinema directors took place more intensively and productively than
ever before or since. Equally striking was the incursion of spatial
and visual motifs and structures into verbal texts. Verbal and
visual principles of creation joined forces in an attempt to
transform and surpass life through art. Yet willed transcendence of
the boundaries between art forms gave rise to confrontation and
creative tension as well as to harmonious co-operation. This
collection of essays by leading British, American and Russian
scholars, first published in 2000, draws on a rich variety of
material - from Dostoevskii to Siniavskii, from writers' doodles to
cabarets, from well-known modernists such as Akhmatova, Malevich,
Platonov and Olesha to less well-known figures - to demonstrate the
creative power and dynamism of Russian culture 'on the boundaries'.
Refining Russia is a pioneering study of the development of advice literature (how-to books such as etiquette manuals and brochures on hygiene) in Russia, and of its reception and wider cultural meaning. It shows how books of this kind reflected changing attitudes to national identity, to gender roles, and to daily life, and how they recorded shifting views of the masses and their place in Russian society. An absorbing and original exercise in 'history of the book', it is also a major contribution to the understanding of Russia's relationship with the West, and of the cultural world inhabited by the Russian intelligentsia.
In the Russian modernist era, literature threw itself open to
influences from other art forms, most particularly the visual arts.
Collaborations between writers, artists, designers, and theatre and
cinema directors took place more intensively and productively than
ever before or since. Equally striking was the incursion of spatial
and visual motifs and structures into verbal texts. Verbal and
visual principles of creation joined forces in an attempt to
transform and surpass life through art. Yet willed transcendence of
the boundaries between art forms gave rise to confrontation and
creative tension as well as to harmonious co-operation. This
collection of essays by leading British, American and Russian
scholars, first published in 2000, draws on a rich variety of
material - from Dostoevskii to Siniavskii, from writers' doodles to
cabarets, from well-known modernists such as Akhmatova, Malevich,
Platonov and Olesha to less well-known figures - to demonstrate the
creative power and dynamism of Russian culture 'on the boundaries'.
Russian women's writing is now attracting enormous interest both in
the West and in Russia itself. This is the first one-volume history
of the subject to appear in any language in modern times. Written
from a bold feminist perspective, the book combines a broad
historical survey with close textual analysis. Sections on women's
writing in the periods 1820-1880, 1881-1917, 1917-1954, and
1953-1992 are followed by essays on individual writers. Drawing on
a wide range of sources, including rare literary journals and
almanacs, Catriona Kelly's account shows familiar figures such as
Akhmatova, Tsevtaeva, and Tolstaya in a radical new context and
brings to light a colourful gallery of fascinating but neglected
writers including Elena Gan, Nadezhda Teffi, Natalya Baranskaya,
and Nina Sadur. The text is supported by generous quotations from
the Russian, all accompanied by English translations. Complemented
by Dr Kelly's Anthology of Russian Women's Writing 1777-1992 (also
available from OUP), this is an indispensable source for readers
and students of women's writing, and for all those concerned with
women's history, the history of feminism, and Russian literature in
general.
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