A Hall of Mirrors: Sovietizing Culture under Stalinism

Abstract

This article explores how culture in the USSR became “Soviet.” Malte Rolf describes how different fields of communication and cultural production generated criteria that could be used to attach the label “Soviet” to all features of culture. Sovietizing culture was a work in progress, and various institutions, agencies, and experts actively participated in defining an adequate “Soviet style.” Focusing on this interplay of agencies and taking mass festivals as an example, Rolf portrays the dynamics of a growing selfreferentiality within Soviet culture in the 1930s in such cultural spheres as architecture, city planning, and mass celebrations. Under Stalinism, canonized “Soviet” standards also set the agenda for everyday communications. By reproducing an officially privileged agenda, participants in these daily communications encouraged a cultural inner Sovietization during the prewar decade. This article explores how and why the cultural canon of a closed system of “Soviet” references made its way so smoothly into die microstructures of society.

SOVIET CULTURAL COLONIALISM: CULTURE AND POLITICAL DOMINATION IN THE LATE 1940s-EARLY 1950s ROMANIA

“…Thus, in culture Sovietization functioned as a principle identical to all other fields ("Soviet literature and the arts exist to serve political ends and must spurn the Western notion of 'art for art's sake' [emphasis added]" (Bolsover 170), although the practice and rules were specific. The label Soviet "regimenting of intellectual life and culture" (Tismǎneanu 2003:109) is currently in the literature on the situation of Romanian culture, probably because it suggests the unnatural way -for a culture -of becoming uniform and obedient under the rule of the party-state apparatus, "a powerful agent when it came to Sovietizing culture" (Rolf 2009:628), a process that many, among whom Malte Rolf (in a study on "Sovietizing Culture under Stalinism"), do not see as a voluntary or enthusiastic acceptance. However, while the latter may have been possible in some cases due to the privileges offered to those showing such an enthusiasm, it is probably the case of individuals rather than of 'cultures'.…”

Munkásfolklór-narratívák és a társadalmi átalakulások kapcsolata az 1950-es években. Az országos ünnepek példái alapján

“…Ezekről az egyedi esetekről a fennmaradt naplók is tájékoztattak: Ignat Frolov parasztember a naplóját a forradalom előtti ortodox Julián-naptár szerint vezette, de gyakran utalt az új naptár ünnepi eseményeire is. 465 462Rolf 2009: 625-626. 463 Ma Novokuznetsk, 1932 és 1961 között Sztálinról nevezték el.464 Rolf 2009: 626-627.…”

“…465 462Rolf 2009: 625-626. 463 Ma Novokuznetsk, 1932 és 1961 között Sztálinról nevezték el.464 Rolf 2009: 626-627. 465 Garros et al (szerk.)…”