Soviet Consumer Culture In The Brezhnev Era

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Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era

Author : Natalya Chernyshova
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135046271
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (35 download)

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Book Synopsis Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era by : Natalya Chernyshova

Download or read book Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era written by Natalya Chernyshova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After decades of turmoil and trauma, the Brezhnev era brought stability and an unprecedented rise in living standards to the Soviet Union, enabling ordinary people to enjoy modern consumer goods on an entirely new scale. This book analyses the politics and economics of the state’s efforts to improve living standards, and shows how mass consumption was often used as an instrument of legitimacy, ideology and modernization. However, the resulting consumer revolution brought its own problems for the socialist regime. Rising well-being and the resulting ethos of consumption altered citizens’ relationship with the state and had profound consequences for the communist project. The book uses a wealth of sources to explore the challenge that consumer modernity was posing to Soviet ‘mature socialism’ between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s. It combines analysis of economic policy and public debates on consumerism with the stories of ordinary people and their attitudes to fashion, Western goods and the home. The book contests the notion that Soviet consumers were merely passive, abused, eternally queuing victims and that the Brezhnev era was a period of ‘stagnation’, arguing instead that personal consumption provided the incentive and the space for individuals to connect and interact with society and the regime even before perestroika. This book offers a lively account of Soviet society and everyday life during a period which is rapidly becoming a new frontier of historical research.

Shopping with Brezhnev

Author : Natalya Chernyshova
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 720 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (681 download)

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Book Synopsis Shopping with Brezhnev by : Natalya Chernyshova

Download or read book Shopping with Brezhnev written by Natalya Chernyshova and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Material Culture in Russia and the USSR

Author : Graham H. Roberts
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 147258614X
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (725 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 Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 281 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.

The Khrushchev Era 1953-1964

Author : Martin McCauley
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317889215
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (178 download)

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Book Synopsis The Khrushchev Era 1953-1964 by : Martin McCauley

Download or read book The Khrushchev Era 1953-1964 written by Martin McCauley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History and politics students alike will welcome this new Seminar Study which analyses the Khrushchev era -- a critical period of Soviet and world history. It was Khrushchev who, in 1957, finally filled the political vacuum left by the death of Stalin in 1953. He was an erratic, impulsive, inspirational and innovative leader who addressed the fundamental problems of the country - and yet he was, Martin McCauley argues, "a brilliant failure''. In this study the author explores all aspects of the Khrushchev era: including reforms in agriculture, economic policy, crises in Eastern Europe, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, de-Stalinisation and Khrushchev's attempts to reform the Communist Party.

Reconsidering Stagnation in the Brezhnev Era

Author : Dina Fainberg
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498529941
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Reconsidering Stagnation in the Brezhnev Era by : Dina Fainberg

Download or read book Reconsidering Stagnation in the Brezhnev Era written by Dina Fainberg and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-04-27 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contributes to a growing reevaluation of the Brezhnev era, helping to shape a new historiography that gives us a much richer and more nuanced picture of the time period than the stagnation paradigm usually assigned to the era. The essays provide a multifaceted prism that reveals a dynamic society with a political and intellectual class that remained committed to the ideological foundations of the state, recognized the challenges that the system faced, and embarked on a creative search for solutions. The chapters focus on developments in politics, society, and culture, as well as the state’s attempts to lead and initiate change, which are mostly glossed over in the stagnation narrative. The volume challenges the assumption that the period as a whole was characterized by rampant cynicism and a decline of faith in the socialist creed and instead points to the persistence of popular engagement with the socialist ideology and the power it continued to wield within the Soviet Union.

Pleasures in Socialism

Author : David Crowley
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
ISBN 13 : 0810126907
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Pleasures in Socialism by : David Crowley

Download or read book Pleasures in Socialism written by David Crowley and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-31 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume shows how the rise of consumer culture took a unique form in Eastern Europe. It investigates the ways in which pleasurable activities were both a space in which these communist governments tried to insinuate themselves and thereby further expand the reach of their authority.

