Mass Culture in Soviet Russia

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.

Sujets

• Former Soviet Union
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Película fotográfica
• URSS
• General officer
• Eastern Europe
• Russian
• Russia
• Cinema
• Anthropology
• General
• Film
• Russie
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 décembre 1995
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253013392
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia
Mass Culture in Soviet Russia
Tales Poems Songs Movies Plays and Folklore 1917-1953
EDITED BY
James von Geldern and Richard Stites
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS BLOOMINGTON INDIANAPOLIS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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1995 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences- Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mass culture in Soviet Russia: tales, poems, songs, movies, plays, and folklore, 1917-1953 / edited by James von Geldern and Richard Stites.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-253-32893-9 (alk. paper). - ISBN 978-0-253-20969-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Popular culture-Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union-Civilization.
I. Von Geldern, James. II. Stites, Richard.
DK266.4.M38 1995
306 .0947 0904-dc20
94-47995
6 7 8 9 10 12 11 10 09 08 07
Contents
Note: Performances of entries marked with an asterisk are on the accompanying cassette tape.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION BY JAMES VON GELDERN
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
I. The Revolution and New Regime, 1917-1927
Aleksei Gastev, We Grow Out of Iron (1918)
Vladimir Kirillov, The Iron Messiah (1918)
Mikhail Gerasimov, We (1919)
The War of Kings (1918)
Demyan Bedny, Send Off: A Red Army Song (1918)
Solemn Oath on Induction into the Worker-Peasant Red Army (1918)
Little Apple (1918)
Aleksandr Bezymensky, The Young Guard (1918)
Larisa Reisner, Letters from the Eastern Front (1918)
Pavel Arsky, For the Cause of the Red Soviets (1919)
Toward a World Commune (1920)
Marietta Shaginyan, Mess-Mend (1923)
Pavel Blyakhin, The Little Red Devils (1923)
Kornei Chukovsky, Buzzer-Fly (1924)
Mikhail Zoshchenko, The Lady Aristocrat (1923)
Dmitry Furmanov, Chapaev (1923)
Valentin Kruchinin and Pavel German, The Brick Factory (1920s)*
Bublichki (1920s)*
Songs of the Underworld (1920s)
Vitaly Zhemchuzhny, Evening of Books (1924)
Blue Blouse Skit (1924)
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ( 1924)
Innokenty Zhukov, Voyage of the Red Star Pioneer Troop to Wonderland (1924)
A. I. Ulyanova, V. I. Ulyanov (N. Lenin) (1925)
Heard in Moscow (1925)
K. Podrevsky and B. Fomin, The Long Road (1926) *
Anecdotes
II. The Stalinist Thirties
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION, 1928-1932
Leninist Fairy Tales
Ivan Zhiga, The Thoughts, Cares, and Deeds of the Workers (1928)
Makhno s Band ( Gulyai-Pole ) (1930)
Shock Brigade of Composers and Poets, Swell the Harvest (1930)
Fyodor Panfyorov, Rammed It Through (1930)
Vladimir Kirshon, Bread (1930)
Mikhail Doroshin, Pavlik Morozov (1933)
Shock Workers, The First Cruise (1931)
Nikolai Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered (1932-1934)
M. Ilin, The Story of the Great Plan (1930)
Aleksei Garr , A Storm off Hope (1928)
The Stalin White Sea-Baltic Canal (1934)
Samuil Marshak, Mister Twister (1933)
Anecdotes
HIGH STALINISM, 1932-1936
Gr. Bortnik, Granddaddy Sebastian Went Godless (1934)
Sergei Tretyakov, Nine Girls ( 1935)
Anton Makarenko, The Road to Life (1932-1934)
Vasily Lebedev-Kumach and Isaac Dunaevsky, March of the Happy-Go-Lucky Guys (1934)*
Vasily Lebedev-Kumach and Isaac Dunaevsky, Sportsman s March (1936) *
Vasily Lebedev-Kumach and Aleksandr Aleksandrov, Life s Getting Better (1936)*
Aleksei Stakhanov, The Stakhanov Movement Explained (1936)
Yury Zhukov and Roza Izmailova, Chronicle of Komsomolsk-on-the-Amur (1937)
Pavel German and Yuly Khait, Ever Higher (1920)
Radio Speech of K. E. Tsiolkovsky (1935)
B. Galin, Val ry Chkalov (1937)
I. T. Spirin, Dinner at the Pole (1938)
Vasily Lebedev-Kumach and Isaac Dunaevsky, Song of the Motherland (1935)*
Vadim Kozin, Autumn (1930s)*
Mikhail Koltsov, In Praise of Modesty (1936)
Sergei Mikhalkov, Uncle Steeple (1935-1939)
The Storyteller Korguev, Chapaev (1936)
Anecdotes
THE PURGES AND PREPARATION FOR WAR, 1937-1940
Marfa Semyonovna Kryukova, Tale of the Pole (1937)
Konstantin Fedin, The Living Lenin (1939)
An Old Worker of the Bolshevik Factory, I Heard Lenin (1939)
Lazar Lagin, Goose Gets a Transfer (1937)
Dzhambul Dzhabaev, Narkom Yezhov (1937)
Two Purge Poems (1937)
Arkady Gaidar, Timur and His Squad (1938)
Mikhail Isakovsky and Matvei Blanter, Katyusha (1938)*
