Description
Book SynopsisThis 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 in Stalinism. Naturally, some essays document episodes in the defeat and dismantling of utopian projects, but others trace the persistence of avant-garde ideas and the astonishing tenacity of creative individuals who managed to retain their personal integrity while continuing to serve the cause of Soviet power. Contributors include: John E. Bowlt, Natalia Budanova, David Crowley, Evgeny Dobrenko, Maria Kokkori, Christina Lodder, Muireann Maguire, Nicholas Bueno de Mesquita, Maria Mileeva, John Milner, Nicoletta Misler, Maria Starkova-Vindman, Brandon Taylor, and Maria Tsantsanoglou.
Table of ContentsList of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Utopia and Dystopia: The Impulse of History Christina Lodder, Maria Kokkori and Maria Mileeva 1. Dreaming of the City: Mikhail Larionov’s Provincial Dandy John Milner 2. Utopic Sex: The Metamorphosis of Androgynous Imagery in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Russian Art Natalia Budanova 3. The Soviet Icarus: From the Dream of Free Flight to the Nightmare of Free Fall Maria Tsantsanoglou II 4. Theo van Doesburg and Russia: Utopia Thwarted Nicholas de Mesquita 5. Fighting for a Utopian Childhood: Militarism in Children’s Periodicals of the Early USSR Maria Starkova-Vindmann 6. Spectral Geographies of Soviet Russia: Émigré Visions of Impossible Returns Muireann Maguire 7. Twice removed: Pavel Filonov and Nikolai Glebov-Putilovskii Nicoletta Misler 8. Exhibiting Kazimir Malevich under Stalin Maria Kokkori 9. The Old and the New: Solomon Nikritin and Polyrealizm John E. Bowlt 10. The Ghost in the Machine: The Modernist Architectural Utopia under Stalin Christina Lodder 11. Petrified Utopia: Socialist Realism and Stasis Evgeny Dobrenko 12. Utopia in Retreat: The Closure of the State Museum of New Western Art, 1948 Maria Mileeva III 13. The Body Electric: Cybernetics in East European Art in the 1960s Eastern Bloc David Crowley 14. Geometry after Utopia Brandon Taylor Notes on the Contributors Index
