History 305

Fall 2006

Devine

 

Study Questions: Week #2

 

Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture, pp. 1-8

 

  1. According to Stites, why should we study popular culture? Why has everyone from prudish reformers to academic Marxists criticized popular culture?

 

  1. Why is popular culture essentially an urban phenomenon? 

 

  1. In what ways has Russian popular culture been similar to popular culture in other countries?  In what ways is it unique?  How did Soviet “mass culture” (p. 5) differ from pre-revolutionary Russian popular culture?

 

  1. What aspects of Russia’s history, culture, and traditions have shaped Russian popular culture? According to Stites, what are the “complimentary and conflicting aspects” (p. 5) of the Russian character that are prevalent in Soviet popular culture?

 

  1. What do you think Stites means when he says, “Part of comprehending a people’s culture is knowing what they know”? (p. 7)

 

 

Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, Chapter 1

 

  1. According to Kenez, what are the main “characteristics” of cinema? What factors explain its immediate financial success and popularity among the people?

 

  1. What does Kenez mean when he says cinema was a “democratic medium”?  Did it remain a “democratic medium” in the Soviet Union after the October revolution?

 

  1. What was the attitude of the tsarist government toward the new medium?  How did this attitude suggest the vulnerability of the tsar’s regime?

 

  1. How did filmmakers get middle class customers to the cinema?  Why had the middle class not embraced early films?   How did the upper class view early cinema? 

 

  1. How did World War I affect the Russian film industry?

 

  1. How did pre-revolutionary Russian films differ from films in the West and from films subsequently produced by the Bolsheviks?

 

  1. What impact did the political and economic instability that surrounded the revolution have on the content of Russian films?

 

Richard Taylor, “The Bolsheviks, Propaganda and the Cinema,” pp. 26-42

 

  1. How would you characterize the relationship of the Bolsheviks to the masses following the Revolution in October, 1917?  Controlling? Distant? Patronizing? Suspicious? Was the revolution a movement from above or from below?

 

  1. Why was it difficult for the Bolsheviks to “integrate the masses” into their activities? (27)  How did they try to overcome this difficulty?

 

  1. What distinction did the early Bosheviks make between “propaganda” and “agitation?”  Why were both considered so important?

 

  1. Why was film – “a weapon for progress” – singularly suited for propaganda purposes among the Soviet masses?  What was wrong with literature?  Or theatre? 

 

  1. Why were screenplays written after a film had been shot?

 

  1. How did film, as an art form, reflect a new age?  For the Bolsheviks, what role did technology play in determining the acceptability of an art form?

 

  1. Why did the Bolsheviks suspect any form of communication whose purported purpose was merely “entertainment?” Why were Bolsheviks opposed to “fiction” films?  

 

S. Frederick Starr, Red & Hot, Chapters 1, 2, 3

 

Chapter 1

 

  1. What does Starr mean by the “Twin Revolutions of 1917?”  Were these revolutions political, cultural, or both? Were they conducted as “top down” or “bottom up?”

 

  1. What was new about the Bolshevik government’s relationship to culture?  In what way did this relationship clash with classic Marxist theory?

 

  1. Why did the Bolsheviks strive to place “honest work” at the center of their culture? 

 

  1. What factors contributed to an emerging popular culture in America in the early 20th century?  Why did America become “the world’s leading laboratory for creation and dissemination of consumer oriented pop culture ‘from below.’”  Why not Europe? 

 

  1. What was new about Jazz?  How did it differ from previous musical forms?  How did jazz threaten the Soviet desire to harness man’s physical nature through work?

 

  1. How did technology affect the growth of jazz?

 

  1. Ostensibly, revolutions are intended to “liberate the oppressed.” Who, respectively, were the twin revolutions that Starr discusses attempting to liberate?  

 

Chapter 2

 

  1. What did the “Red Seal” recordings say about pre-revolutionary culture in Russia?

 

  1. What forms of popular culture existed in pre-revolutionary Russia?  What role did American films play in pre-revolutionary Russian pop culture? 

 

  1. Why did ragtime and the cakewalk sweep through Europe?  What was the allure?  Why was Black culture particularly appealing to middle class Europeans? 

 

  1. On what did Russian critic Ivan Narodny’s base his attack on ragtime?   Was it credible? 

 

  1. What was the “low, sweet fever” that had invaded Russia by 1917?

 

Chapter 3

 

  1. According to Starr, what factors explain the absence of jazz in the Soviet Union before 1922?

 

  1. What role did Valentin Parnakh play in the development of Russian jazz?   What made his contribution so important?  What appeared to be his motive for embracing jazz?

 

  1. To what extent was the New Economic Policy (NEP) essential to Parnakh’s desire to introduce jazz to the Soviet Union?   How did his appreciation for “the vibrant energy and motion released by granting of boundless individual freedom to each participant” square with Bolshevik orthodoxy? 

 

  1. How did Meierhold use jazz in the theatrical production, D.E. in 1922?  In Starr’s opinion, what was Meierhold attempting to accomplish? 

 

  1. What were the positive and negative results of the NEP’s tolerance of jazz?