Vasily Lebedev-Kumach and the Pokrass Brothers, If Tomorrow Brings War (1938)*
Boris Laskin and the Pokrass Brothers, Three Tank Drivers (1937)*
Legend of Voroshilov (1939)
History of the C.P.S.U. (Short Course) (1939)
The Chuvash Peasant and the Eagle ( 1937)
Anatoly D Aktil and Isaac Dunaevsky, March of the Enthusiasts (1940)*
Anecdotes
III Russia at War
E. Dolmatovsky and M. Blanter, My Beloved (1939)
Jerzy Peterburgsky and Yakov Galitsky, The Blue Kerchief (1940)*
Konstantin Simonov, Wait for Me (1941)
Konstantin Simonov, Smolensk Roads (1941)
Aleksei Surkov, Scout Pashkov (1941)
Vasily Lebedev-Kumach and Aleksandr Aleksandrov, Holy War (1941)*
Pavel Lidov, Tanya (1942)
Aleksandr Korneichuk, The Front (1942)
Aleksandr Tvardovsky, Vasily Tyorkin (1942-1945)
N. Bogoslovsky and V. Agatov, Dark Is the Night (1943)*
Olga Berggolts, Conversation with a Neighbor (1941)
Vasily Grossman, Good Is Stronger Than Evil (1944)
Aleksandr Fadeev, Immortal (1943)
Aleksandr Dovzhenko, The Night before Battle (1944)
Ilya Ehrenburg, The Justification of Hate (1942)
Soviet State Anthem (1944)*
Anecdotes
IV. The Postwar Era
N. Pogodin, Cossacks of the Kuban (1949)
Boris Polevoi, The Story of a Real Man (1947)
Sergei Mikhalkov, Children s Verse (1946)
Konstantin Simonov, The Russian Question (1947)
Gennady Fish, The Man Who Did the Impossible (1948)
Semyon Babaevsky, Cavalier of the Gold Star (1948)
D. Belyaev, Stilyaga (1949)
V. Lebedev, Michurin s Dream (1950)
Boris Polevoi, To Stalin from the Peoples of the World (1950)
Stepan Shchipachov, Pavlik Morozov (1950)
Konstantin Paustovsky, In the Heart of Russia (1950)
Aviation (from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia) (1950)
Anecdotes
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Materials were first gathered for this collection as part of a seminar on Soviet mass culture supported by Stanford s Center for Russian and East European Studies. Later work was funded by the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Illinois, by the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Study, and by a Joyce Grant from Macalester College. Many colleagues have offered useful suggestions for the content and format of the book, and we would like to give particular thanks to Allan Ball, Katie Clark, Iurii Druzhnikov, Robert Rothstein, and Jesse Sheppard, as well as to Vladimir Padunov, Nancy Condee, and the Study Group on Contemporary Culture for their encouragement.
Contents were collected through a process of extensive and often indiscriminate reading. We would like to thank the librarians of several fine collections for their kind advice and willing help: the wonderful reference librarians of Petersburg s Public Library, and others at the Hoover Institute, the music collections of Stanford University and the Library of Congress, and the Slavonic Library of Helsinki. Jeanne Stevens and Jean Beccone of Macalester College s Wallace Library were indispensable fact-finders.
Of all the people who helped put the book together, we would like to thank Lana Larsen for her good-natured and reliable assistance. Finally, we would like to thank our family members and loved ones for their patience and advice.
INTRODUCTION
James von Geldern
The Bolsheviks were journalists long before they were state leaders, and they never forgot the impact of a well-aimed message. Newspapers were the lifeline of the underground party. Formative ideological and political debates were conducted in them; reporters and deliverers evolved into party cadres; and readers became rank-and-file supporters. At times, newspapers smuggled from abroad kept the Party alive; and Lenin s editorials often forestalled factional division. Revolutionary struggle taught the Bolsheviks the value of mass media and confirmed their belief that culture is inherently partisan. In times of political turmoil, they exploited it skillfully. Illegal front-line newspapers helped demoralize troops and turn them against the Great War; effective propaganda helped win the Civil War. Yet the revolutionaries knew that the same weapons could be used against them-by newspapermen, vaudevillians, and others. Lenin and Trotsky had been lampooned: horns were drawn sprouting from their heads and barbed tails from their rears, and they were accused of treason, a sting they never forgot. When they took power, they protected themselves by denying the opposition access to public opinion; printing presses, theaters, movie houses were all eventually confiscated and placed under state monopoly. The Bolsheviks considered these measures necessary and just.
Soviet authorities were never ashamed of their monopoly on culture. They considered the policy progressive. Culture was a weapon of class struggle, available to acquaint people with the socialist program. Allowing the enemy access to mass media would have seemed criminally stupi