BECOMING A SOVIET CITIZEN: LANGUAGE CHOICES IN N. F. TERENTYEV’S DIARY

The article based on the diary of the young writer N. F. Terentyev from Komi ASSR who wrote his records in the Komi language from 1936 to 1939 considers peculiarities of the “subjectivity” formation in the non-Russian language discursive space. The author hypothesizes that non-Russian people in the 1930s USSR acquiring new subjectivity, began not only to speak Bolshevik but also appropriated a more prestigious discourse in which the Russian language was endowed with revolutionary consolidating potential. The material of the diary reveals two levels of the formation of a Soviet citizen. As regards Terentyev, the first level is related to the local context: the diarist advocates the development of the countryside, collects folklore, adheres to the national literary tradition in terms of the description of the countryside life. The second level is connected with Terentyev’s desire to be involved in more significant events: he joins Komsomol, uses Marxist language in representation of the everyday life, actively participates in the translation of the texts written in the Russian language. The process of writing the diary reveals not only Terentyev’s aspiration to become a Komi writer but also his active civic engagement. Terentyev’s ambition was to become a Komi writer, a representative of the emergent national intelligentsia. Internalizing “cultural revolution discourse”, Terentyev defined Komi literature as backward which should be developed in order to keep up with the Russian literature. In this context, his personal development as a writer involved overcoming of not only personal backwardness (which he acknowledged) but also backwardness of his native culture.

How to Raise an Independent Soviet Citizen? Pedagogic Technologies of the Exemplary Pioneer Camps Artek and Orlyonok (1957–1991)

The article discusses attempts to actualize the popular idea of the Soviet child as an active and autonomous subject; specifically, the way this project was realized by counselors and content developers of Artek and Orlyonok, exemplary camps of the USSR, in the 1960–1980s. The study is based on archival documents and retrospective interviews with employees of these children’s centers. The article investigates the reasons that led the ideologists of the Komsomol Central Committee to transform the health facility (where the actions of children were regulated by a strict regime) into a school for so-called pioneers and Komsomol activists (i.e. creative and initiative children) in 1957. Moreover, the reflections of tutors on the methods of implementing this task in the conditions of an “overorganized” institutional order are analyzed. Attention is drawn to the fact that the technology developed in the late Soviet era for raising “self-sufficiency and initiative” in children (triggered by the request of the Komsomol Central Committee) began, over time, to be interpreted by former Artek and Orlyonok employees as a grassroots innovative child-centred approach, defined as radically different from the Soviet pedagogical tradition. To explain the conflict between the appointment of state order and its perception, the article employs the theory of “strategies” and “tactics” developed by Michel de Certeau.

THE TOPICA OF NOSTALGIA. SOVIET SONG IN CINEMATOGRAPHY AND ON STAGE. AN ESSAY ON STUDYING THE MULTIMEDIA SPACE

The author of this article analyzes methods of the nostalgia motivation in the Soviet song of 1930s and 1980s. Such task is set and solved for the first time. It is noted that appeal to nostalgia has traditionally been used as an evidence of love for the homeland. It is proved that such an argument was not used in propaganda until the end of the 1930s, because only a Soviet citizen could become the lyrical hero of the song, and there were no generally understandable reasons for his long stay abroad. It was noted that by the second half of the 1940s, the long stay of a Soviet citizen abroad was motivated by his military past. However, in ten years that motivation had already exhausted itself and a search for the others began. It is established that fundamentally new ones were never offered, and references to emigrant nostalgia were minimized by censorship. The tradition of polemical comprehension of the Soviet propaganda attitudes is also considered in the article. Examples relating to the so-called amateur or bard song and pop culture of the turn of the 1980s 1990s are analyzed.

