Probing the Heart and Mind of the Viewer: Scientific Studies of Film and Theater Spectators in the Soviet Union, 1917–1936

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 931-958
Author(s):  
Anna Toropova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Aesthetic Perception ◽  
State Institute ◽  
Cultural Organizations ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Research Sector ◽  
Soviet Cinema ◽  
Heart And Mind

A vast array of research institutes and cultural organizations began to study the viewer of Soviet cinema and theatre in the years following the October Revolution. These investigations called on the techniques of sociology, psychology, and physiology to make Soviet cultural production more “efficient” and “rational.” Belying the conventional assumption that the cultural revolution of 1928–1932 brought empirical research in aesthetics to an abrupt end, this paper traces the continuation and redefinition of studies of the viewer in the Soviet Union after the “Great Break.” My analysis of the work of the “Scientific Research Sector” at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) between 1933 and 1936 outlines how Stalin-era researchers shifted their gaze from viewers’ tastes and attitudes to questions of perceptual management and effectiveness. Exploring the VGIK researchers’ attempts to determine the “laws” of aesthetic perception and optimize intelligibility, the article brings to light the developments in scientific knowledge underwriting Soviet culture's transition to a form “accessible to the millions.”

Enemy Number One

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Inferiority Complex ◽  
Available Information

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.

Restating Classicist Monumentalism in Soviet Architecture, 1930s–early 1950s

2019 ◽  
pp. 64-88
Author(s):  
William C. Brumfield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Architectural Styles ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines the development of retrospective styles in Soviet architecture during the Stalin era, from the 1930s to the early 1950s. This highly visible manifestation of communist visual culture is usually interpreted as a reaction to the austere modernism of 1920s Soviet avant-garde architecture represented by the constructivist movement. The project locates the origins of Stalin-era proclamatory, retrospective style in prerevolutionary neoclassical revival architecture. Although functioning in a capitalist market, that neoclassical reaction was supported by prominent critics who were suspicious of Russia’s nascent bourgeoisie and felt that neoclassical or neo-Renaissance architecture could echo the glory of imperial Russia. These critics left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, but prominent architects of the neoclassicist revival remained in the Soviet Union. Together with the Academy of Architecture (founded 1933), these architects played a critical role in reviving classicist monumentalism—designated “socialist realism”—as the proclamatory style for the centralized, neoimperial statist system of the Stalin era. Despite different ideological contexts (prerevolutionary and Stalinist), retrospective styles were promulgated as models for significant architectural projects. The article concludes with comments on the post-Stalinist—and post-Soviet—alternation of modernist and retrospective architectural styles.

Why pioneer camps survived the collapse of the Soviet Union

2021 ◽  
pp. 161189442110186
Author(s):  
Anna Kozlova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Teaching Experiences ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Ethnographic Analysis ◽  
Children’S Centres ◽  
Educational Field

The article analyses the survival of the children’s centres, Artek and Orlyonok, during the post-socialist transformation. It is based on 50 interviews with employees who worked there starting in the late-Soviet era. Artek and Orlyonok were exemplary children’s camps, subordinated to the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Since the early 1960s, they have functioned as schools for distinguished teenagers who were considered ‘good examples’ for other children. In this article, I have made an ethnographic analysis of Artek and Orlyonok employees’ late-Soviet experiences. This analysis shows how the agency of Soviet counsellors and camp directors became a creative interpretation of the governmental order to raise the children as active Soviet citizens. Camp educators transformed it in line with the idea to base their agency on ‘common human values’, which was spread in the Soviet educational field in the post-Stalin era. As a result, the Soviet teaching experiences gained in these education centres were heterogeneous. When a child-centred paradigm was later introduced to the post-Soviet educational system, the camps adopted the most applicable practices from their Soviet experiences.

scholarly journals Of Loss and Loot: Stalin-Era Culture, Foreign Aid, and Trophy Goods in the Soviet Union during the 1940s

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (02) ◽  
pp. 219-258
Author(s):  
Nathalie Moine
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Foreign Objects ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army

This article focuses on the influx and circulation of foreign objects in the Soviet Union during the 1940s in order to investigate the specific role of these objects during World War II. It reveals how the distribution of humanitarian aid intersected with both the (non)recognition of the genocide of Soviet Jews during the Nazi occupation, and with Stalinist social hierarchies. It explains why erasing the origins and precise circumstances through which these objects entered Soviet homes could in turn be used to hide the abuses that the Red Army perpetrated against their defeated enemies. Finally, it revises the image of a Soviet society that discovered luxury and Western modernity for the first time during the war by reconsidering the place and the trajectories of these objects in Stalinist material culture of the interwar period.

Conclusion

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Heinzen
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Flexible Tool ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Tape

This chapter reviews the meaning of the bribe in the late-Stalin era of the Soviet Union, focusing on how both the givers and receivers of bribes learned to use the bribe as a flexible tool for manoeuvring inside a disorganized economy and rigid bureaucratic system. Bribery emerged from a set of practices and attitudes that, in many cases, could serve certain practical functions, from distributing scarce goods and services, to establishing personalized relationships among state functionaries and citizens, to cutting through red tape.

