Thinking Socialism: The Soviet Intellige

While Soviet Union after the second World War is often figured as a country of “stagnation,” in contrast to the avant garde 1920s and the tumult of Stalin’s 1930s, this figure is currently being re-evaluated. Political calm belied a rapidly changing society. The period developed a Soviet culture that was indubitably educated, modern, and mass. Despite, or within, or against the ever changing and ambiguous boundaries, censors, and dogmas, Soviet intellectuals generated cultural productions that reflected upon, processed, and critiqued the reality in which they lived and created. This course examines the development of this late Soviet “intelligentsia,” the first that was fully a product of Soviet society itself. Against a background of social history, we will select developments in various realms of cultural production for further examination, which from year to year may include philosophy, literature, political culture and ideology, art, and science.