The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse - Couverture rigide

Kellner, Joseph

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1501781510 ISBN 13 : 9781501781513

Editeur : Cornell University Press, 2025

Synopsis

The Spirit of Socialism is a cultural history of the Soviet collapse. It examines the millions of Soviet people who, during the cascading crises of the collapse and the post-Soviet transition, embarked on a spirited and highly visible search for new meaning. Amid profound disorientation, these seekers found direction in their horoscopes, or behind gurus in saffron robes or apocalyptic preachers, or by turning from the most basic premises of official science and history to orient themselves anew. The beliefs they seized on and, even more, the questions that guided their search reveal the essence of late-Soviet culture and its legacy in post-Soviet Russia. To skeptical outsiders, the seekers appeared eccentric, deviant, and above all un-Soviet. Yet they came to their ideas by Soviet sources and Soviet premises. As Joseph Kellner demonstrates, their motley beliefs reflect modern values that formed the spiritual core of Soviet ideology, among them a high regard for science, an informed and generous internationalism, and a confidence in humanity to chart its own course. Soviet ideology failed, however, to unite these values in an overarching vision that could withstand historical change. And so, as The Spirit of Socialism shows, the seekers asked questions raised but not resolved by the Russian Revolution and subsequent Soviet order—questions of epistemic authority, of cultural identity, and of history's ultimate meaning. Although the Soviet collapse was not the end of history, it was a rupture of epochal significance, whose fissures extend into our own uncertain era.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Joseph Kellner is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union at the University of Georgia.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Cornell University Press
• Date d'édition: 2025
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1501781510
• ISBN 13: 9781501781513
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 258
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Pays-Bas