History
305
Fall
2006
Devine
Study
Questions: Week #2
Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture, pp. 1-8
- According to Stites, why should we study popular culture? Why has
everyone from prudish reformers to academic Marxists criticized popular
culture?
- Why is popular culture essentially an urban phenomenon?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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
- According to Kenez, what are the main “characteristics” of cinema?
What factors explain its immediate financial success and popularity among
the people?
- 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?
- What was the
attitude of the tsarist government toward the new medium? How did this attitude suggest the
vulnerability of the tsar’s regime?
- 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?
- How did World War
I affect the Russian film industry?
- How did
pre-revolutionary Russian films differ from films in the West and from
films subsequently produced by the Bolsheviks?
- 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
- 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?
- Why was it
difficult for the Bolsheviks to “integrate the masses” into their
activities? (27) How did they try
to overcome this difficulty?
- What distinction did
the early Bosheviks make between “propaganda”
and “agitation?” Why were both considered so important?
- Why was film – “a weapon for progress” – singularly suited
for propaganda purposes among the Soviet masses? What was wrong with literature? Or theatre?
- Why were
screenplays written after a film had been shot?
- 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?
- 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
- 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?”
- What was new
about the Bolshevik government’s relationship to culture? In what way did this relationship clash
with classic Marxist theory?
- Why did the
Bolsheviks strive to place “honest work” at the center of their
culture?
- 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?
- 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?
- How did technology
affect the growth of jazz?
- Ostensibly, revolutions
are intended to “liberate the oppressed.” Who, respectively, were the twin
revolutions that Starr discusses attempting to liberate?
Chapter 2
- What did the “Red
Seal” recordings say about pre-revolutionary culture in Russia?
- What forms of
popular culture existed in pre-revolutionary Russia? What role did American films play in
pre-revolutionary Russian pop culture?
- Why did ragtime
and the cakewalk sweep through Europe? What was the allure? Why was Black culture particularly
appealing to middle class Europeans?
- On what did
Russian critic Ivan Narodny’s base his attack on
ragtime? Was it credible?
- What was the
“low, sweet fever” that had invaded Russia by 1917?
Chapter 3
- According to Starr,
what factors explain the absence of jazz in the Soviet
Union before 1922?
- 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?
- 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?
- How did Meierhold use jazz in the theatrical production, D.E.
in 1922? In Starr’s opinion, what
was Meierhold attempting to accomplish?
- What were the
positive and negative results of the NEP’s
tolerance of jazz?