POP CULTURE RUSSIA! Upcoming titles in ABC-CLIO’s series Popular Culture in the Contemporary World Pop Culture Latin America! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Lisa Shaw and Stephanie Dennison Pop Culture India! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Asha Kasbekar Pop Culture Japan! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, William H. Kelly Pop Culture Israel! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture Korea! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture Scandinavia! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture Caribbean! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Brenda F. Berrian Pop Culture France! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Wendy Michallat Pop Culture Ireland! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture Australia! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture UK! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Bill Osgerby Pop Culture West Africa! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Onookome Okome Pop Culture Germany! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Catherine Fraser Pop Culture China! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Kevin Latham [...]... funding my research trips to Russia during 2002 and 2003 I should like to thank Nadia, Polina, and Glasha for making me feel at home in the popular jungle of Moscow; Svetlana Kriukova and Svetlana Khokhriakova for their help in locating articles and pictures; Tamara, Masha, and Sasha at the Golden Mask for sorting me out whenever I got stuck; Tanya Tkach and Tanya Kuznetsova for helping me in Petersburg... It wanted to create a sophisticated, high culture, raising the general levels of education of the working class rather than pander to an audience The term mass culture remained synonymous with commercial and bourgeois throughout the Soviet period A parallel can be drawn, however, between mass culture in the capitalist world, serving commercial aims, and mass culture in the USSR, serving a political... mass appeal and popular taste before exploring concepts of popular culture After the Revolution The October Revolution of 1917 was supported by a great number of artists, who put their art at the service of the Revolutionary cause The Revolution had an enormous impact on cultural life in general, and on theater and cinema in particular, as a potential tool for agitation among the masses and the propagation... potatoes Folksy tunes and triumphant marches such as “Black Raven” (“Chernyi voron,” in the Vasiliev brothers’ [Georgi and Sergei] Chapayev, 1934) and “Song of the Motherland” (“Pesnia o rodine,” in Grigori Alexandrov’s Circus, 1936) assisted the plot and even became hits in their own right The Stalinist musical comedies were blockbusters, loved by the audiences for their glorified and glossy demonstration... incredible patience with the photo selection and to Irina Kaledina for her help with pictures Sharon Daugherty and Anna Kaltenbach at ABC-CLIO have been the most competent editors any author could wish for My sincere thanks to Gordon McVay for reading various drafts of the manuscript, to Barbara Heldt and Gerry Smith, and to Simon Mason for his patience and his invaluable suggestions This book is for... Brezhnev removed from towns and squares 08 Jan perestroika of the press: increased print runs of the journals Druzhba narodov and Novy mir, the newspapers Moskovskie novosti and AiF, and the weekly Ogonyok 28 Jan end of beriozka (foreign currency) shops 04 Feb rehabilitation of the anti-Stalin opposition (1938) 06 Feb nuclear test in Semipalatinsk 17 Feb suicide of musician Alexander Bashlachev 28–29 Feb... message would reach the masses The blockbuster became a tool for ideology At the same time, popular elements (comic or melodramatic genres, the promotion of stars, the inclusion of mass and folk songs) were incorporated into official Stalinist culture The popular films of the 1930s all relied on a simple narrative and conventional style, with a linear plot, reducing complex issues to a level that could... in USA 25 Feb death of writer and dissident Andrei Siniavsky 21 Mar Yeltsin and Clinton meet in Helsinki 12 May peace agreement with Chechnya 17 May release of Balabanov’s Brother 26 May Union charter with Belarus (effective as of 11 June) 09 Jun TV Center founded for the 850th anniversary of Moscow 12 Jun death of poet and bard Bulat Okudzhava 18 Jun death of writer and dissident Lev Kopelev 23 Jun... life through the beautiful, feminine characters played by Marina Ladynina and Liubov Orlova; they were loved for showing the victory of those Soviet ideals that the population was forced to believe in and for the predictability of their plots In theater, the experiments of Meyerhold and other avant-garde directors were stopped, and Konstantin Stanislavsky’s psychological realism was elevated to the “method.”... Moscow 24 Feb Putin dismisses Prime Minister Kasianov and cabinet 09 Mar new cabinet under Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov; reorganization of ministerial apparatus 14 Mar fire in the Manège exhibition hall 14 Mar presidential elections: Putin gains 57% of the votes XXXI Introduction Although the term popular culture is appropriate for contemporary Russian culture, it was, in a sense, contradictory to the . Michallat Pop Culture Ireland! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture Australia! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture UK! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Bill Osgerby Pop Culture West Africa! Media, Arts,. Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture Scandinavia! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture Caribbean! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Brenda F. Berrian Pop Culture France! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, . Dennison Pop Culture India! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Asha Kasbekar Pop Culture Japan! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, William H. Kelly Pop Culture Israel! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle Pop Culture Korea! Media,