Up to now the culture of the Stalin period has been studied mainly from a political or ideological point of view. In this book renowned specialists from many countries approach the problem rather 'from inside'. The authors deal with numerous aspects of Stalinist culture such as art, literature, architecture, film and popular culture. Yet the volume is more than a mere collection of studies on special issues. It is an inquiry into the very nature of a certain type of culture, its symbols, rites and myths. The book will be useful not only for students of Soviet culture but also for a wider audience.

List of Illustrations - Preface - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction - PART 1 POPULAR CULTURE, EVERYDAY LIFE, IDEOLOGY - Working-Class Culture and Political Culture in the 1930s; J.Barber - Stalinism and Popular Culture; R.Robin - Stalinism and Carnival; R.Sartorti - Stalinism and the Restructuring of Revolutionary Utopianism; R.Stites - PART 2 ART - Presuppositions of Socialist Realism; A.Flaker - Problems in the Study of Stalinist Culture; I.Golomstock - The Birth of Socialist Realism from the Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde; B.Groys - Socialist Realism as Institutional Practice: Observations on the Interpretation of the Works of Art of the Stalin Period; J.Guldberg - The Avant-Garde and Art of the Stalinist Era; V.Rakitin - PART 3 LITERATURE - Education and Conversion: The Road to the New Man in the Totalitarian Bildungsroman; H.G nther - Satire under Stalinism: Zoshchenko's Golubaya kniga and Bulgakov's Master and Margarita; J.U.Peters - PART 4 ARCHITECTURE - Moscow in the 1930s and the Emergence of a New City; V.Paperny - The Ultimate Palladianist, Outliving Revolution and the Stalin Period: Architect Ivan V.Zholtovsky; A.M.Vogt - PART 5 FILM - From the Avant-Garde to Socialist Realism: Some Reflections on the Signifying Procedures in Eisenstein's Stachka and Donskoi's Raduga; B.Bollag - The Annexation of History: Eisenstein and the Ivan Grozny Cult of the 1940s; B.Uhlenbruch - Index