Stites, Chapters 2 and 3

Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900
By: Richard Stites
Chapters 2 and 3


Revolutionary reassortment 1917-1927


The revolution brought what hundreds of thousands of people saw as a new dawn of freedom and justice, but what was really a state of control. The civil war redirected energies, creating massive dislocation, generalized poverty, social disorder, and material shortages. 


The Blosheviks did not believe in the harmlessness of popular culture. Cultural politics became a reified agenda, a drug for the masses. Ideological correctness was paramount, mass appeal was important, and artistic excellence was desirable to the extent that it fit the other two. 


Agit-train: a traveling political carnival with live entertainers, phonograph recitals of Lenin's voice, and motion picture projectors. 


Proletcult: promoted not only a culture of the factory floor and industrial motifs, but also folk singing, avante-garde experimentation, and the treasures of old high culture. 


The NEP partially restored private businesses. 


The new proletarian morality: mutual respect, equality of the sexes, atheism rooted in science, spirit of collective comradship, and the cult of the machine. 


Utopian sci-fi books! 


Agitki: short propaganda films. 


Stalin by starlight 1928-1941


"The self-proclaimed guardians of proletarian sensibilities almost succeeded in destroyed what was left of popular culture in the years 1928-1932" (64).


Socialist realism --> didactic middlebrow literature whose rules and codes quickly migrated to statuary film, radio drama, and song. 


Pilots and aviators as the hero. 


1929- ban on saxophones 


1833- end of first Five Year Plan, a major national victory worthy of jubilation, popular music was allowed to reemerge. 


WIth the triumph of jazz, a new dance craze set in. Dance classes were made mandatory for officers in the Red Army. The purge on the jazz scene was ridiculous. One guy was arrested on the podium, others sent to camps. 


Folklorism was a major industry of the period. Radio grew in popularity. 


Film: Shumyatsky (in charge of Sovkino in 1930) believed that films should not be the personal expression of a tyrannical director but should be endowed with strong plots and clearly defined heroes, be accessible, and avoid cinematic experimentation.


With the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939, anti-German films were withdrawn from circulation, only to be reissued in 1941 after the German attack. 


Popular culture functioned at two levels: direct political communication and controlled spontaneity.