Format:
Online-Ressource (pages cm)
Edition:
Online-Ausg.
ISBN:
9780822980254
Series Statement:
Pitt series in Russian and East European studies
Content:
"Anguish, Anger, and Folkways in Soviet Russia offers original perspectives on the politics of everyday life in the Soviet Union by closely examining the coping mechanisms individuals and leaders alike developed as they grappled with the political, social, and intellectual challenges the system presented before and after World War II. As Gábor T. Rittersporn shows, the 'little tactics' people employed in their daily lives not only helped them endure the rigors of life during the Stalin and post-Stalin periods but also strongly influenced the system's development into the Gorbachev and post-Soviet eras. For Rittersporn, citizens' conscious and unreflected actions at all levels of society defined a distinct Soviet universe. Terror, faith, disillusionment, evasion, folk customs, revolt, and confusion about regime goals and the individual's relation to them were all integral to the development of that universe and the culture it engendered. Through a meticulous reading of primary documents and materials uncovered in numerous archives located in Russia and Germany, Rittersporn identifies three related responses--anguish, anger, and folkways--to the pressures people in all walks of life encountered, and shows how these responses in turn altered the way the system operated. Rittersporn finds that the leadership generated widespread anguish by its inability to understand and correct the reasons for the system's persistent political and economic dysfunctions. Rather than locate the sources of these problems in their own presuppositions and administrative methods, leaders attributed them to omnipresent conspiracy and wrecking, which they tried to extirpate through terror. He shows how the unrelenting pursuit of enemies exacerbated systemic failures and contributed to administrative breakdowns and social dissatisfaction. Anger resulted as the populace reacted to the notable gap between the promise of a self-governing egalitarian society and the actual experience of daily existence under the heavy hand of the party-state. Those who had interiorized systemic values demanded a return to what they took for the original Bolshevik project, while others sought an outlet for their frustrations in destructive or self-destructive behavior. In reaction to the system's pressure, citizens instinctively developed strategies of noncompliance and accommodation. A detailed examination of these folkways enables Rittersporn to identify and describe the mechanisms and spaces intuitive ...
Note:
Description based upon print version of record
,
Introduction: A Conservative AgendaPart One. Anguish -- The Omnipresent Conspiracy : Imageries of Politics and Social Relations in the 1930s -- Catching Spies, Trapping the System -- Between the Catastrophe and the Promised Land : Public Mood, Popular Hopes, Elite Fears, and Mass Terror -- Part Two. Anger -- From Revolution to Daily Routine : Endemic Violence, Suspicious Youth, Angry Bolsheviks -- Citizens between Indignation and Resignation : Loyalty and Lost Hope -- Rebels -- Part Three. Folkways -- Breaking Step, Enjoying Carnival : Unorthodox Folklore -- Exploring Frontiers : Entrepreneurship, Continuities, and Changes -- Virtuous Girls Building a Sinful World : Misadventures of Modernity, Limits of the Thinkable, and the Politics of Folkways -- Epilogue: Dilemmas of History.
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0822980258
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0822963205
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780822980254
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780822963202
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe Anguish, Anger, and Folkways in Soviet Russia
Language:
English
URL:
Volltext
(lizenzpflichtig)
