Stefan Hedlund, “Such a Beautiful Dream: How Russia Did Not Become a Market Economy”
Perhaps the most important part of Russia’s attempt at “systemic change” was that of transforming the Soviet-era planned economy into a modern market economy. By alleging that this ambition has not been realized, the present article seeks to highlight the importance of culture and history in assessing even seemingly technical issues in Russian economic development. It begins by presenting what the “dream” of establishing market economy entailed, proceeds to look at some of the evidence on the outcome, and concludes the introductory argument by claiming that the essence of the problem at hand was fundamentally misconceived. The main part of the explanation both for the misconception and for the failed outcome is sought in an institutional matrix that is rooted in the Muscovite era, and that has become surprisingly resistant to reform. Based on this presentation, it is held that given the way in which systemic change was implemented, the outcome was essentially predictable. The argument concludes with a discussion on how to interpret the cultural dimension of market economy.
Julia Vaingurt, “Poetry of Labor and Labor of Poetry: The Universal Language of Alexei Gastev's Biomechanics”
A scapegoat of twentieth-century Russian literature, Alexei Gastev is primarily known as the object of parody in Evgenii Zamiatin's anti-utopian novel We. His name is brought up in the context of Soviet Taylorism, and the rare scholars who turn to his poetry usually treat it as an example of the Proletarian Culture group to which he belonged. They concentrate on such common features as paeans to the machine and the rhetoric of metallization, and ignore Gastev's original experimentation with form. Meanwhile, Velemir Khlebnikov admired Gastev's poetry and called Gastev a "fragment of labor conflagration in its purest form." My article is the first attempt to analyze Gastev's formal experiments that exhibit the poet's affinity with the aesthetics of the Russian and Western avant-garde. It points out the complexity of Gastev's endeavor by tracing various discursive practices that influenced his work: Soviet reflexology, Taylor's scientific management of labor, the Western avant-garde, the fin-de-siècle preoccupation with body cultivation, and Nikolai Fedorov's cosmism. Gastev looks for ways in which poetry can assist in the conversion of the excessiveness of the human body into the restrain and control of the machine. In an effort to create poetry as a product of a man-machine and to reconsider the role of poetry in the machine age, Gastev disposes of mimesis--as nature was something to leave behind--in favor of the rhythm of mechanical reproduction. By extracting intemperance from poetry, Gastev attempts to reduce human emotions provoked by this art form to reflexology. Finally, the article argues that Gastev understood the biomechanical transformation of the human in national terms, and demonstrates how Gastev’s taming of the Russian word was part of his project of expelling everything Russian in him and transforming him from a Russian man into a Western machine.
Francis Butler, “Ol'ga’s Conversion and the Construction of Chronicle Narrative”
From the Byzantine perspective, the baptism of St. Ol'ga baptism represented the incorporation of Rus' into the Byzantine state. Yet the chronicler who portrayed this baptism saw it very differently and presented it so as to emphasize the independence of Rus' from Constantinople. The depiction of the event in the Povest' deals, on one hand, with Ol'ga’s baptism by the Byzantine patriarch, a representative of God on earth, and, on the other hand, with Ol'ga’s encounter with the Byzantine emperor, a secular ruler. The motivation behind Ol'ga’s avoidance of marriage to the emperor as portrayed in the Povest' resembles that behind her avoidance of marriage to the Derevlian ruler, Mal. Ol'ga’s creation of a spiritual kinship bond between herself and the emperor to avoid marriage may be understood against a background of roughly contemporary female manipulation of spiritual kinship. As in the encounter with Mal, Ol'ga demonstrates a resourcefulness not associated with male figures in the Povest'.