“What Kind of Soviet Citizen Will You Grow into?”: Ukrainian Adventure for Adolescents in the Stalinist Epoch

This article analyzes a number of Soviet Ukrainian adventure narratives written during the 1930-40s, including the novels “Lakhtak” (“Lakhtak,” 1934) and Shkhuna “Kolumb” (Schooner “Columbus,” 1940) by Mykola Trublaini, Shkola nad morem (A School by the Sea, 1937) by Oles' Donchenko, Hospodari Okhots'kykh hir (The Owners of the Okhotsk Mountains, 1949) by Ivan Bahmut, and several short stories. This entertaining genre was used to educate its young readers about their place and aims in the world, as well as about the boundaries of the newly-forged Soviet identity and its meaning. This period witnessed a radical change in the criteria for defining group identity, as proposed to young readers: ethno-national markers were substituted by belonging to an ideological community and by class affiliation. As a result, although anyone originating from outside the Soviet borders was perceived as a menace, some foreigners of a “correct political orientation” could be recognized as potentially belonging to “our” community. At the same time, this change implied that there were hidden “enemies” among alleged “in-group” members, which justified the mobilized state of the group identity. The adventure stories analyzed here also shed light on the fostering of a sense of Union-wide unity through the parallels they drew between the experiences of young Ukrainian readers and those of their counterparts in faraway regions of the USSR.

Stepanova, Varvara Fedorovna (1894–1958)

Varvara Stepanova was a Russian artist. Although she made her mark as an innovative painter in Moscow exhibitions (1920), Stepanova became particularly well known as a designer. Between 1921 and the late 1940s, she designed sets and costumes for theatre and film (1922–6), textiles and practical clothing for both women and men (thus creating a ‘new look’ for the new Soviet citizen, 1924), and taught textile design at the art school VKhUTEMAS in Moscow beginning in 1923. Under commissions from the State, Stepanova developed various designs to establish an aesthetic for the Soviet regime, including designs of books, magazines, journals, and the celebration albums of the 1930s and 1940s. This new look was largely determined by geometrical models, including circular patterns using a pair of compasses, linear designs using a ruler, contrasts of light and dark, repeating patterns inspired by film, and, more generally, the aesthetic potential of simple geometric lines and shapes. Stepanova assimilated the human figure, photomontage, and pure design into a visual whole made possible by her modernist method of creating with geometrical models. This was the Constructivist process, and its principles were described by Stepanova in her articles ‘On Non-Objectivity Creativity in Painting’ (1919), ‘On the Possibility of Cognizing Art’ (1920), ‘Construction’ (1920), ‘On Constructivism’ (1921), ‘On Facture’ (1922), ‘Photomontage’ (1928), ‘Draft Syllabus for a Course in Artistic Composition in the Textile’ (c.1925), ‘From Clothing to Pattern and Fabric’ (1929), and ‘How We Worked on The First Cavalry’ (1936).

Marian Revelations in the Russian Context

Modern Marian apparitions have often responded to various incarnations of rational Enlightenment political thought, from the 1830 French revolution to Soviet socialism and the international Communist movement. Through her apparitions, the Virgin and her devotees have engaged in “cosmopolitics” by offering an alternative to a purely secular political order. Denying a mechanistic universe, Mary testifies to the existence of a compassionate, personal, miracle-working God. Although primarily a Roman Catholic phenomenon, Marian apparitions are also part of the Orthodox tradition, and the Virgin’s appearances in Russia and Ukraine after 1917 served to critique the new Marxist order. In 1984, the Mother of God continued her venture into cosmopolitics when she first spoke to Soviet citizen and spiritual seeker Veniamin Bereslavsky (“Blessed John”). Over the following decades, as the Communist world collapsed, Bereslavsky built an ecclesiastical organization and an international movement on the charismatic authority of these continuing revelations, which gradually have led him away from traditional Christianity to gnostic dualism. With thousands of followers, meeting in congregations from Ulan-Ude in eastern Russia to Glastonbury, England, Bereslavsky, who now lives in Spain, preaches ecumenical esotericism as a cosmopolitical alternative to Western secularism.