This collection of essays deals broadly with the visual and cultural manifestation of utopian aspirations in Russia of the 1920s and 1930s, while examining the before- and after-life of such ideas both geographically and chronologically. The studies document the pluralism of Russian and Soviet culture at this time as well as illuminating various cultural strategies adopted by officialdom. The result serves to complicate the excessively simplistic narrative that avant-garde dreams were suddenly and brutally crushed by Soviet repression and to contest the notion of the avant-garde's complicity...
This collection of essays deals broadly with the visual and cultural manifestation of utopian aspirations in Russia of the 1920s and 1930s, while exam...
Russian literature for children and young people has a history that goes back over 400 years, starting in the late sixteenth century with the earliest alphabet primers and passing through many different phases over the centuries that followed. It has its own success stories and tragedies, talented writers and mediocrities, bestsellers and long-forgotten prize winners. After their seizure of power in 1917, the Bolsheviks set about creating a new culture for a new man and a starting point was children's literature. 70 years of Soviet control and censorship were succeeded in the 1990s by a...
Russian literature for children and young people has a history that goes back over 400 years, starting in the late sixteenth century with the earliest...
Across Eastern Europe and Russia in the first half of the twentieth century, conflict and violence arising out of foreign and civil wars, occupation, revolutions, social and ethnic restructuring and racial persecution caused countless millions of children to be torn from their homes. Nurturing the Nation examines the powerful and tragic history of child displacement in this region and the efforts of states, international organizations and others to re-place uprooted, and often orphaned, children. By analysing the causes, character and course of child displacement, and examining through...
Across Eastern Europe and Russia in the first half of the twentieth century, conflict and violence arising out of foreign and civil wars, occupation, ...
The battle of Kulikovo, fought between Muscovite and Tatar troops in 1380, has been considered as a crucial turning point in the national history of Russia. In The Battle of Kulikovo Refought Kati Parppei examines the layers of contemporary meanings attached to the event from the Middle Ages to the present, following the formation and establishment of the collective images and perceptions concerning the battle. By utilizing a diverse set of sources she shows that the present image of the medieval battle was created in retrospect from the 15th century onwards by interpolating,...
The battle of Kulikovo, fought between Muscovite and Tatar troops in 1380, has been considered as a crucial turning point in the national history of R...
This is the first study in any language to trace the emergence of the art historical interest in icon painting in the nineteenth century with its evident impact on the course of Russian modernism in the twentieth century. Given the surge in popularity of the Russian avant-garde, a book devoted to the gradual awareness of the artistic value of icons and their effect on Russian aesthetics is timely. The discoveries, the false starts, the incompetence, the interaction of dilettantes and academics, the meddling of tsars and church officials, all make for a fascinating tale of growing cultural...
This is the first study in any language to trace the emergence of the art historical interest in icon painting in the nineteenth century with its evid...
In Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia, Susan Smith-Peter shows how ideas of civil society encouraged the growth of subnational identity in Russia before 1861. Adam Smith and G.W.F. Hegel’s ideas of civil society influenced Russians and the resulting plans to stimulate the growth of civil society also formed subnational identities. It challenges the view of the provinces as empty space held by Nikolai Gogol, who rejected the new non-noble provincial identity and welcomed a noble-only district identity. By 1861, these non-noble and...
In Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia, Susan Smith-Peter shows how ideas of civil society ...
Art for the workers explores the mythology and reality of post-revolutionary proletarian art in Russia as well as its expression in the festive decorations of Petrograd between 1917 and 1920. It covers this brief period chronologically, and so permits a close inspection of the development of artistic policies in Russia under the Provisional Government followed by the Bolsheviks. Specifically, this book focuses on the pre-and post-revolutionary debate about the nature of proletarian art and its role in the new Socialist society, particularly focusing on festive decorations, parades and mass...
Art for the workers explores the mythology and reality of post-revolutionary proletarian art in Russia as well as its expression in the festive decora...
Celebrating Suprematism throws vital new light on Kazimir Malevich’s abstract style and the philosophical, scientific, aesthetic, and ideological context within which it emerged and developed. The essays in the collection, which have been produced by established specialists as well as new scholars in the field, tackle a wide range of issues and establish a profound and nuanced appreciation of Suprematism’s place in twentieth-century visual and intellectual culture. Complementing detailed analyses of The Black Square (1915), Malevich’s theories and statements, various developments at...
Celebrating Suprematism throws vital new light on Kazimir Malevich’s abstract style and the philosophical, scientific, aesthetic, and ideological co...