Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920

Bibliographic Data

ID19913638
AuthorsJames Von Geldern (corresponding author)
Year1993
Publication date1993-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueBolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920 (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/9780520403512
OpenAlexW2098119113
ISBN9780520403512
LanguageEN
Citations received48

In the early years of the USSR, socialist festivals - events entailing enormous expense and the deployment of thousands of people - were inaugurated by the Bolsheviks. Avant-garde canvases decorated the streets, workers marched and elaborate mass spectacles were staged. Why, with a civil war raging and an economy in ruins, did the regime sponsor such spectacles? In this investigation of the manner in which these festivals helped to build a new political culture, James von Geldern examines the mass spectacles that captured the Bolsheviks' historical vision. Spectacle directors borrowed from a tradition that included tsarist pomp, avant-garde theatre and popular celebrations. They transformed the ideology of revolution, the author claims, into a mythologized sequence of events that provided new foundations for the Bolsheviks' claim to power

Art · Economic history · Ideology · Mass culture · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Spectacle · Anthropology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Soviet and Russian History

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