History 305

Devine

Fall 2006

Week #3 Study Questions

John Carter, “These Wild Young People: By One of Them”

1. What effect did World War I have on the younger generation?

2. Why is John F. Carter so critical of the older generation?

3. According to Carter, how did the older generation take away the idealism of the younger generation?

Thomas Hine, The Rise & Fall of the American Teenager, Chapter 10

1. What was new about teen sexuality in the 1920s?

2. According to the author, were the cultural changes of the 1920s spurred by the rich or by the lower classes?

3. What was “Chlorosis” and why did it disappear by 1920?

4. By the 1920s, more young women were entering the workplace. What impact did this have on their lives?

5. According to the author, why did the rise of a commercial, consumer-driven culture make society more democratic and inclusive?

6. Why was navigating the new commercial culture more difficult for women? How did the line between “treating” and prostitution get blurred?

7. What impact did the movies have on young people living in a peer culture?

8. How did Joan Crawford’s flapper character bridge the gap between “good girl” and “vamp”?

9. Why is it ironic that Anne Faulkner, a jazz critic, refers to the music as having a “Bolshevik element”? (p. 194)

10. What are some of the factors – economic, social, technological – that account for the changes in youthful behavior?

11. What role did high school attendance have in shaping the new youth culture?

12. How did dating grant new freedoms but also impose limitations on young men and women?

Anne E. Gorsuch, Youth in Revolutionary Russia, Chapters 4, 6

Chapter 4

1. How did New Economic Policy (NEP) Communism differ from Civil War Communism? Why did some militant young people prefer the latter?

2. Who did the bratushki see as the new “enemies”? In their view, what factors and circumstances had caused communism to lose its “militance”?

3. Were the bratushki criticisms of NEP communism and the “old ones” who ran it due to a fundamental disagreement over political philosophy or more attributable to the “restlessness of youth”?

4. In what ways did the bratushki express their frustration with the political status quo? Do you think some of their tactics seemed more effective than others?

5. Why did Leon Trotsky, and not Josef Stalin, become the hero of the bratushki?

6. How did the Soviet government react to the bratushki?

7. For the bratushki, why did clothes, manners, language, and everyday behavior have political significance? Did these things have political significance or were they just a means of getting attention and irritating the older generation?

8. How did the Bolshevik moralists’ definition of a being a “good communist” differ from that of the bratushki? Why did the older communists object to the bratushkis’ appearance and behavior?

9. How did the contrast between NEP communism and Civil War communism also reflect the contrast between adolescence and adulthood?

Chapter 6

1. What effect did the introduction of the NEP have on culture and everyday life in Soviet cities?

2. Even though the Soviet economy improved dramatically under NEP and “private trade…revived a population on the brink of death” (p. 118), why did many communists see the new policies as “evil”?

3. Why did the bohemian youth make committed communists feel uncomfortable? Do you think the discomfort caused by the bohemians was different from the discomfort caused by the bratushki?

4. How was the NEP a political and economic retreat from revolutionary upheaval? Why does the author believe that the popularity of “bourgeois” dances and amusements signaled an “emotional retreat” (p. 123) from revolutionary upheaval?

5. Why did many young Russians prefer fox trotting to “building socialism”? Why was this cause for concern among the Bolshevik moralists?

6. What evidence does the author introduce to show that Bolshevik moralists and middle class reformers in the US and Europe had much in common?

7. Why, by the late 1920s, was the Soviet government condemning the use of lipstick while state-owned factories were producing it? Is there any broader significance to be found in this apparent contradiction?

8. Why were some young Russians attracted to Western fashions and willing to make great sacrifices to be “in fashion”? Why didn’t they want to be recognized as “workers” – even in the “workers’ state”?

9. How did young Russians – both the bratushki and those who wore jackets with white silk linings – use clothing as a means of self-identification? Was this a political statement or simply an assertion of one’s individuality?

10. Why does the author think that Russian flappers must have “disappointed” Trotsky? How did Russian flappers and foxtrotters violate Bolshevik cultural and political ideals?

S. Frederick Starr, Red & Hot, Chapter 4

1. What was the critical response to Sam Wooding’s jazz band? What factors motivated the critics’ responses?

2. What was the purpose of the Blue Blouse movement?

3. Why did Russian audiences prefer Benny Peyton’s Jazz Kings over Sam Wooding’s band while the elite musicians and critics preferred Wooding?

4. What role did Paul “Pops” Whiteman play in the history of jazz music?

5. How did the Soviet musicians who played jazz in Teplitsky’s band differ from American jazz musicians?

6. How did the government react to the introduction of jazz into the Soviet Union during the mid- to late 1920s?

7. According to Starr, why did elites – European and Russian – have to “romanticize” jazz or “render it exotic” before they could accept it? (p. 74)

8. Why did the Soviet lecturer and musician Joseph Schillinger speak in favor of jazz? Why did his views on jazz make him “potentially dangerous” in the eyes of the regime?

9. Who made up the audience for jazz in the Soviet Union? Why was it a fairly restricted audience?