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Author: Gyorgy Peteri Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre ISBN: 082297391X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
This volume presents work from an international group of writers who explore conceptualizations of what defined "East" and "West" in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production. They reveal that the roots of an East/West cultural divide were present many years prior to the rise of socialism and the Cold War. The chapters offer insights into the complex stages of adoption and rejection of Western ideals in areas such as architecture, travel writings, film, music, health care, consumer products, political propaganda, and human rights. They describe a process of mental mapping whereby individuals "captured and possessed" Western identity through cultural encounters and developed their own interpretations from these experiences. Despite these imaginaries, political and intellectual elites devised responses of resistance, defiance, and counterattack to defy Western impositions. Socialists believed that their cultural forms and collectivist strategies offered morally and materially better lives for the masses and the true path to a modern society. Their sentiments toward the West, however, fluctuated between superiority and inferiority. But in material terms, Western products, industry, and technology, became the ever-present yardstick by which progress was measured. The contributors conclude that the commodification of the necessities of modern life and the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century made it impossible for communist states to meet the demands of their citizens. The West eventually won the battle of supply and demand, and thus the battle for cultural influence.
Author: Gyorgy Peteri Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre ISBN: 082297391X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
This volume presents work from an international group of writers who explore conceptualizations of what defined "East" and "West" in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production. They reveal that the roots of an East/West cultural divide were present many years prior to the rise of socialism and the Cold War. The chapters offer insights into the complex stages of adoption and rejection of Western ideals in areas such as architecture, travel writings, film, music, health care, consumer products, political propaganda, and human rights. They describe a process of mental mapping whereby individuals "captured and possessed" Western identity through cultural encounters and developed their own interpretations from these experiences. Despite these imaginaries, political and intellectual elites devised responses of resistance, defiance, and counterattack to defy Western impositions. Socialists believed that their cultural forms and collectivist strategies offered morally and materially better lives for the masses and the true path to a modern society. Their sentiments toward the West, however, fluctuated between superiority and inferiority. But in material terms, Western products, industry, and technology, became the ever-present yardstick by which progress was measured. The contributors conclude that the commodification of the necessities of modern life and the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century made it impossible for communist states to meet the demands of their citizens. The West eventually won the battle of supply and demand, and thus the battle for cultural influence.
Author: Sergei I. Zhuk Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 1498551254 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
This study is an intellectual biography of Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov (1930–2008), the prominent Soviet historian who was a pioneering scholar of US history and US–Russian relations. Alongside the personal history of Bolkhovitinov, this study also examines the broader social, cultural, and intellectual developments within the Americanist scholarly community in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Using archival documents, numerous studies by Russian and Ukrainian Americanists, various periodicals, personal correspondence, diaries, and more than one hundred interviews, it demonstrates how concepts, genealogies, and images of modernity shaped a national self-perception of the intellectual elites in both nations during the Cold War.
Author: Malgorzata Fidelis Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019764340X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 313
Book Description
The Sixties occupy a prominent place in popular culture and scholarship as an era of global upheavals, including the Civil Rights Movement, de-colonization, radical social movements, student and youth protests, and the Vietnam War. This pioneering book explores the seemingly isolated Eastern bloc and a non-capitalist context, demonstrating the impact of those global upheavals on young people in Poland in the form of international youth culture, protest movements, and counterculture.
Author: Riccardo Bavaj Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1785335049 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
“The West” is a central idea in German public discourse, yet historians know surprisingly little about the evolution of the concept. Contrary to common assumptions, this volume argues that the German concept of the West was not born in the twentieth century, but can be traced from a much earlier time. In the nineteenth century, “the West” became associated with notions of progress, liberty, civilization, and modernity. It signified the future through the opposition to antonyms such as “Russia” and “the East,” and was deployed as a tool for forging German identities. Examining the shifting meanings, political uses, and transnational circulations of the idea of “the West” sheds new light on German intellectual history from the post-Napoleonic era to the Cold War.
Author: P. Goral Publisher: Springer ISBN: 1137364300 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 197
Book Description
This book demonstrates how the two adversaries of the Cold War, West Germany and East Germany, endeavored to create two distinct and unique German identities. In their endeavor to claim legitimacy, the German cinematic representation of the American West became an important cultural weapon of mass dissemination during the Cold War.
Author: Ana Miljacki Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1315460122 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
The Optimum Imperative examines the multiple ways that architecture was entangled within the problem of Socialist lifestyle in Czechoslovakia.
Author: Danielle Fosler-Lussier Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520284135 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 346
Book Description
"During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department's Cultural Presentations program. Using archival documents and newly collected oral histories, this study illuminates the reception of these musical events, for the practice of musical diplomacy on the ground sometimes differed substantially from what the department's planners envisioned. Performances of music in many styles--classical, rock 'n' roll, folk, blues, and jazz--were meant to compete with traveling Soviet and Chinese artists, enhancing the reputation of American culture. These concerts offered large audiences evidence of America's improving race relations, excellent musicianship, and generosity toward other peoples. Most important, these performances also built meaningful connections with people in other lands. Through personal contacts and the media, musical diplomacy created subtle musical, social, and political relationships on a global scale. Although these tours were sometimes conceived as propaganda ventures, their most important function was the building of imagined and real relationships, which constitute the essence of soft power"--Provided by publisher.
Author: James Mark Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108427006 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 381
Book Description
Placing Eastern Europe in a global context, this provides new perspectives on the political, economic, and cultural transformations of the late twentieth century.
Author: Peter J. Schmelz Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197541267 Category : Music Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Sonic Overload offers a new, music-centered cultural history of the late Soviet Union. It focuses on polystylism in music as a response to the information overload swamping listeners in the Soviet Union during its final decades. It traces the ways in which leading composers Alfred Schnittke and Valentin Silvestrov initially embraced popular sources before ultimately rejecting them. Polystylism first responded to the utopian impulses of Soviet ideology with utopian impulses to encompass all musical styles, from "high" to "low". But these initial all-embracing aspirations were soon followed by retreats to alternate utopias founded on carefully selecting satisfactory borrowings, as familiar hierarchies of culture, taste, and class reasserted themselves. Looking at polystylism in the late USSR tells us about past and present, near and far, as it probes the musical roots of the overloaded, distracted present. Based on archival research, oral historical interviews, and other overlooked primary materials, as well as close listening and thorough examination of scores and recordings, Sonic Overload presents a multilayered and comprehensive portrait of late-Soviet polystylism and cultural life, and of the music of Silvestrov and Schnittke. Sonic Overload is intended for musicologists and Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian specialists in history, the arts, film, and literature, as well as readers interested in twentieth- and twenty-first century music; modernism and postmodernism; quotation and collage; the intersections of "high" and "low" cultures; and politics and the arts.
Author: Gyorgy Peteri
Author: Gyorgy Peteri
Author: Larry Wolff
Author: Sergei I. Zhuk
Author: Malgorzata Fidelis
Author: Riccardo Bavaj
Author: P. Goral
Author: Ana Miljacki
Author: Danielle Fosler-Lussier
Author: James Mark
Author: Peter J. Schmelz