Culture and the Media in the USSR Today

Author : Julian Graffy
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780333491195
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Culture and the Media in the USSR Today by : Julian Graffy

Download or read book Culture and the Media in the USSR Today written by Julian Graffy and published by . This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Between Truth and Time

Author : Christine Elaine Evans
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300208480
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Between Truth and Time by : Christine Elaine Evans

Download or read book Between Truth and Time written by Christine Elaine Evans and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CHAPTER SIX: "KVN Is an Honest Game": Game Shows and the Problem of Authority -- CHAPTER SEVEN: A Dress Rehearsal for Life: Artloto and What? Where? When? -- Epilogue: The Origins of Central Television's Perestroika -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War

Author : Yale Richmond
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 9780271046679
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (466 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Exchange and the Cold War by : Yale Richmond

Download or read book Cultural Exchange and the Cold War written by Yale Richmond and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some fifty thousand Soviets visited the United States under various exchange programs between 1958 and 1988. They came as scholars and students, scientists and engineers, writers and journalists, government and party officials, musicians, dancers, and athletes&—and among them were more than a few KGB officers. They came, they saw, they were conquered, and the Soviet Union would never again be the same. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War describes how these exchange programs (which brought an even larger number of Americans to the Soviet Union) raised the Iron Curtain and fostered changes that prepared the way for Gorbachev's glasnost, perestroika, and the end of the Cold War. This study is based upon interviews with Russian and American participants as well as the personal experiences of the author and others who were involved in or administered such exchanges. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War demonstrates that the best policy to pursue with countries we disagree with is not isolation but engagement.

Russian Journal

Author : Andrea Lee
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 030749036X
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Russian Journal by : Andrea Lee

Download or read book Russian Journal written by Andrea Lee and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A subtly crafted reflection of both the bleak and golden shadings of Russian life . . . Its tones belong more to the realm of poetry than journalism.” –The New York Times Book Review At age twenty-five, Andrea Lee joined her husband, a Harvard doctoral candidate in Russian history, for his eight months’ study at Moscow State University and an additional two months in Leningrad. Published to enormous critical acclaim in 1981, Russian Journal is the award-winning author’s penetrating, vivid account of her everyday life as an expatriate in Soviet culture, chronicling her fascinating exchanges with journalists, diplomats, and her Soviet contemporaries. The winner of the Jean Stein Award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters–and the book that launched Lee’s career as a writer–Russian Journal is a beautiful and clear-eyed travel-writing classic. “[Lee] takes us wherever she is, conveying a feeling of place and atmosphere that is the mark of real talent.” –The Washington Post Book World “A book of very great charm . . . [Lee] records what she saw and heard with unassuming delicacy and exactness.” –Newsweek

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking

Author : Anya von Bremzen
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307886832
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by : Anya von Bremzen

Download or read book Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking written by Anya von Bremzen and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations “Delicious . . . A banquet of anecdote that brings history to life with intimacy, candor, and glorious color.”—NPR’s All Things Considered Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, naively joyous, and melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return. Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, Anya and her mother decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience. Through these meals, and through the tales of three generations of her family, Anya tells the intimate yet epic story of life in the USSR. Wildly inventive and slyly witty, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly

Brezhnev's Folly

Author : Christopher J. Ward
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN 13 : 0822971216
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis Brezhnev's Folly by : Christopher J. Ward

Download or read book Brezhnev's Folly written by Christopher J. Ward and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heralded by Soviet propaganda as the “Path to the Future,” the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway (BAM) represented the hopes and dreams of Brezhnev and the Communist Party elite of the late Soviet era. Begun in 1974, and spanning approximately 2,000 miles after twenty-nine years of halting construction, the BAM project was intended to showcase the national unity, determination, skill, technology, and industrial might that Soviet socialism claimed to embody. More pragmatically, the Soviet leadership envisioned the BAM railway as a trade route to the Pacific, where markets for Soviet timber and petroleum would open up, and as an engine for the development of Siberia. Despite these aspirations and the massive commitment of economic resources on its behalf, BAM proved to be a boondoggle-a symbol of late communism's dysfunctionality-and a cruel joke to many ordinary Soviet citizens. In reality, BAM was woefully bereft of quality materials and construction, and victimized by poor planning and an inferior workforce. Today, the railway is fully complete, but remains a symbol of the profligate spending and inefficiency that characterized the Brezhnev years. In Brezhnev's Folly, Christopher J. Ward provides a groundbreaking social history of the BAM railway project. He examines the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of workers from the diverse republics of the USSR and other socialist countries, and his extensive archival research and interviews with numerous project workers provide an inside look at the daily life of the BAM workforce. We see firsthand the disorganization, empty promises, dire living and working conditions, environmental damage, and acts of crime, segregation, and discrimination that constituted daily life during the project's construction. Thus, perhaps, we also see the final irony of BAM: that the most lasting legacy of this misguided effort to build Soviet socialism is to shed historical light on the profound ills afflicting a society in terminal decline.

