Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin by Karen s> Petrone (review)

Abstract

114 SEER, 82, I, 2004 fails to pursue these topics in more ambitious or original directions. The editors acknowledge that they cannot offer a comprehensive survey of all aspects of the subject described in the book's title. This may partiallyjustify their failure to consider any forms of cultural self-representationor practice otherthan architectureand philanthropy(and,perhaps,religionand politics). But this does not excuse the fact that only one contributor (West) engages theoreticallywith crucial definitional and interpretativeproblems of cultural history. PartTwo, in particular,will disappointreadersinterestedin cultural approaches to studying architecture and the built environment. While the authorsof these chaptersexpertlydescribethe history,constructionand style of buildings, they make little attempt to explain their formal, aesthetic or representationalinnovations, still less to interpret these attributesor contextualize them in wider historiesof Russian and European modernity. Ruble's paper, while deeply engaging, fits awkwardlyinto the overall conception of the volume. Nevertheless, the editors are correct to assertthat the novelty of this body of research into Russian business and architecturalhistoryjustifies the attention of specialists,who will certainlywelcome itspublication. Department ofHistogy NICK BARON U'niversity ofM7anchester Petrone,Karen. LifeHasBecome Morejoyous,Comrades. Celebrations intheTimeoJ Stalin.Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2000. X+ 266 pp. Illustrations . Notes. Bibliography.Index. [28.50. THE end of 1935 marked the beginning of an upswing in official Soviet celebrations:the promotion of the New Year'stree;the Stalin Constitutionof I936; the PushkinCentennial of 1937; and the twenty-yearanniversaryof the October Revolution. This waspreciselythe period when the terrorreachedits apogee. According to Karen Petrone,the studyof celebrationsis criticalto an understanding of the Stalinist I930s, for it can illuminate the interplay of officialideology, the various practices and discoursesof governance, and the forms of popular participation and resistance. Situating herself within the historiographicalframeworkof social history, Petrone opposes the other key current in contemporary scholarshipthat privileges the role of ideology and assertsthe inability of ordinarySoviet citizens to fashion identitiesoutside of this framework.She thus stressesthe fracturesand contradictions of official discourses and the myriad ways ordinarypeople interacted with them at times appropriatingthem fortheirown, more subversiveuses.The statecould not control the way officialdiscourseswere used, she stresses,nor could they eliminate alternativeworldviews. This volume is the first comprehensive study of celebrations during the 1930$ and contributes to a growing literature on the history of festivals, parades, holidays and public rituals. As scholars have documented, official celebrationsare importantmechanismsof politicallegitimizationandpopular mobilization. While celebrationsand festivalshad played an importantrole in REVIEWS 115 Bolshevikpolitical culture since i 9 I8, the late I 920s witnessed the centralization and tightening of political control over them. NeverthelessPetroneis not satisfiedwithjust 'reading'the totalizingrepresentationsof officialideology in these stage-managedperformances,though she does analysethe way categories and concepts were used to promote the legitimacy and authority of the state. Using a wide variety of published and archival sources, she instead reveals the disputes and jockeying for position among officialsas well as the responsesof both institutionsand individuals. This volume is divided into two parts with six topical chapters (plus introductoryand concluding chapters).PartOne examines three case studies that illuminate the nexus between popular culture and mass mobilization. Chaptersare thus devoted to parades,the celebrationof the heroic exploits of Soviet aviatorsand polar explorers,and the festivitiesof New Year'sDay. In her analysisof parades, for example, Petroneshows how the parade provided a powerfulimage and enactment of the officialorder.Hierarchywas displayed most fundamentallyin the distinctionsbetween the elite spectators(withStalin at the symbolic and physical centre) and the slightly less elite participants. Likewise,the orderof precedence within theparade enacted otherhierarchies of identity involving geography (Moscow-periphery),nation (Russian over non-Russian), class (workersover peasants), and gender (men over women). Behind the facade of order,however, reigneddisorder,confusion, indiscipline and rivalry.As Petroneshowsin othercontexts aswell, the parade often could not mask the gaps between discourse and social reality. Indeed, in the realm of celebration as in almost all others spheres of politics and the economy, failures of communication intentional and unintentional limited Moscow's rule in the provinces. Part Two is then organized around the theme of cultural and political enlightenment,withchaptersdevotedto thePushkinCentennial,thetwentieth anniversary of the October Revolution, and the celebrations of the Stalin Constitution. Although culturedness was a central aspect of the Stalinist system,each of these case...