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The culture of the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
passed through several stages during the country's 69-year existence. It was contributed to by people of various nationalities from every one of fifteen union republics, although the majority of the influence was made by the Russians. The Soviet state supported cultural institutions, but also carried out strict censorship.


History


Lenin era

The main feature of communist attitudes towards the arts and artists in the years 1918–1929 was relative freedom, with significant experimentation in several different styles in an effort to find a distinctive Soviet style of art. In many respects, the NEP period was a time of relative freedom and experimentation for the social and cultural life of the Soviet Union. The government tolerated a variety of trends in these fields, provided they were not overtly hostile towards the establishment. In art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others radically experimental, proliferated. Communist writers
Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (;  – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...
and
Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...
were active during this time, but other authors, many of whose works were later repressed, published work lacking socialist political content. Film, as a means of influencing a largely illiterate society, received encouragement from the state; much of cinematographer
Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein; (11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist. Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, he was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is no ...
's best work dates from this period. Education, under Commissar
Anatoly Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (, born ''Anatoly Aleksandrovich Antonov''; – 26 December 1933) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and the first Soviet People's Commissariat for Education, People's Commissar (minister) of Education, as well ...
, entered a phase of experimentation based on progressive theories of learning. At the same time, the state expanded the primary and secondary school system, and introduced night schools for working adults. The quality of higher education was affected by admissions policy that preferred entrants from the proletarian class over those from bourgeois backgrounds, regardless of the applicants' qualifications. Under NEP, the state eased its active persecution of religion begun during
war communism War communism or military communism (, ''Vojenný kommunizm'') was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. War communism began in June 1918, enforced by the Supreme Economi ...
but continued to agitate on behalf of atheism. The party supported the Living Church reform movement within the Russian Orthodox Church in hopes that it would undermine faith in the church, but the movement died out in the late-1920s. In family life, attitudes generally became more permissive. The state legalized
abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...
, and it made divorce progressively easier to obtain, whilst public cafeterias proliferated at the expense of private family kitchens.


Stalin era

Arts during the rule of
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
were characterized by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of socialist realism, with all other trends being severely repressed, with rare exceptions. Many notable works of
Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( ; rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The M ...
were not repressed, although the full text of his novel ''
The Master and Margarita ''The Master and Margarita'' () is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, was published posthumously in ''Moscow (magazine), Moscow'' magazine in ...
'' was published only in 1966. Many writers were imprisoned and killed, or died of starvation, examples being Daniil Kharms,
Osip Mandelstam Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (, ; – 27 December 1938) was a Russian and Soviet poet. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school. Osip Mandelstam was arrested during the repressions of the 1930s and sent into internal exile wi ...
,
Isaac Babel Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel ( – 27 January 1940) was a Soviet writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of ''Red Cavalry'' and ''Odessa Stories'', and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose write ...
and Boris Pilnyak. Andrei Platonov worked as a caretaker and was not allowed to publish. The work of
Anna Akhmatova Anna Andreyevna Gorenko rus, А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко, p=ˈanːə ɐnˈdrʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡɐˈrʲɛnkə, a=Anna Andreyevna Gorenko.ru.oga, links=yes; , . ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova,. ...
was also condemned by the government, although she notably refused the opportunity to escape to the West. During the time when the Party was trying to make Soviet government more palatable to Ukrainians, a great deal of national
self-determination Self-determination refers to a people's right to form its own political entity, and internal self-determination is the right to representative government with full suffrage. Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international la ...
and cultural development was tolerated. After this short period of the renaissance of Ukrainian literature ended, more than 250 Ukrainian writers died during the
Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...
, for example Valerian Pidmohylny (1901–1937), in the so-called
Executed Renaissance The Executed Renaissance (), or Red Renaissance (), was a generation of Ukrainian language poets, writers, and artists of the 1920s and early 1930s who lived in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and wеre kille ...
. Texts of imprisoned authors were confiscated by the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
and some of them were published later. Books were removed from libraries and destroyed. In addition to literature, musical expression was also repressed during the Stalin era, and at times the music of many Soviet composers was banned altogether.
Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer. Shostak ...
experienced a particularly long and complex relationship with Stalin, during which his music was denounced and prohibited twice, in 1936 and 1948 (see Zhdanov Doctrine).
Sergei Prokofiev Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''. , group=n ( – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who l ...
and
Aram Khachaturian Aram Ilyich Khachaturian (; 1 May 1978) was a Soviet Armenians, Armenian composer and conductor. He is considered one of the leading Music of the Soviet Union#Classical music of the Soviet Union, Soviet composers. Khachaturian was born and rai ...
had similar cases. Although
Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...
did not live in the Soviet Union, his music was officially considered formalist and anti-Soviet.


Late Soviet Union

In the late Soviet Union, Soviet popular culture was characterized by fascination with the Western popular culture as exemplified by the blue jeans craze.Were Jeans Really Illegal in the Soviet Union? The Surprising History of Denim Smuggling Under the Iron Curtain
/ref> In arts, the liberalization of all aspects of life starting from the
Khrushchev Thaw The Khrushchev Thaw (, or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when Political repression in the Soviet Union, repression and Censorship in ...
created a possibility for the evolution of various forms of non-formal, underground and dissident art; still repressed, but no longer under the immediate threat of imprisonment.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...
, who wrote the critical ''
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ''One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' (, ) is a short novel by the Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine ''Novy Mir'' (''New World'').Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...
and subsequently exiled from the Soviet Union. Greater experimentation in art forms became permissible in the 1970s, with the result that more sophisticated and subtly critical work began to be produced. The government loosened the strictures of socialist realism; thus, for instance, many protagonists of the novels of author Yury Trifonov concerned themselves with problems of daily life rather than with building socialism. In music, although the state continued to frown on such Western phenomena as
jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
and rock, it began to permit Western musical ensembles specializing in these genres to make limited appearances. But the native balladeer Vladimir Vysotsky, widely popular in the Soviet Union, was denied official recognition because of his iconoclastic lyrics.


See also

* * * *
Cinema of the Soviet Union The cinema of the Soviet Union includes films produced by the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history, albeit they were all regulated by the central government in Moscow. ...
* Culture of Belarus * Culture of Russia *
Culture of Ukraine The culture of Ukraine is composed of the material and spiritual values of the Ukrainian people that has formed throughout the history of Ukraine. Strong family values and religion, alongside the traditions of Ukrainian embroidery and Ukrainian ...
* Family in the Soviet Union * Fashion in the Soviet Union * Index of Soviet Union-related articles * List of Russian-language novelists * List of Russian-language playwrights * List of Russian-language poets * Music of the Soviet Union *
Religion in the Soviet Union Religion in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was dominated by the fact that it became the first state to have as one objective of its official ideology the elimination of existing religion, and the prevention of future implanting ...
*
Soviet cuisine Soviet cuisine, the common cuisine of the Soviet Union, was formed by the integration of the various national cuisines of the Soviet Union, in the course of the formation of the Soviet people. It is characterized by a limited number of ingredien ...
*
Soviet people The Soviet people () were the citizens and nationals of the Soviet Union. This demonym was presented in the ideology of the country as the "new historical unity of peoples of different nationalities" (). Nationality policy in the Soviet Union ...


References


Further reading

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External links


Russian Film Hub
Russian and Soviet film database {{DEFAULTSORT:Culture Of The Soviet Union