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RSS1010

Soviet literature and culture

Proposed to be offered next in 1998

S M Vladiv-Glover

6 points
* 3 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton

Objectives On completion of the subject, students should have become acquainted with the major historical, political and artistic trends in Soviet culture between 1917 and the 1960s and with the salient cultural and artistic texts of the period. They should be able to evaluate the society of the Soviet era against other social models and to see the connection between ideology and aesthetics on the textual level.

Synopsis An introduction, from a contemporary post-Soviet perspective, to Soviet culture and society, using selected literary texts, films and slides. Issues studied include the rehabilitation of the arts of the twenties and thirties, the new position of the writer on the contemporary cultural scene and the re-evaluation of the Soviet past. The texts represent a combination of the repressed Stalinist literature and the post-Stalinist `thaws' (`village prose,' `young prose', the `semiotic novel').

Assessment Written (3500 words): 70%
* Examination (1.5 hours): 30%

Prescribed texts

Bitov A Pushkin House tr. S Brownsberger, Farrow, Strauss and Giroux, 1987

Bulgakov M Master and Margarita Fontana

Platonov The pit Ardis, 1973

Rasputin V Money for Maria

Rybakov A The children of the Arbat Hutchinson, 1988

Whitney T (ed.) The new writing in Russia Michigan, 1964

Recommended texts

Deutscher I Stalin: Political biography rev. edn, Penguin, 1966

Hosking G Beyond socialist realism: Soviet fiction since Ivan Denisovich Granada, 1980

Mackenzie D and Curran M W A history of the Soviet Union Dorsey, 1986

Shub D Lenin: A biography Penguin

Svirski G A History of post-war Soviet writing: The literature of moral opposition Ardis, 1981

Talbott S (ed. and tr.) Khrushchev remembers Deutsch, 1971

Volkov S Testimony: The memoirs of Shostakovich Hamish Hamilton, 1979

Voslensky M Nomenklatura: Anatomy of the Soviet ruling class Bodley Head, 1984


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Authorised by the Academic Registrar December 1996