Synopses & Reviews
'\'Leaders of the Soviet Union, Stalin chief among them, well understood the power of art, and their response was to attempt to control and direct
it in every way possible. This book examines Soviet cultural politics from the Revolution to Stalins death in 1953. Drawing on a wealth of newly released documents from the archives of the former Soviet Union, the book provides remarkable insight on relations between Gorky, Pasternak, Babel, Meyerhold, Shostakovich, Eisenstein, and many other intellectuals, and the Soviet leadership. Stalins role in directing these relations, and his literary judgments and personal biases, will astonish many.
The documents presented in this volume reflect the progression of Party control in the arts. They include decisions of the Politburo, Stalins correspondence with individual intellectuals, his responses to particular plays, novels, and movie scripts, petitions to leaders from intellectuals, and secret police reports on intellectuals under surveillance. Introductions, explanatory materials, and a biographical index accompany the documents.
\''
Review
'\'\\\"Clark and Dobrenko not only provide a careful and creatively organized selection of documents but also, in their commentary, a concise and incisive analysis of Soviet cultural history.\\\"Carol Avins, Rutgers University
-- Mara Judith Feliciano - Speculum--A Journal of Medieval Studies\''
Review
'\'\\\"To have these documents in one place, and accessible for students in English with detailed explanations and commentary, is nothing less than a small miracle. Beg, buy or borrow this wonderful book if you care about Russian culture.\\\"Jeffrey Brooks, author of
Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War -- Carol Avins\''
Review
'\'\\\"This is a history of Soviet culture under Lenin and Stalin told in documents. The story unfolds in letters, public appeals, bureaucratic decisions, official orders, marginal jottings, police reports and memoranda, comments of censors, petitions, transcripts of meetings, and more. To have these documents in one place, and accessible for students in English with detailed explanations and commentary, is nothing less than a small miracle. Beg, buy or borrow this wonderful book if you care about Russian culture.\\\"Jeffrey Brooks, author of
Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War -- Jeffrey Brooks\''
Review
'\'\\\'\\\\\\\"Joseph Stalin famously described Soviet writers as engineers of human souls. This remarkable collection of documents, laden with comedy and sheer stupidity as well as calculated repression, chronicles the Bolshevik governments effort to control all cultural institutions and creative individuals. This is a story of compelling interest not only for Sovietologists but for anyone who wants to know what happens when a government treats culture as a long-term engineering project.\\\\\\\"Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism -- Jeffrey Brooks\\\'\''
Review
'\'\\\"Throws a bright light on the partys torturous dealings with writers and on the inevitable conflict between art and propaganda. Perhaps the books biggest surprise is its revelation of Stalin as literary critic. Despite his onerous responsibilities as party chief, dictator and head of state, no detail seems to have been too small for Stalins eagle eyea backhanded compliment if ever there was one to the awesome power of the written word.\\\"Michael Scammell, author of
Solzhenitsyn: A Biography -- Susan Jacoby\''
Review
'\'\\\'\\\\\\\"Soviet Culture and Power is a groundbreaking work that provides access to significant archival materials for a population that might never have been able to read and analyze these documents.\\\\\\\"Cynthia A. Ruder, Slavic and East European Journal -- Michael Scammell\\\'\''
Review
"Dobrenko is a master interpreter of Socialist Realism. He explores the functionality of the Leninist-Stalinist cultural project with verve and imagination. Those who study Soviet art, literature, film, photography, history, and much else will be hard put to find a better guide. The book is a pleasure to read."Jeffrey Brooks, author of
Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War -- Clyde S. Spillenger
Review
"Unsurpassed in its grasp of Stalinism and Stalinist culture, Dobrenkos new book makes the convincing theoretical move of turning the categories of Stalinist thought against Stalinist cultural production. Rigorous in interpretation and research, challenging and persuasive."William Mills Todd III, Harvard University
-- Jeffrey Brooks
Review
“This book by an internationally celebrated scholar of Soviet culture offers a uniquely rich and convincing account of how Socialist Realism was the pre-determining force in Stalinist discourse, shaping biological sciences and ‘scientific Communism as well as glossy magazines, official histories, narrative films, public exhibitions, and advertising. The eccentricities and paradoxes of a country where, as Dobrenko puts it, there was ‘a single need. The need to provide the spectacle of socialism, are everywhere on view. This fascinating study will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in Russian culture from the 1930s onwards.”Catriona Kelly, University of Oxford
-- William Mills Todd III
Review
“Evgeny Dobrenko has written the most sweeping, theoretically-informed book to-date on Socialist Realism and its centrality to the Stalinist project. He presents a chilling analysis of Socialist Realism as a discourse of repression. From photojournalism, to cinema, to biology, to advertising and Stalins speeches, Dobrenko shows how Socialist Realism produced socialism by aestheticizing and ‘de-realizing life. I have never seen a more convincing indictment of arts centrality in Soviet terror. ”Eric Naiman, University of California, Berkeley
-- Catriona Kelly
Review
'“This is a major study of the place of Soviet film within the Soviet cultural system. Specialists in the history of Russian film and culture will find it an indispensable resource.”Jeff Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University -- Greg Kearsley - Education Technology'
Review
“This is essential reading for all those interested in Soviet film. Dobrenko with his fresh approach and non-standard mix of examples confounds many of the clichés about the subject.”Katerina Clark, Yale University -- Jeff Brooks
Review
“Professor Dobrenkos absorbing new study of Stalin period cinema shows how films set in the past, from historical epics to versions of literary classics to narratives of the Revolutionary struggle were required to adapt history to the evolving political demands of the present. Witty and nuanced, drawing on a broad range of sources, the book combines unprecedented attention to hitherto neglected films with exciting new insights into classics of Soviet cinema.”Julian Graffy, University College London -- Katerina Clark
Synopsis
This engrossing book explores the important role played by Stalinist cinema in legitimizing Stalinism and producing a new Soviet identity.
Evgeny Dobrenko, a leading scholar of Soviet cultural history, asserts that both Lenin and Stalin valued cinema as the most effective form of propaganda and organization of the masses.” Dobrenko looks at Stalinist historical films and the novels from which they drew and shows that they transformed the experience and trauma of the past into a legitimizing historical narrativethe basis of a new mythology. He examines the works of the great film directors of the revolutionary period in Stalinist cinemaincluding Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Grigorii Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, Fridrikh Ermler, Mark Donskoi, and Mikhail Rommand explains how they worked with time, the past, and memory to construct the Soviet political imagination.
Synopsis
The USSR is often regarded as the world's first propaganda state. Particularly under Stalin, politically charged rhetoric and imagery dominated the press, schools, and cultural forums from literature and cinema to the fine arts. Yet party propagandists were repeatedly frustrated in their efforts to promote a coherent sense of "Soviet" identity during the interwar years. This book investigates this failure to mobilize society along communist lines by probing the secrets of the party's ideological establishment and indoctrinational system. An exposand#233; of systemic failure within Stalin's ideological establishment, Propaganda State in Crisis ultimately rewrites the history of Soviet indoctrination and mass mobilization between 1927 and 1941.
About the Author
Evgeny Dobrenko is professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Political Economy of Socialist Realism and co-editor with Katerina Clark of Soviet Culture and Power, both published by Yale University Press. He lives in Sheffield, UK.