At the end of the 1920s, the Modernist and avant-garde artistic programmes of the early Soviet Union were swept away by the rise of Stalinism and the dictates of Socialist Realism. Did this aesthetic transition also constitute a conceptual break, or were there unseen continuities between these two movements? In Automatic for the Masses, Petre M. Petrov offers a novel, theoretically informed account of that transition, tracing those connections through Modernist notions of agency and authorship. Reading the statements and manifestos of the Formalists, Constructivists, and other Soviet avant-garde artists, Petrov argues that Socialist Realism perpetuated in a new form the Modernist "death of the author." In interpreting this symbolic demise, he shows how the official culture of the 1930s can be seen as a perverted realization of modernism's unrealizable project. An insightful and challenging interpretation of the era, Automatic for the Masses will be required reading for those interested in understanding early Soviet culture.

Tracing both economic and political developments through the prism of history as well as more recent events, this book casts new light on the role of communist history in setting the different regional successes in post-communist transition. It challenges the dominant view that all communist systems were the same, and differing from existing books on the subject, it provides a full account of how certain variations in the functioning of the communist political and socio-economic systems in East Central Europe and the Balkans defined the different modes of power transfer of states in the two regions and their subsequent pathways following the fall of communism. The author also develops a new angle on national and regional post-communist pathways by exploring varying levels of success in both post-communist political and economic reforms as well as the ability of particular states to (re)establish close political ties with the West, especially the EU, and secure necessary foreign assistance for post-communist reform.
Unobtrusive, factual and ultimately convincing, with a foreword written by the leading world scholar in the twentieth-century history of Central and Eastern Europe, Professor Richard Crampton from Oxford, this volume is an excellent contribution to existing literature on democratic reform in the countries of post-communist Europe.

Tracing both economic and political developments through the prism of history as well as more recent developments, this book casts new light on the role of communist history in setting the different regional successes in post-communist transition.

At the end of the 1920s, the Modernist and avant-garde artistic programmes of the early Soviet Union were swept away by the rise of Stalinism and the dictates of Socialist Realism. Did this aesthetic transition also constitute a conceptual break, or were there unseen continuities between these two movements? In Automatic for the Masses, Petre M. Petrov offers a novel, theoretically informed account of that transition, tracing those connections through Modernist notions of agency and authorship. Reading the statements and manifestos of the Formalists, Constructivists, and other Soviet avant-garde artists, Petrov argues that Socialist Realism perpetuated in a new form the Modernist "death of the author." In interpreting this symbolic demise, he shows how the official culture of the 1930s can be seen as a perverted realization of modernism's unrealizable project. An insightful and challenging interpretation of the era, Automatic for the Masses will be required reading for those interested in understanding early Soviet culture.