In the Soviet House of Culture

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691219702
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis In the Soviet House of Culture by : Bruce Grant

Download or read book In the Soviet House of Culture written by Bruce Grant and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the outset of the twentieth century, the Nivkhi of Sakhalin Island were a small population of fishermen under Russian dominion and an Asian cultural sway. The turbulence of the decades that followed would transform them dramatically. While Russian missionaries hounded them for their pagan ways, Lenin praised them; while Stalin routed them in purges, Khrushchev gave them respite; and while Brezhnev organized complex resettlement campaigns, Gorbachev pronounced that they were free to resume a traditional life. But what is tradition after seven decades of building a Soviet world? Based on years of research in the former Soviet Union, Bruce Grant's book draws upon Nivkh interviews, newly opened archives, and rarely translated Soviet ethnographic texts to examine the effects of this remarkable state venture in the construction of identity. With a keen sensitivity, Grant explores the often paradoxical participation by Nivkhi in these shifting waves of Sovietization and poses questions about how cultural identity is constituted and reconstituted, restructured and dismantled. Part chronicle of modernization, part saga of memory and forgetting, In the Soviet House of Culture is an interpretive ethnography of one people's attempts to recapture the past as they look toward the future. This is a book that will appeal to anthropologists and historians alike, as well as to anyone who is interested in the people and politics of the former Soviet Union.

Reconstructing the House of Culture

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Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 0857452762
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (574 download)

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Book Synopsis Reconstructing the House of Culture by : Brian Donahoe

Download or read book Reconstructing the House of Culture written by Brian Donahoe and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notions of culture, rituals and their meanings, the workings of ideology in everyday life, public representations of tradition and ethnicity, and the social consequences of economic transition- these are critical issues in the social anthropology of Russia and other postsocialist countries. Engaged in the negotiation of all these is the House of Culture, which was the key institution for cultural activities and implementation of state cultural policies in all socialist states. The House of Culture was officially responsible for cultural enlightenment, moral edification, and personal cultivation-in short, for implementing the socialist state's program of "bringing culture to the masses." Surprisingly, little is known about its past and present condition. This collection of ethnographically rich accounts examines the social significance and everyday performance of Houses of Culture and how they have changed in recent decades. In the years immediately following the end of the Soviet Union, they underwent a deep economic and symbolic crisis, and many closed. Recently, however, there have been signs of a revitalization of the Houses of Culture and a re-orientation of their missions and programs. The contributions to this volume investigate the changing functions and meanings of these vital institutions for the communities that they serve.

Soviet Culture and Power

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300106467
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Soviet Culture and Power by : Katerina Clark

Download or read book Soviet Culture and Power written by Katerina Clark and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Stalin’s 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. Stalin’s 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, Stalin’s 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.

The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801483318
Total Pages : 486 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (833 download)

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Book Synopsis The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture by : Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal

Download or read book The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture written by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the influence of occult beliefs and doctrines on intellectual and cultural life in twentieth-century Russia.

Empire of Nations

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801455944
Total Pages : 389 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Empire of Nations by : Francine Hirsch

Download or read book Empire of Nations written by Francine Hirsch and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state. In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers—who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context—produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force," and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR." In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories . Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.

To See Paris and Die

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Publisher : Belknap Press
ISBN 13 : 0674980719
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

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Book Synopsis To See Paris and Die by : Eleonory Gilburd

Download or read book To See Paris and Die written by Eleonory Gilburd and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Stalin died a torrent of Western novels, films, and paintings invaded Soviet streets and homes. Soviet citizens invested these imports with political and personal significance, transforming them into intimate possessions. Eleonory Gilburd reveals how Western culture defined the last three decades of the Soviet Union, its death, and afterlife.

Speaking Soviet with an Accent

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Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN 13 : 0822978091
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis Speaking Soviet with an Accent by : Ali Igmen

Download or read book Speaking Soviet with an Accent written by Ali Igmen and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking Soviet with an Accent presents the first English-language study of Soviet culture clubs in Kyrgyzstan. These clubs profoundly influenced the future of Kyrgyz cultural identity and fostered the work of many artists, such as famed novelist Chingiz Aitmatov. Based on extensive oral history and archival research, Ali Igmen follows the rise of culture clubs beginning in the 1920s, when they were established to inculcate Soviet ideology and create a sedentary lifestyle among the historically nomadic Kyrgyz people. These “Red clubs” are fondly remembered by locals as one of the few places where lively activities and socialization with other members of their ail (village or tribal unit) could be found. Through lectures, readings, books, plays, concerts, operas, visual arts, and cultural Olympiads, locals were exposed to Soviet notions of modernization. But these programs also encouraged the creation of a newfound “Kyrgyzness” that preserved aspects of local traditions and celebrated the achievements of Kyrgyz citizens in the building of a new state. These ideals proved appealing to many Kyrgyz, who, for centuries, had seen riches and power in the hands of a few tribal chieftains and Russian imperialists. This book offers new insights into the formation of modern cultural identity in Central Asia. Here, like their imperial predecessors, the Soviets sought to extend their physical borders and political influence. But Igmen also reveals the remarkable agency of the Kyrgyz people, who employed available resources to meld their own heritage with Soviet and Russian ideologies and form artistic expressions that continue to influence Kyrgyzstan today.

