Soviet Culture as a Social Phenomenon - JTM553

• Title: Soviet Culture as a Social Phenomenon
• Czech title: Sovětská kultura jako společenský fenomén
• Guaranteed by: Department of Russian and East European Studies (23-KRVS)
• Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Actual: from 2022
• Semester: winter
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: winter s.:
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (25)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: not taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: Dr. Razia Sultanova; PhDr. Jiří Kocián, Ph.D.
• Class: Courses for incoming students

Annotation

This course aims to explore and expand on the relationship between culture and society in the USSR and its satellites countries. Specifically, this course will explore how culture was employed as an ideo-logical tool by the Soviet state - through the lenses of education and propaganda of Socialism inherent to the Soviet aesthetic. Drawing on a rich range of insider-outsider recollections this course seeks to analyse a comprehensive view of culture in the USSR. Anchored in qualitative research the course will advance the knowledge about both how culture can be altered ideologically, as well as about culture’s potential to act as a cohesions factor in revisiting authority and cultural hegemony.

Lecturer contact: [e-mail]

Last update: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (18.10.2021)

Aim of the course

The course aims at presenting interdisciplinary perspective of the culture and politics entanglement in the Soviet Union and its satellites, while demonstrating various methodological approaches.

Last update: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (20.09.2021)

Course completion requirements

Presence at the lectures/seminars, student presentation during the classes and a seminar paper (3000 words).

Last update: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (20.09.2021)

Literature

1) Etkind Alexander, B Beumers , O, Gurova and S Turoma.
Cultural forms of protest in Russia, New York, Routledge, 2017
2) Etkind Alexander: Post-Soviet Russia: the land of the Oil Curse, Pussy Riot, and Magical Histori-cism”, Boundary 2, Vol 41, No 1; 2014, pp152-170
3) Etkind Alexander, How Russia colonised itself., International Journal for History,Culture and Mo-dernity, Vol 3, No 2, 2015, pp159-172
4)Fitzpatrick, S.1993: 745-770, Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Rus-sia.The Journal of Modern History,Vol. 65, No. 4 (Dec., 1993). the University of Chicago Press
5) Jowett, G. and O'Donnell, V. 2011. Propaganda & Persuasion. SAGE Publications.
6) Olkhovsky, A.1975. Music under the Soviets: the Agony of an Art. Greenwood Press.
7) Sultanova R. & Rancier M. 2019. (Eds) Turkic soundscapes: From Shamanic Voices to Hip-Hop, Routledge, London - New York
8) Sultanova R. 1993, “Politics and Music after the October revolution" in The Situation in the Years after 1930, ACASIA, USA, pp7
9) Tomoff, K. 2006. Creative Union: The Professional Organisation of Soviet Composers, 1939–1953. Ithaca.
10) Post-Soviet Migration nd Diasporas, Nikolko, Milana, Carment, David (Eds). Palgrave Macmil-lan, 2017.
11) Abashin, Sergei, Migration from Central Asia to Russia in the New Model of World Order. Rus-sian Politics & Law, Vol. 52, No. 6 (2014), pp. 8-23.

12) The Russian Conquest of Central Asia, A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

13) Сергей Абашин, Советский кишлак: Между колониализмом и модернизацией (Библио-тека журнала «Неприкосновенный запас»), Новое литературное обозрение, Москва, 2015
14) Валерий Тишков, Российский народ, пространство и культура. Санкт Петербург, 2018
15) Эткинд, Александр. Природа зла. Сырье и государство. — М.: НЛО, 2020.

Last update: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (20.09.2021)

Teaching methods

The course is a combination of lectures and seminars in a present form.

Last update: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (01.10.2021)

Requirements to the exam

Students have to present on the topic agreed on with the lecturer and course leader (40%).

To successfuly complete a course, they have to submit a term paper, 3000 words in length, which corresponds with the general standards of academic writing. (60%).

The students are graded A-F as total result for both parts in accordance with the Dean`s provision no. 20/2019, as follows:

91% and more => A
81-90% => B
71-80% => C
61-70% => D
51-60% => E
0-50% => F

Last update: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (20.09.2021)

Syllabus

The teaching will begin with a third week of the semester, from October 11, 2021.

 

1)    11.10. Lecture - Introduction (syllabus of the course)

2)    18.10. Soviet Identity as ethnonational coexistence: Slavs versus Turkic speaking people of the USSR 

3)    25.10. Arts and culture as mediums of propaganda and a political tool

4)    1.11. Soviet powerhouses in political practises and promotion:  centre - periphery in the USSR

5)    8.11. Soviet influence on the satellite countries (with Maria Asavei as Guest Lecturer)

6)    15.11. Post-Soviet Migration and diasporas in transition: the pop music case

7)    22.11. Musical dissent alternatives to the state cultural policies in the East European transnational perspectives (Jiri Kocian as Guest lecturer)

8)    29.11. The Soviet-Afghani war and its impact on culture (Slavomir Horak as Guest lecturer) 

9)    6.12. Religion and secularism: the Soviet Union’s experience (Guest Lecturer Zilia Imamutdinova , Moscow, Arts Study Institute)

10)  13.12. Music and media as a tool of political propaganda in the Soviet and post-Soviet Turkmenistan (with Jamal Yazliyeva as a Guest lecturer)

11)  20.12. Gender and religions in the USSR: Central Asian case

Last update: Kocián Jiří, PhDr., Ph.D. (03.11.2021)