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In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress,
control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to
suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a
good future out of a "bad past." While Putin's regime has acquired
nearly complete control over interpretations of the past, The
Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully
rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current
political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in
which public narrative shapes Russian culture—from cinema,
television, and music to museums, legislature, and education—as
well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies
a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in
World War II. The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and
nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as
well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.
How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism?
In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist
countries constructed museums dedicated to chronicling their
experiences. Museums of Communism explores the complicated
intersection of history, commemoration, and victimization made
evident in these museums constructed after 1991. While contributors
from a diverse range of fields explore various museums and include
nearly 90 photographs, a common denominator emerges: rather than
focusing on artifacts and historical documents, these museums often
privilege memories and stories. In doing so, the museums shift
attention from experiences of guilt or collaboration to narratives
of shared victimization under communist rule. As editor Stephen M.
Norris demonstrates, these museums are often problematic at best
and revisionist at worst. From occupation museums in the Baltic
States to memorial museums in Ukraine, former secret police prisons
in Romania, and nostalgic museums of everyday life in Russia, the
sites considered offer new ways of understanding the challenges of
separating memory and myth.
In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress,
control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to
suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a
good future out of a "bad past." While Putin's regime has acquired
nearly complete control over interpretations of the past, The
Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully
rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current
political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in
which public narrative shapes Russian culture—from cinema,
television, and music to museums, legislature, and education—as
well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies
a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in
World War II. The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and
nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as
well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.
How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism?
In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist
countries constructed museums dedicated to chronicling their
experiences. Museums of Communism explores the complicated
intersection of history, commemoration, and victimization made
evident in these museums constructed after 1991. While contributors
from a diverse range of fields explore various museums and include
nearly 90 photographs, a common denominator emerges: rather than
focusing on artifacts and historical documents, these museums often
privilege memories and stories. In doing so, the museums shift
attention from experiences of guilt or collaboration to narratives
of shared victimization under communist rule. As editor Stephen M.
Norris demonstrates, these museums are often problematic at best
and revisionist at worst. From occupation museums in the Baltic
States to memorial museums in Ukraine, former secret police prisons
in Romania, and nostalgic museums of everyday life in Russia, the
sites considered offer new ways of understanding the challenges of
separating memory and myth.
Seeking to rebuild the Russian film industry after its
post-Soviet collapse, directors and producers sparked a revival of
nationalist and patriotic sentiment by applying Hollywood
techniques to themes drawn from Russian history. Unsettled by the
government s move toward market capitalism, Russians embraced these
historical blockbusters, packing the American-style multiplexes
that sprouted across the country. Stephen M. Norris examines the
connections among cinema, politics, economics, history, and
patriotism in the creation of "blockbuster history" the adaptation
of an American cinematic style to Russian historical epics."
A fundamental dimension of the Russian historical experience has
been the diversity of its people and cultures, religions and
languages, landscapes and economies. For six centuries this
diversity was contained within the sprawling territories of the
Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and it persists today in the
entwined states and societies of the former USSR. Russia's People
of Empire explores this enduring multicultural world through life
stories of 31 individuals-famous and obscure, high born and low,
men and women-that illuminate the cross-cultural exchanges at work
from the late 1500s to post-Soviet Russia. Working on the scale of
a single life, these microhistories shed new light on the
multicultural character of the Russian Empire, which both shaped
individuals' lives and in turn was shaped by them. -- Indiana
University Press
This is the first book in English to trace the fascinating and
tragic history of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, founded in 1919
and liquidated by the Soviet government in 1949. Since the
conventional view of the fate of Jews in Soviet Russia is that from
the beginning, the Soviet state pursued policies aimed at stamping
out Jewish culture, it is surprising to learn that from the 1920s
through World War II, secular Yiddish culture was actively promoted
and Yiddish cultural institutions thrived, supported by the Soviet
government, albeit for its own propaganda purposes. Drawing from
newly available archives, Jeffrey Veidlinger uses the dramatic
story of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, the premiere secular
Jewish cultural institution of the Soviet era, to demonstrate how
Jewish writers and artists were able to promote Jewish national
culture within the confines of Soviet nationality policies. He
shows how a stellar group of artists, writers, choreographers,
directors, and actors led by Solomon Michaels brought to life
shtetl fables, biblical heroes, Israelite lore, exilic laments, and
dilemmas of contemporary life under the guise of conventional
socialist realism before the theater and many of its principal
figures fell victim to Stalinist antisemitism and xenophobia after
World War II. Enriched by rare photographs of the theater's artists
and performances, The Moscow State Yiddish Theater brings to life a
complex period in the history and culture of Soviet Jewry.
For more than three centuries, St. Petersburg, founded in 1703
by Peter the Great as Russia's westward-oriented capital and as a
visually stunning showcase of Russia's imperial ambitions, has been
the country's most mythologized city. Like a museum piece, it has
functioned as a site for preservation, a literal and imaginative
place where Russians can commune with idealized pasts. Preserving
Petersburg represents a significant departure from traditional
representations. By moving beyond the "Petersburg text" created by
canonized writers and artists, the contributors to this engrossing
volume trace the ways in which St. Petersburg has become a "museum
piece," embodying history, nostalgia, and recourse to memories of
the past. The essays in this attractively illustrated volume trace
a process of preservation that stretches back nearly three
centuries, as manifest in the works of noted historians, poets,
novelists, artists, architects, filmmakers, and dramatists.
The Akunin Project is the first book to study the fiction and
popular history of Grigorii Chkhartishvili, one of the most
successful writers in post-Soviet Russia. In the first two decades
of the twenty-first century, Chkhartishvili published over sixty
books under the pen names Anatolii Brusnikin, Anna Borisova,
Akunin-Chkhartishvili, and, most commonly, Boris Akunin. His series
featuring the tsarist secret policeman Erast Fandorin has sold over
15 million books in Russia alone, making Akunin one of the
bestselling authors of the post-Soviet era. Combining
intertextuality, allusions, pastiche, and other markers of
postmodern playfulness, many of Akunin's works have been translated
into English and have also been adapted for film and television.
Akunin's public profile has been further enhanced by his active
involvement in mass political protests against Vladimir Putin.
Despite Akunin's international reputation as a celebrated writer,
there is very little critical work on his literary output and his
mysterious persona. Bringing together scholars of literature,
history, and culture, The Akunin Project fills this gap by
exploring the author's bestselling adventure novels and recent
histories of the Russian state. The book includes translations of
five short works previously unavailable in English as well as an
interview with the author.
Seeking to rebuild the Russian film industry after its
post-Soviet collapse, directors and producers sparked a revival of
nationalist and patriotic sentiment by applying Hollywood
techniques to themes drawn from Russian history. Unsettled by the
government s move toward market capitalism, Russians embraced these
historical blockbusters, packing the American-style multiplexes
that sprouted across the country. Stephen M. Norris examines the
connections among cinema, politics, economics, history, and
patriotism in the creation of "blockbuster history" the adaptation
of an American cinematic style to Russian historical epics."
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