Description
Book SynopsisStaging the Absolute argues that an array of practices and beliefs came together to define an essential aspect of Russian and Soviet culture in the twentieth century: the persistent desire to interrupt or disrupt history. Drawing on sources that define the nature of public rituals, the book reveals the pervasive presence of the impulse to impede history in Russia’s modern era and the realization of the idea in the form of the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s.
Thomas Seifrid analyses Soviet festivals, public displays of agitational propaganda, and urban planning, together with such modernist precursors as fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century projects for reviving the theatre, modernist adaptations of puppet theatre, the Faust legend and its vogue in early twentieth-century Russia, and the nineteenth-century panorama. The book reveals that what binds these otherwise disparate phenomena together is a shared impatience with history and a corresponding des
Table of Contents
Note on Transliteration List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Narratives of Intervention and the Culture of Space in the Early Twentieth Century 2. Faust and the Medieval Roots of Intervention 3. Modernist Dreams of Intervention 4. Rituals of Intervention in the Early Soviet Era 5. Stalinist Ritual and the Impulse toward Judgment Epilogue Bibliography Notes Index
