A Gaze at Enthusiasm: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century Russian Culture

Abstract

This paper aims to trace the descent of ‘enthusiasm’ in the twentieth century Russian cultural history as well as understand the Totalitarianism under the Stalinist authority and its consequences in the late twentieth century. In doing so, we started by categorizing the concept of ‘enthusiasm’ into the ‘earth-grounded type’ and the ‘authority-oriented type’.The mainstream symbolist movement in the early twentieth century Russian culture obtained an eschatological tendency under the influence of Sorov'yov's school. Later, Ivanov opened up a way to the Primitivist movement by recognizing the role of ‘symbol’ within the Dionysian integration. Such is an example of the ‘grounded’ type of enthusiasm.Nourishing on such enthusiasm, the Russian avant-garde art movement blossomed. After the Russian revolution, the Russian avant-garde art, through artist such as Mayakovsky and Meierhold, realised the enthusiasm in both directions. On the other hand, there were artists such as Eisenstein who attempted to integrate to the Stalinist authority by deploying an anthoropological imagination, even though tending towards the ‘earth-grounded’ enthusiasm.The era of the ‘Thaw’ was also the era in which the spirit of integration (sobornost') originated in the Russian Orthodox tradition flourished. But since Stalin's death the centripetal force of enthusiasm was lost. The process of anti-Stalinism failed to realise the regression towards world history, and caused the new era of closure called ‘the post-Utopean era’. The characteristic of ‘informal culture’ which existed between the ‘Thaw’ and the Breshnev era is understood as the movement attempting to overcome the Stalinist influence through intense sophistication of the concept of ‘distance’.Even though the Soviet socialist declined through the influence of high-tech revolution in the Western Europe, the recent Postmodernists devise Russian history with the concept of ‘emptiness (pustota) ’, identifying Russia as the state of simulation without reference. Such Postmodernists attempt to harmonize with the Totalitarianism, but at the same time seek for a way to overcome Stalinism as they skillfully attempt to secretly innovate the rigid dichotomous framework.