Nietzsche and Soviet Culture
Ally and Adversary

This pioneering 1994 study documents the extent and diversity of the impact of Nietzschean ideas on Soviet literature and culture.

Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Edited by)

9780521452816, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 September 1994

440 pages
22.4 x 14.3 x 2.8 cm, 0.654 kg

"Many of the essays collected here are excellent and present findings that, as Rosenthal expects, will probably surprise many observers of Soviet culture....any scholar of Soviet culture, and even those who have investigated the role of Nietzsche in Russian culture, will find that Rosenthal's book is well worth reading..." Slavic Review

This pioneering 1994 study documents the extent and diversity of the impact of Nietzschean ideas on Soviet literature and culture. It shows how these ideas, unacknowledged and reworked, entered and shaped that culture and stimulated the imagination of both supporters and detractors of the regime addresses key peculiarities of the Soviet reception of Nietzsche - the role of the prerevolutionary interest in the occult, the way revolution figured as an allegorical subject, the intertwining of art and ideology in the obsession with creating a new culture, the continuing Russian interest in Nietzsche as a religious thinker, and the manner in which censorship affected the dynamic of reception and influence. The book looks at the origins, formative years, and subsequent development of Soviet literature and culture, and raises issues for research and discussion.

List of illustrations
List of contributors
Acknowledgement
List of abbreviations
Introduction Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal
Part I. Nietzsche and the Prerevolutionary Roots of Soviet Culture: 1. Nietzsche and the young Mayakovsky Bengt Jangfeldt
2. Khlebnikov and Nietzsche: pieces of an incomplete mosaic Henryk Baran
3. Apollonianism and Christian art: Nietzsche's influence on Acmeism Elaine Rusinko
4. Armchair anarchists and salon supermen: Russian occultists read Nietzsche Maria Carlson
Part II. Nietzsche and Soviet Initiatives in the Arts: 5. Nietzschean leaders and followers in Soviet mass theater, 1917–27 James von Geldern
6. Revolution as an aesthetic phenomenon: Nietzschean motifs in the reception of Isaac Babel (1923–32) Gregory Freidin
7. Nietzschean implications and superhuman aspirations in the architectural avant-garde Milka Bliznakov
8. Nietzscheanism and the return of Pushkin in twentieth-century Russian culture (1899–1937) Irina Paperno
Part III. Adaptations of Nietzsche in Soviet Ideology: 9. Nietzschean motifs in the Komsomol's vanguardism Isabel A. Tirado
10. Nietzschean roots of Stalinist culture Mikhail Agursky
11. Superman imagery in Soviet photography and photomontage Margarita Tupitsyn
Part IV: Nietzsche among Disaffected Writers and Thinkers: 12. From beyond the abyss: Nietzschean myth in Zamiatin's We and Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago Edith Clowes
13. Mandelstam, Nietzsche, and the conscious creation of history Clare Cavanagh
14. Nietzsche's influence on the non-official culture of the 1930s Boris Groys
Part V. Nietzsche and the Nationalities: A Case Study: 15. Nietzsche's influence on Hebrew writers of the Russian empire Menahem Brinker
Index.

Subject Areas: Cultural studies [JFC]