Soviet Union

Author : Raymond E. Zickel
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1182 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (319 download)

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Book Synopsis Soviet Union by : Raymond E. Zickel

Download or read book Soviet Union written by Raymond E. Zickel and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 1182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Fashion Meets Socialism

Author : Jukka Gronow
Publisher : Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN 13 : 9522227528
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (222 download)

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Book Synopsis Fashion Meets Socialism by : Jukka Gronow

Download or read book Fashion Meets Socialism written by Jukka Gronow and published by Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. This book was released on 2015-08-19 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents, above all, a study of the establishment and development of the Soviet organization and system of fashion industry and design as it gradually evolved in the years after the Second World War in the Soviet Union, which was, in the understanding of its leaders, reaching the mature or last stage of socialism when the country was firmly set on the straight trajectory to its final goal, Communism. What was typical of this complex and extensive system of fashion was that it was always loyally subservient to the principles of the planned socialist economy. This did not by any means indicate that everything the designers and other fashion professionals did was dictated entirely from above by the central planning agencies. Neither did it mean that their professional judgment would have been only secondary to ideological and political standards set by the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, as our study shows, the Soviet fashion professionals had a lot of autonomy. They were eager and willing to exercise their own judgment in matters of taste and to set the agenda of beauty and style for Soviet citizens. The present book is the first comprehensive and systematic history of the development of fashion and fashion institutions in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Our study makes use of rich empirical and historical material that has been made available for the first time for scientific analysis and discussion. The main sources for our study came from the state, party and departmental archives of the former Soviet Union. We also make extensive use of oral history and the writings published in Soviet popular and professional press.

Armageddon Averted

Author : Stephen Kotkin
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780199743841
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (438 download)

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Book Synopsis Armageddon Averted by : Stephen Kotkin

Download or read book Armageddon Averted written by Stephen Kotkin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring extensive revisions to the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue--bringing the book completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse--this compact, original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the great historical events of the last fifty years. Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post Soviet Russia and he reminds us, with chilling immediacy, of what could not have been predicted--that the world's largest police state, with several million troops, a doomsday arsenal, and an appalling record of violence, would liquidate itself with barely a whimper. Throughout the book, Kotkin also paints vivid portraits of key personalities. Using recently released archive materials, for example, he offers a fascinating picture of Gorbachev, describing this virtuoso tactician and resolutely committed reformer as "flabbergasted by the fact that his socialist renewal was leading to the system's liquidation"--and more or less going along with it. At once authoritative and provocative, Armageddon Averted illuminates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing how "principled restraint and scheming self-interest brought a deadly system to meek dissolution." Acclaim for the First Edition: "The clearest picture we have to date of the post-Soviet landscape." --The New Yorker "A triumph of the art of contemporary history. In fewer than 200 pagesKotkin elucidates the implosion of the Soviet empire--the most important and startling series of international events of the past fifty years--and clearly spells out why, thanks almost entirely to the 'principal restraint' of the Soviet leadership, that collapse didn't result in a cataclysmic war, as all experts had long forecasted." -The Atlantic Monthly "Concise and persuasive The mystery, for Kotkin, is not so much why the Soviet Union collapsed as why it did so with so little collateral damage." --The New York Review of Books

Into the Cosmos

Author : James T. Andrews
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN 13 : 082297746X
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis Into the Cosmos by : James T. Andrews

Download or read book Into the Cosmos written by James T. Andrews and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2011 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The launch of the Sputnik satellite in October 1957 changed the course of human history. In the span of a few years, Soviets sent the first animal into space, the first man, and the first woman. These events were a direct challenge to the United States and the capitalist model that claimed ownership of scientific aspiration and achievement. Into the Cosmos shows us the fascinating interplay of Soviet politics, science, and culture during the Khrushchev era, and how the space program became a binding force between these elements.

Communism and Consumerism

Author : Timo Vihavainen
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004303979
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis Communism and Consumerism by : Timo Vihavainen

Download or read book Communism and Consumerism written by Timo Vihavainen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the world of the Soviet consumer and the specific problems, which arose both for the consumer and the Soviet state in a command economy of chronic shortages. It concentrates on the latter half of the Soviet period, but also the longue durée of Russian consumerism is discussed.