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. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 11 | |
Living the Revolution | 59 |
We The Community of the Future | 167 |
Dreams and Nightmares | 223 |
A Note on Sources and Abbreviations | 255 |
Notes | 257 |
Index | 297 |
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Common terms and phrases
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
Popular passages
Page 167 - A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
Page 42 - At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order as at a time of revolution.
Page 42 - My dream may run ahead of the natural march of events or may fly off at a tangent in a direction in which no natural march of events will ever proceed. In the first case my dream will not cause any harm; it may even support and augment the energy of the working men....
Page 247 - The charismatic leader gains and maintains authority solely by proving his strength in life. If he wants to be a prophet, he must perform miracles; if he wants to be a war lord, he must perform heroic deeds. Above all, however, his divine mission must 'prove' itself in that those who faithfully surrender to him must fare well.
Page 124 - ... their grand clothing with that of the Utopians, who had poured out into the street to see them pass. On the other hand, it was no less delightful to notice how much they were mistaken in their sanguine expectations and how far they were from obtaining the consideration which they had hoped to get. To the eyes of all the Utopians, with the exception of the very few who for a good reason had visited foreign countries, all this gay show appeared disgraceful. They therefore bowed to the lowest of...
Page 42 - Divergence between dreams and reality causes no harm if only the person dreaming believes seriously in his dream, if he attentively observes life, compares his observations with the airy castles he builds and if, generally speaking, he works conscientiously for the achievement of his fantasies.
Page 168 - The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.
Page 148 - I pity the poor fellow who is so soft and flabby that he must always have "an atmosphere of good feeling" around him before he can do his work. There are such men. And in the end, unless they obtain enough mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft reliance on "feeling,
Page 168 - Man, who will learn how to move rivers and mountains, how to build peoples' palaces on the peaks of Mont Blanc and at the bottom of the Atlantic, will not only be able to add to his own life richness, brilliancy and intensity, but also a dynamic quality of the highest degree. The shell of life will hardly have time to form before it will burst open again under the pressure of new technical and cultural inventions 'and achievements. Life in the future will not be monotonous. More than that. Man at...
Page 284 - Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present 38 (1967): 56-97; Jon M.