Post-Stalin Purge Defectors, 1953–1954

2020 ◽  
pp. 214-262
Author(s):  
Kevin Riehle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
State Security ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Perception Of Threat

The flow of defectors waned in the early 1950s as the Soviet Union began again to enforce 1930s rules against defection. However, the death of Stalin in 1953, and equally importantly, the arrest and execution of Soviet state security director Lavrentiy Beriya later that year, prompted a brief new wave of defections—ten officers in a thirteen-month period. They defected for similar reasons as their predecessors in the Yezhovshchina period—out of fear that they were in danger from a purge. With Beriya’s downfall came the inevitable purge that followed the arrest of a state security leader during the Stalin era. Any officer who had connected his or her career with Beriya’s was at risk of going down with him. These officers revealed a growing perception of threat from the United States as the leader of the Western alliance, and targeting of U.S. and NATO information dominated their collection requirements.

scholarly journals The Psychopharmacological Revolution in the USSR: Schizophrenia Treatment and the Thaw in Soviet Psychiatry, 1954–64

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-269
Author(s):  
Benjamin Zajicek
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nervous Activity ◽  
Psychiatric Hospitals ◽  
New Drugs ◽  
Patient Treatment ◽  
The West ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
System A ◽  
The Soviet Union

Twentieth-century psychiatry was transformed in the 1950s and 1960s by the introduction of powerful psychopharmaceuticals, particularly Chlorpromazine (Thorazine). This paper examines the reception of Chlorpromazine in the Soviet Union and its effect on the Soviet practice of psychiatry. The drug, known in the USSR by the name Aminazine, was first used in Moscow in 1954 and was officially approved in 1955. I argue that Soviet psychiatrists initially embraced it because Aminazine enabled them to successfully challenge the Stalin-era dogma in their field (Ivan Pavlov’s ‘theory of higher nervous activity’). Unlike in the West, however, the new psychopharmaceuticals did not lead to deinstitutionalisation. I argue that the new drugs did not disrupt the existing Soviet system because, unlike the system in the West, the Soviets were already dedicated, at least in theory, to a model which paired psychiatric hospitals with community-based ‘neuropsychiatric dispensaries.’ Chlorpromazine gave this system a new lease on life, encouraging Soviet psychiatrists to more rapidly move patients from in-patient treatment to ‘supporting’ treatment in the community.

Technical base of soviet cinema in the period of “stagnation”

Servis plus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-80
Author(s):  
Марина Косинова ◽  
Marina Kosinova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Carrier Transport ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Defense Industry ◽  
Technical Equipment ◽  
Difficult Situation ◽  
Soviet Film ◽  
Technical Base ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Cinema

The article is devoted to such technical aspects of Soviet cinema as cinema spreading, film, movie taking and film equipment. We consider the activities of NIKFI [National Research film and photo institute] in the 1970s. One of the major problems in cinema spreading is a deep-rooted lag of the cinema network from the audience needs. There was not only few cinemas, but also there was less technical equipment which often left much to be desired. In addition, large one-hall cinemas, which always prevailed in the USSR, significantly narrowed the choice of repertoire. In the late 1970’s – early 1980’s in the Soviet Union there was dramatically reduced cinema building, while the number of urban residents continued to grow. Status of rural cinema network also left much to be desired: it was often increased at the expense of the reorganization of rooms poorly adapted for this purpose into cinemas. The technical base of the Soviet film industry has always been its Achilles heel. In our country, there was always a certain gap between the level of scientific research and their practical realization. The reason is that all the forces were at the defense industry. A huge number of people (even in “peaceful” factories there were often secret workshops) employs on the “defense industry”. So in many fields we had advanced science (because the “defense industry” science always moves forward) and backward production. The perversity of this approach negatively affected the efficiency of NIKFI. Laboratories operating according to the plans approved by Institute of State cinema were busy with works which were not directly related to the cinematography; as the result, every year the Soviet Cinema equipment remained more and more behind the world standards, equipment dilapidated and were gradually replaced by foreign novelties. Especially serious lag observed in a number of areas cinema techniques: in the projection, the developing and copying equipment, new types of imaging optics, carrier transport. The most difficult situation was in the production and development of new varieties of film. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the problem of the quality laid on the problem of the quantity. Soviet film industry began to have trouble with positive film, which resulted in a forced reduction in circulation of new films.

scholarly journals THE IMAGE OF A FEMALE HEROINE OF THE WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF IDEOLOGY: ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE MOVIE «THE SNIPERS» BY B.SHAMSHIEV

2020 ◽  
pp. 580-587
Author(s):  
N.M. Stanaliev
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Female Hero ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Communication Methods ◽  
Ideological Construction

Modern social science pays more attention to the study of social consciousness, forms and means of communication, methods of self-identification of human communities. A sufficient number of studies can be found on the influence of information on mass consciousness. In this regard, some thoughts and research have arisen about how a certain ideology can penetrate the consciousness of people through the media. This interest of scientists is largely related to various sources (text, visual, etc.) of information in modern society, which is accessible to the masses. This work focuses on the forms of representation of ideology aimed at the masses. Within the framework of the work, a brief history of Soviet cinema, cinema as a means of building the ideology of the Soviet era, and a review of literature in the context of this topic were presented. In order to identify the forms of transmission of ideology, the Van Dyck method of ideological discourse is used. An example of the study is the film " Snipers” by Bolotbek Shamshiev, a film based on the exploits of Aliya Moldagulova during the Great Patriotic War. Using this method of analysis, the film examined the forms of ideological construction through ideological discourses. Soviet sniper Aliya Moldagulova, who was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, presented as a female hero in the 1985 film "Snipers", is considered an ideological icon. The transformation of Moldagulova into an icon was carried out within the framework of socialist ideology in the form of militarism, equality of men and women, courage, etc.

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