Material Culture in Russia and the USSR

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 100018174X
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Material Culture in Russia and the USSR by : Graham H. Roberts

Download or read book Material Culture in Russia and the USSR written by Graham H. Roberts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material Culture in Russia and the USSR comprises some of the most cutting-edge scholarship across anthropology, history and material and cultural studies relating to Russia and the Soviet Union, from Peter the Great to Putin.Material culture in Russia and the USSR holds a particularly important role, as the distinction between private and public spheres has at times developed in radically different ways than in many places in the more commonly studied West. With case studies covering alcohol, fashion, cinema, advertising and photography among other topics, this wide-ranging collection offers an unparalleled survey of material culture in Russia and the USSR and addresses core questions such as: what makes Russian and Soviet material culture distinctive; who produces it; what values it portrays; and how it relates to 'high culture' and consumer culture.

Russian Talk

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801484162
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Russian Talk by : Nancy Ries

Download or read book Russian Talk written by Nancy Ries and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of the first Western ethnographers working in Moscow, Nancy Ries became convinced that talk is one crucial way in which Russian identity is constructed and reproduced. Listening to the grim stories people used to characterize their lives during perestroika, and encountering the florid pessimism with which Muscovites described the unraveling of Soviet governance, Ries realized that these dire tales played a crucial role in fabricating a sense of shared experience and destiny. While many of the narratives aptly depicted the chaotic social and political events, they also promoted key images of "Russianness" and presented Russian society as an inescapable realm of injustice, absurdity, and suffering. At the height of perestroika in the early 1990s, Moscow residents commonly used the phrase "complete ruin" to refer to the disintegration of Russian society, encompassing in that phrase the escalation of crime, the disappearance of goods from stores, the fall of production, ecological catastrophes, ethnic violence in the Caucasus, the degradation of the arts, and the flood of pornography. Ries argues that such stories became a genre of folklore consistent in their lamenting, portentous tone and their dramatic, culturally poignant details.

The House of Government

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400888174
Total Pages : 1128 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The House of Government by : Yuri Slezkine

Download or read book The House of Government written by Yuri Slezkine and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 1128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.

The Captive and the Gift

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501702866
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis The Captive and the Gift by : Bruce Grant

Download or read book The Captive and the Gift written by Bruce Grant and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-15 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Caucasus region of Eurasia, wedged in between the Black and Caspian Seas, encompasses the modern territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the troubled republic of Chechnya in southern Russia. A site of invasion, conquest, and resistance since the onset of historical record, it has earned a reputation for fearsome violence and isolated mountain redoubts closed to outsiders. Over extended efforts to control the Caucasus area, Russians have long mythologized stories of their countrymen taken captive by bands of mountain brigands.In The Captive and the Gift, the anthropologist Bruce Grant explores the long relationship between Russia and the Caucasus and the means by which sovereignty has been exercised in this contested area. Taking his lead from Aleksandr Pushkin's 1822 poem "Prisoner of the Caucasus," Grant explores the extraordinary resonances of the themes of violence, captivity, and empire in the Caucasus through mythology, poetry, short stories, ballet, opera, and film. Grant argues that while the recurring Russian captivity narrative reflected a wide range of political positions, it most often and compellingly suggested a vision of Caucasus peoples as thankless, lawless subjects of empire who were unwilling to acknowledge and accept the gifts of civilization and protection extended by Russian leaders.Drawing on years of field and archival research, Grant moves beyond myth and mass culture to suggest how real-life Caucasus practices of exchange, by contrast, aimed to control and diminish rather than unleash and increase violence. The result is a historical anthropology of sovereign forms that underscores how enduring popular narratives and close readings of ritual practices can shed light on the management of pluralism in long-fraught world areas.

Russian Postmodernism

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Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1782388656
Total Pages : 602 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (823 download)

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Book Synopsis Russian Postmodernism by : Mikhail N. Epstein

Download or read book Russian Postmodernism written by Mikhail N. Epstein and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent decades have been decisive for Russia not only politically but culturally as well. The end of the Cold War has enabled Russia to take part in the global rise and crystallization of postmodernism. This volume investigates the manifestations of this crucial trend in Russian fiction, poetry, art, and spirituality, demonstrating how Russian postmodernism is its own unique entity. It offers a point of departure and valuable guide to an area of contemporary literary-cultural studies insufficiently represented in English-language scholarship. This second edition includes additional essays on the topic and a new introduction examining the most recent developments.

