Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian RevolutionThe revolutionary ideals of equality, communal living, proletarian morality, and technology worship, rooted in Russian utopianism, generated a range of social experiments which found expression, in the first decade of the Russian revolution, in festival, symbol, science fiction, city planning, and the arts. In this study, historian Richard Stites offers a vivid portrayal of revolutionary life and the cultural factors--myth, ritual, cult, and symbol--that sustained it, and describes the principal forms of utopian thinking and experimental impulse. Analyzing the inevitable clash between the authoritarian elements in the Bolshevik's vision and the libertarian behavior and aspirations of large segments of the population, Stites interprets the pathos of utopian fantasy as the key to the emotional force of the Bolshevik revolution which gave way in the early 1930s to bureaucratic state centralism and a theology of Stalinism. |
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Anarchists army artel artists Avrich Bogdanov Bolshevik Bolshevism building called capital central church Civil collective collectivism communards commune communist cult culture designed dream dystopia early economic egalitarian Ekaterinoslav elements equality experimental experiments factory fantasy February Revolution festival Fitzpatrick Fueloep-Miller future Gastev Godbuilding House human iconoclasm idem industrial intellectuals intelligentsia istorii Kerzhentsev Komsomol Kremlin labor land leaders Lenin Leningrad living Lunacharsky machine major March Marxist masses military modern monuments moral Moscow movement nineteenth century novel October Revolution orchestra organization party passim peasant Persimfans Petrograd political popular population Populists production proletarian Proletcult Provisional Government radical Red Star regime religion religious revolutionary ritual rural Russian history Russian Revolution science fiction social Social Condenser socialist society Soviet Russia space Stalin symbols Taylorism theater tion town tradition Trotsky tsar University Press urban utopian village vision War Communism workers York Zamyatin