Alexander M. Martin, “Sewage and the City: Filth, Smell, and Representations of Urban Life in Moscow, 1770-1880”
Primary sources that describe Moscow in the 1760s-70s speak about ubiquitous filth and noxious smells. Subsequently, such reports grew rare, and for decades Moscow was described as a clean, pleasant-smelling city. This changed again during the Great Reforms era, when Moscow was once more depicted as filthy and malodorous. Throughout this period, the objective realities of air quality and sanitation seem to have changed little; instead, like in other European countries—France is used here for comparative purposes—writers used filth and odor as metaphors for the wider social order. Drawing on regime sources, descriptions by long-time foreign residents, and Russian literati and social analysts, the manuscript traces the evolving representation of Moscow as an urban community. The paper arrives at two principal findings. The first is that in Russia as in France, cleanliness was equated with civilizational progress. During Catherine II’s early years, criticisms of Moscow’s turbulence and backwardness drew attention to its filth and stench. Under her successors, the city was depicted in a deliberately sanitized and deodorized way from the 1790s until the 1840s, as part of a strategy to highlight urban Russia’s sociopolitical stability in contrast to the cities of the West. A reaction against this strategy set in during the Great Reforms, when aggressive criticisms of Moscow as filthy and smelly signaled a wider rejection of the regime’s claim to have brought order and enlightenment to Russia. The second finding is that unlike in France, observers in Russia did not focus on the personal body odor of the masses. In France, this concern was linked to fears that urban living conditions induced moral and even biological degeneration. In Russia, by contrast, educated society equated foul smells with an atavistic popular backwardness that the elites could and should seek to remedy, not an irreversible decline in the nation’s racial stock.
Mikail Mamedov, “‘Going Native’ in the Caucasus: Problems of Russian Identity, 1801-64”
When the Russian Empire began its annexation of the Caucasus at the end of the eighteenth century, nobody in the Russian elite questioned that their cultural values would prevail over "culturally inferior" natives. However, the situation turned out to be much more complicated. Indeed, in the Caucasus, Russian civil and military officers used local clothes, rode horses in the natives' way, and even sought to be indistinguishable from their adversaries. This article examines various and controversial manifestations of the phenomenon of “going native” in the Caucasus: Russian imitation of natives, their borrowing of local dress, fleeing to the mountains, and fighting alongside the highlanders, and their adoption of extremely cruel, allegedly native, modes of warfare to crush the resistance of the mountain tribes. It will discuss the nativization of Russian officers who pursued careers in the Caucasus in the first half of the nineteenth century and will examine emerging collective identities, construction of masculinity, military aspects of mountain warfare, and cultural practices. It also will discus Russians' flight to the mountains, and relations between Russian men and native women. "Going native" manifested itself through various behaviors, but what is important here is how the nativization of culturally “sophisticated” Russians by "inferior" indigenous peoples calls into question the very dichotomy of "primitive" versus "civilized."
Andrew B. Stone, “‘Overcoming Peasant Backwardness’: The Khrushchev Antireligious Campaign and the Rural Soviet Union”
This study examines antireligious ideology and activism among the rural Soviet population during the Khrushchev years. Rather than focusing on religious persecution and forcible church closings, this study treats the antireligious campaign as an ideological project that was related to larger efforts during the Khrushchev years to improve rural living conditions, access to education, and agricultural productivity. The continued presence of religion among the rural population was treated as another sign of “backwardness” that needed to be eliminated if the rural Soviet Union was to be truly modernized and made an equal part of Soviet society. Scientific-atheist education and propaganda, along with improved living standards, were seen as the key to enlightening the rural populace and building the modern Soviet village. This study utilizes archival materials from the Novgorod region to investigate how this campaign proceeded among the rural Soviet population. It finds that many local officials showed little enthusiasm for antireligious propaganda work, and usually did little to hinder religious practices unless they explicitly interfered with agricultural work. Furthermore, the antireligious campaign as an ideological project relied on the basic premise that religion was incompatible with the desired Soviet transformation of the countryside. In this view, once rural citizens began to enjoy the benefits of Soviet socialist life, and saw the superiority of science and education to religious “superstitions,” they would quickly abandon religion. In reality, however, many rural citizens refused to accept the supposed incompatibility between their social status as Soviet citizens and their expression of religious beliefs and practices. Although Soviet ideology insisted that “religious believers” could not be truly “Soviet,” many among the rural population never accepted this distinction. Religion and the Soviet system therefore often coexisted in practice. This practical coexistence was not always the result of apathy on the part of local officials. In some cases, as with “self-appointed” religious leaders (samochintsy), the Orthodox Church and the Soviet state cooperated in attacking practices that both considered harmful and backward. Religious petitioners employed a number of discursive strategies to suggest that Soviet rural life could include a place for religion. Finally, some Orthodox priests seem to have genuinely tried to play the role of “Soviet priests.” The notion that a normal, Soviet life could nevertheless incorporate religious beliefs and practices allowed this practical coexistence to persist even during the years of the Khrushchev antireligious campaign. Despite efforts to create the modern, and by definition atheist, Soviet village, religion never stopped playing a role in rural life.