Soviet Hieroglyphics

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253314024
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Soviet Hieroglyphics by : Nancy Condee

Download or read book Soviet Hieroglyphics written by Nancy Condee and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [The Russian and American contributors] share a very high level of expertise and an impressive command of their material, which ranges from film to billboards to currency. Everything in this book, including the introduction, is worth reading... consistently fascinating... -- Choice... a lightning rush of images and ideas that constitute inviting material for future speculation. -- Times Literary SupplementThis collection of essays is a fine, even an exhilarating piece of work. Her brilliant analysis surveys a kaleidoscope of breaks and continuities: betweeen literature and non-print media, high culture and popular culture, homo sovieticus and homo russicus. -- Slavic and East European JournalOf interest for scholars in several disciplines, Soviet Hieroglyphics provides many insights into recent Russian visual culture. -- Canadian Slavonic PaperThese incisive essays describe contemporary Russian culture under conditions of social collapse. Focusing on visual culture, the book highlights the recurrent tension between two opposing tendencies in Russia today: the impulse to eradicate the cultural hieroglyphics of the Soviet past and the compulsion to reinscribe those sacred images onto contemporary texts.

Stories of House and Home

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501701843
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Stories of House and Home by : Christine Varga-Harris

Download or read book Stories of House and Home written by Christine Varga-Harris and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories of House and Home is a social and cultural history of the massive construction campaign that Khrushchev instituted in 1957 to resolve the housing crisis in the Soviet Union and to provide each family its own apartment. Decent housing was deemed the key to a healthy, productive home life, which was essential to the realization of socialist collectivism. Drawing on archival materials, as well as memoirs, fiction, and the Soviet press, Christine Varga-Harris shows how the many aspects of this enormous state initiative—from neighborhood planning to interior design—sought to alleviate crowded, undignified living conditions and sculpt residents into ideal Soviet citizens. She also details how individual interests intersected with official objectives for Soviet society during the Thaw, a period characterized by both liberalization and vigilance in everyday life. Set against the backdrop of the widespread transition from communal to one-family living, Stories of House and Home explores the daily experiences and aspirations of Soviet citizens who were granted new apartments and those who continued to inhabit the old housing stock due to the chronic problems that beset the housing program. Varga-Harris analyzes the contradictions apparent in heroic advances and seemingly inexplicable delays in construction, model apartments boasting modern conveniences and decrepit dwellings, happy housewarmings and disappointing moves, and new residents and individuals requesting to exchange old apartments. She also reveals how Soviet citizens identified with the state and with the broader project of building socialism.

The Russian "House"

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0761870571
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (618 download)

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Book Synopsis The Russian "House" by : Jason C. Vaughn

Download or read book The Russian "House" written by Jason C. Vaughn and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies Russian society, culture, and public opinion in terms of what ordinary Russians think about Russia independent of the authoritarian regime of President Vladimir Putin. This study uses Jason Vaughn’s research and work in Russia to build a new model of how to interpret the Russian political system.

Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North

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Publisher : Open Book Publishers
ISBN 13 : 178374720X
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (837 download)

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Book Synopsis Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North by : Joachim Otto Habeck

Download or read book Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North written by Joachim Otto Habeck and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North breaks new ground by exploring the concept of lifestyle from a distinctly anthropological perspective. Showcasing the collective work of ten experienced scholars in the field, the book goes beyond concepts of tradition that have often been the focus of previous research, to explain how political, economic and technological changes in Russia have created a wide range of new possibilities and constraints in the pursuit of different ways of life. Each contribution is drawn from meticulous first-hand field research, and the authors engage with theoretical questions such as whether and how the concept of lifestyle can be extended beyond its conventionally urban, Euro-American context and employed in a markedly different setting. Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North builds on the contributors’ clear commitment to diversifying the field and providing a novel and intimate insight into this vast and dynamic region. This book provides inspiring reading for students and teachers of Anthropology, Sociology and Cultural Studies and for anyone interested in Russia and its regions. By providing ethnographic case studies, it is also a useful basis for teaching anthropological methods and concepts, both at graduate and undergraduate level. Rigorous and innovative, it marks an important contribution to the study of Siberia and the Russian North.

Soviet and Kosher

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253112156
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (121 download)

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Book Synopsis Soviet and Kosher by : Anna Shternshis

Download or read book Soviet and Kosher written by Anna Shternshis and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-21 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kosher pork -- an oxymoron? Anna Shternshis's fascinating study traces the creation of a Soviet Jewish identity that disassociated Jewishness from Judaism. The cultural transformation of Soviet Jews between 1917 and 1941 was one of the most ambitious experiments in social engineering of the past century. During this period, Russian Jews went from relative isolation to being highly integrated into the new Soviet culture and society, while retaining a strong ethnic and cultural identity. This identity took shape during the 1920s and 1930s, when the government attempted to create a new Jewish culture, "national in form" and "socialist in content." Soviet and Kosher is the first study of key Yiddish documents that brought these Soviet messages to Jews, notably the "Red Haggadah," a Soviet parody of the traditional Passover manual; songs about Lenin and Stalin; scripts from regional theaters; Socialist Realist fiction; and magazines for children and adults. More than 200 interviews conducted by the author in Russia, Germany, and the United States testify to the reception of these cultural products and provide a unique portrait of the cultural life of the average Soviet Jew.